At long last, Google Alerts are available as RSS feeds! While I realize many people accept email as a means of integrating multiple information feeds, I’m glad that Google has embraced a protocol that is far more suited to the purpose. Time for me to go off and convert my alerts from email to RSS…

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My friend Evan Sandhaus at the New York Times Company told me the other day that the paper of record would be releasing a large collection of their articles. Well, the New York Times Annotated Corpus is here! For full details check out this overview document, but here are some vital stats to whet your appetite: [...]

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Join the discussion over at Probably Irrelevant.

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Just saw on Stefano’s Linotype that social datbase Freebase launched a version 4.0. I think Stefano does a better job marketing the redesign than the official Freebase blog. The positives he cites: reducing data agoraphobia one size does not fit all increasing relational density I really want to be excited about Freebase, especially given the cool [...]

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Here’s the report via ChiefTech: A small study raises questions about whether videoconferencing distorts interactions in a subtle but important way. The study found that doctors and nurses who attended seminars via videoconference were more likely to be influenced by the charisma of the presenter. In contrast, people who were face-to-face with the presenter were [...]

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Yahoo Researcher Andrew Tomkins gave the keynote at the CIKM 2008 Workshop on Search and Social Media, entreating academics to forget about core web search, where they can’t compete on a level playing field with commercial search engine companies, and instead to focus on social media search. Notes here, courtesy of Matt Hurst. Thanks to him [...]

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When I decided to start blogging, I scoured the blogosphere for role models. In particular, I looked for examples of people who, despite a strong corporate affiliation, managed to create a very non-corporate, personal voice. It didn’t take long to find Dave Kellogg. Kellogg is the CEO of Mark Logic, a company that sells an [...]

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The HCIR ’08 proceedings are now available at the workshop website. Enjoy!

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One of Endeca‘s partners, PowerReviews, got a nice write-up in the Wall Street Journal for their reviews and recommendation site, Buzzillions. They’re at the forefront of social navigation, something I think we’ll see increasingly in online retail and media. Here’s a screenshot to get you in the Halloween spirit:

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Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But I do thank Jeff for alerting me to Google’s SearchWiki efforts: The new feature is a more transparent way to personalize search results; this time, Google allows users to decide which search results are the most relevant and to share those findings with other users. Instead of bookmarking the results or [...]

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