If you’re into search startups, then today’s a great day to check out what a couple of them are up to. TheFind just launched (or relaunched?) a “buying engine” that aspires “to help every shopper find exactly what they want to buy, and to help every merchant, large and small, to reach those shoppers.” It [...]

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Freebase. Wolfram Alpha. Google Squared. I hesitate to declare a trend, but there does seem to be a growing interest in more structured approaches to information seeking. The latest entry is Factual, launched today by Gil Elbaz. Elbaz is no slouch: in 1998, he and Adam Weissman co-founded Applied Semantics (originally known as Oingo) and [...]

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Not sure when (or why) this happened, but I just noticed that my Faceted Search book is now almost half off at Amazon, selling for $12.94. Not that it was ever that extravagant a purchase, but at this price you have 48% fewer excuses not to buy your own copy! And, speaking of Amazon, I [...]

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As some of you may remember, I’m excited about Google Squared, a project I see as a great first step toward exploratory search at a web scale. Yes, I know that Duck Duck Go, Kosmix and others are already taking on this challenge, but it makes a difference to see Google throw its weight behind [...]

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A few months ago, I wrote in “The Twouble with Twitter Search“: But the trickle that Twitter returns is hardly enough. I believe this limitation is by design–that Twitter knows the value of such access and isn’t about to give it away. I just hope Twitter will figure out a way to provide this access [...]

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I enjoyed my proverbial fifteen seconds of fame on CNN yesterday, and I even enjoyed lunch at the New York Times cafeteria today. But for a prime-time media show check out the live blogging of a chat that Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt are having with reporters at the Google New York [...]

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For anyone who’s ever wondered what it would be like to see me live on CNN, this is your chance! Sorry that it isn’t my most telegenic moment. Still, it was a nice opportunity to share my perspective on the new FTC regulations facing bloggers.

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Just thought I’d alert readers to an article I just published in the current issue of the ASIS&T Bulletin entitled “Reconsidering Relevance and Embracing Interaction“. Of course, it’s all about trying to usher in a brave new world of human-computer information retrieval. If you’re not already sick of reading about HCIR, check it out!

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The HCIR 2009 proceedings are now available on the workshop web site. We’re planning to  save trees and money by asking attendees to download the proceedings rather than printing them out. And, of course, we’re delighted to circulate the proceedings to those who won’t be fortunate enough to spend the day at the workshop.

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As has been anticipated for a while–and discussed during the Ethics of Blogging panel–the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has published explicit guidelines regarding how bloggers (at least within its jurisdiction) must disclose any “material connections” they have to the companies they endorse.  The full details are available here. There have been a number [...]

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