Cool Tech Reviews

I’m always a sucker for a Web gadget and Blinkx, the audio and video search site, has a neat one:

The above is a “wall” which previews the audio and video results of searching for “Zune” at Blinkx. They encourage web site owners to embed such walls on their sites and the wall is resizeable and updates continuously. I’m not sure how Blinkx makes enough money to support this, but it’s certainly interesting.

This seems to be yet another example of the rapidly growing arena of Web “widgets” which a variety of publishers are providing for various reasons of their own. I previously mentioned the Google gadgets which fall into the same category.

Shelley Solheim at InfoWorld:

Search engine AskJeeves.com has rebranded itself as Ask.com, ditched its namesake butler icon and added several new search tools in an effort to woo more users, Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of Ask Jeeves’ parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp announced Monday.

“It needed not be any radical change, we just needed to drop some baggage,” Diller said in his keynote address Monday at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in New York.

In addition to losing what Diller referred to as the “fat butler,” Ask.com streamlined its Web site with a new “non-cluttered” look and added a right-hand sidebar for searching different sources — such as images, weather, dictionaries, and local sources — that Ask.com officials say enables “search on speed dial.”

That seems a little harsh - Jeeves was about the only reason to head over to AskJeeves, although admittedly not a big reason for me or most others:

According to the latest data compiled by comScore Networks, Ask Jeeves only gets about 6.5 percent of total search queries. Google was the most used search engine in the U.S. in November, followed by Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN and America Online.

We’ll see if dumping the “fat butler” makes any difference, but I expect it’s one more descent on the downward spiral for Ask.com.

It’s not quite as good as Bill Gates’ paying search engine users, but it’s a start. John Ribeiro at InfoWorld:

Start-up Cosmodex launched a new search engine on Thursday that aims to attract users by rewarding them with loyalty points.

The points can be redeemed for free Web traffic directed at a site of the user’s choosing, the company said. The system will help bloggers and owners of small Web sites to generate traffic even if they don’t have an advertising budget, the company said.

Cosmodex, of Montrose, California, sees itself as an Internet superhero, “fighting against search engine villains who are overcharging advertisers.”

Registration at the site, http://www.cosmodex.com, is free.

It’s an interesting idea and, of course, they will also be happy to sell you advertising as well. The real trick will be to match the major search engines in search quality and draw users. They don’t seem to be doing too badly with the first (although they need to work on relevance ordering) and only time will tell on the latter.

David Alpert explains at the Google Blog:

It may come as no surprise, but I like to search for things on Google. Yep, when I’m looking for something, I always try it on Google first. And sometimes, that thing I’m looking for is music. Many of our users feel the same way, and we get a lot of search traffic on music terms like popular artists and albums.

A few of us decided to try to make the information you get for these searches even better, so we created a music search feature. Now you can search for a popular artist name, like the Beatles or the Pixies, and often Google will show some information about that artist, like cover art, reviews, and links to stores where you can download the track or buy a CD via a link at the top of your web search results page.

We do this sort of thing a lot — adding a bit of special information to results for important searches. For example, we have movie showtimes and stock quotes. The more information we can make easily accessible with a simple search, the better.

Right now the music search feature mostly works for artists popular in the U.S. and a more limited number of artists from other countries, but we plan to expand it to classical music, worldwide artists, and lesser-known performers. Our list of music stores will also grow over time. If you’re a music store (selling downloads, music by subscription, or physical CDs) and would like to be listed, please get in touch.

Every reviewer seems to be trying out obscure groups and songs and I’m no exception. When Google finds them at the main search (like the examples above) it’s great, but not all will be found. In that case, here’s a tip - use http://www.google.com/musicsearch instead and you’re much more likely to have success. Here’s an example:

Searching at the main Google search prompt for The Contours ( http://www.google.com/search?q=the+contours ) doesn’t provide any of the enhanced music information. Using the Music Search entry ( http://www.google.com/musicsearch?q=the+contours ) does.

So how is Google making money off this? Well, hard as it may be to believe, they aren’t. Directly, at least:

Unlike Yahoo Inc., Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has no plans to create a music library of its own, Mayer said. Google also won’t collect a referral fee if its visitors click on the new music section and go on to buy songs from one of the linked libraries.

But Google does stand to profit if the new section spurs more search requests about music because that gives its search engine more opportunities to display ads about the same subject.

Give it a try the next time you are feeling musically minded.

Not right away though, as Bryan Glick reports at vnunet.com in Search engines will have to offer financial incentives, says Bill Gates:

‘Google is getting about $50 per year for your searching. Yet, because it does not think it has any competition, it is not giving any of that back to you,’ he said.

‘As search becomes competitive and people realise that other offerings are as good, or are even significantly better, there will be price competition.

‘You will get some free content or a cheque, or some incentive to use a different search engine. Competition for users has not even kicked in. I can assure you it will not stay that way.’

And he added: ‘We are going to run some experiments on that in the next year.’

More by following the link, as well as the rest of the interview.