We’ve written about several video metasearch (aka federated search) tools in 2006. They allow the searcher to simultaneously search multiple video databases with a single query. These metasearch products include:
+ SearchforVideo.com (video podcast directory too!)
+ Blinkx (includes some transcript search)
+ Pure Video (Beta)

We will end the year with yet another video metasearch service, VideoRonk (Beta). Here you can simultaneously search the databases of:
+ YouTube
+ Google Video
+ Dailymotion
+ Metacafe
+ iFilm
+ MySpace Video
+ Vimeo
+ Revver
+ Blip
+ Other “open web” sources

Things to note with VideoRonk:
1) Dynamic search term suggestions as letters are entered into the search box.
2) Option to download video clip to local computer (copyright emptor, of course!).
3) Pre-limited search options for music video.
4) Ability to limit to one specific source.
5) View video clips directly on results pages, Save favorites via cookie-based service. If cookies are cleared, your list is cleared.
6) VideoRonk has a separate site for “adult content.”
7) A service of Madrid Spain’s Freestyle34.com.

Source: Hat Tip to SearchMob

4INFO is a mobile information service (web, WAP, SMS) that we’ve been posting about since it first launched. They’re ending 2006 with a bunch of enhanced services that have rolled out in the past month or so. Here’s a quick review:

+ 12 New SMS Alerts (sent via SMS)
Word of the Day, Bible Quotes, On This Day, Love Tips, Diet Tips, Movie Trivia, Celeb News, Daily Insult, Daily Myth, Fortune Cookie, and Wacky Days. Here’s a complete list of all 4Info alerts. A new pickup line feature is also available.

+ Upgraded Sports SMS Alerts
From the 4INFO blog:

Several users asked for the ability to get scores sent at the end of each period instead of at the end of the game (which you could already do on the web, but the default “Reply 1″ set up was for end of game only). So, we changed the default setting to deliver at the end of each game’s period (quarter, half, period) and at the end of the game.

+ Addition of Real-Time NFL Player Updates (via GroganSports)
Using the 4INFO Open Platform.

+ Open Platform
If you mobilize your content with the 4INFO Open Platform for free, end users will now see advertising. Other services to know about include Winksite, xFruits, and Squeet.

4INFO allows you to create text message alerts using ANY RSS feed and have them delivered as they’re posted/published or at a specific time.

Another company doing impressive work (and getting better all of the time) in this area is ZapTXT. They not only provide mobile SMS alerts but also alerts via e-mail and IM. Keyword alerts too!

Here’s a Yahoo Research Lab Berkeley prototype (not new, about 10 months old) but one you might have missed in 2006.

Since many of you are Flickr fans, it might be of special interest. Photos taken with a camera phone can utilize research.yahoo.com’s ZoneTag. However, at this point there are many requirements. In other words, many of you will be unable to try it. Nevertheless, it’s likely that the concepts developed here will be used elsewhere in the future.

In Yahoo Research language:

ZoneTag is a research prototype that aims to leverage the context available from cellular phones to create new experiences around media, and in particular, photographs. The name ZoneTag was inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1977 quote asserting that “Everything [in the world] exists to end up in a photograph”.

What ZoneTag offers, from the site:
1) Automatic Tag Suggestions

The suggestions are based on tags made by you and your Flickr contacts in similar context, e.g. in the same location.

2) Two Click Uploads to Flickr

3)

ZoneTag can automatically tag your photos with the location, based on the cell tower, in which they were taken. The location of the cell tower is not known until our user community updates the city, state, or zip code of their photos on Flickr. ZoneTag is then able to map the cell tower to the location.

At this point (10 months after launch), ZoneTag only works with Motorola or Nokia phone (Series 60 V2, not V3) and a few wireless plans. More info in the FAQ.

Want to review what others have contributed (and said about the service)? Look here.

Real estate dbases, Zillow.com, Trulia, and HotPads, now all offer heat maps to illustrate “hot” (or cold) neighborhoods for real estate in various cities.

The HotPads Heat Maps are available for the United States. Interactive versions are also available. You’ll find neighborhood listings along with the following Census data:
+ Population Density
+ Per Capita Income
+ Median Household Income
+ Median Age
+ Percent Renters
+ Median Rent

Trulia:
Look for the “heat map tab” at the top of the search box. Search by city name or zip code to determine if a “heat map” is available. Here’s an example of a Trulia “heat map” for the Chicago metropolitan area. From the page:

See home prices and popularity trends in Chicago, IL, by neighborhood or ZIP—sort by avg. listing price, avg. sales price, median sales price, avg. price/sqft and search popularity. Choose between seeing the actual prices or year-over-year (y-o-y) percentage changes on the map.

Also note the advanced search page and its many options.

+ Zillow
Look for the “heat map” option when you search by address or zip code. It’s located next to the hybrid map view. “Heat Maps” are available at the city view level. Btw, Zillow includes “recently sold” home data and each home for sale offers a “comparables” link to see prices that similar homes in the area have sold for.

See Also: More Heat Maps
+ NASDAQ 100 Heat Map
+ NASDAQ 100 Pre-Market Heat Map
+ NASDAQ ETF Heat Map
+ “Map of the Market” “Mutual Fund” and Sector Maps (via SmartMoney)
+ Local Forum Activity Heat Maps (via Topix.net)

+ Sullivan Talks Wikisari with Jimmy Wales (via Search Engine Land)
Danny does an excellent job (what else is new) chatting it up with Jimmy Wales about Wikisari, a yet to launch search tool that made lots of news last week. As many of you know, Jimmy Wales is also one of the co-founders of Wikipedia. We will be watching its progress with great interest in the new year. One of many things we learn in Sullivan’s interview is that Wikisari is still in very early development.

Last week, in a post about Wikisari, ResourceShelf pointed out that information professionals/librarians and subject experts (aka humans) have been on the front lines developing databases where the quality (as determined by the humans selecting, reviewing and annotating the material) trumps the overall size of the database. If you never visited a few of these sites, we urge you to take a look. We think you’ll be impressed. We listed a few (of thousands) of both general knowledge and some specific to one topic or discipline. The list could go on for pages. Most of these sites are non-commercial and provide expert generated metadata and annotations. They also have collection development policies (what can or cannot be added) similar to what an actual physical library has on file.

See Also: Wikiasari, Community Search Engine; What About Info Pro Community Constructed Databases and Search Tools?

+ The Ten Best Food Trends of 2006

+ The Ten Worst Food Trends of 2006

+ Food and Drink Predictions for 2007

Source: Epicurious

From the article:

Concert tours by the Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand and country duo Tim McGraw and Faith Hill were among the top-grossing tours in North America in 2006, helping drive ticket revenue to a record $3.6 billion (euro2.7 billion), according to Pollstar, the industry trade magazine.

Source: AP (via Pollstar)

Posted 30 December 2006 on DocuTicker:
+ To Have or Not To Have a Pet for Better Health? (PLoS One)
+ Residential Properties Taken Under Eminent Domain: Do Government Appraisers Track Market Values? (Journal of Real Estate Research)
+ Tackling Hate Crime: Homophobic Hate Crime (Home Office)

National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD) 2006 CD

This CD is available free from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics by ordering here. Ships withing 24 hours.

This 2-CD set presents a set of national geographic databases of transportation facilities. These databases include geospatial information for transportation modal networks and intermodal terminals, and related attribute information. Included are descriptions of the file formats and database metadata as prescribed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).

You can also download the files online.

Source: BTS

+ Yahoo Removes News Message Boards: What Is To Come? (via Search Engine Land)

Btw, if you’re interested in commenting on items in the news, Topix.net (a ResourceShelf favorite) offers discussion boards for thousands of topics and a local forum for every zip code and many postal codes in Canada. Their database is also superb.

+ Of Disappearing Sex Blogs & Google Updates (via SEL)

+ Overlap Showdown: Only at 1 of 6 (via SES)

Atlas of Plucked Instruments: an encyclopedia of all the world’s plucked instruments of lute, guitar, banjo and mandolin type
“Based on a large private collection of plucked stringed musical instruments (plus additional material from books and websites), this ATLAS will give you information about almost all the different plucked instruments you can think of.”

I have tried to keep the website as simple as possible.

The menu with all different website pages is on the top left side, and repeated on each page.

This menu is roughly divided in 3 parts :
- the red part are the general pages,
- the grey part contains the pages with “historical” instruments,
- the green part contains the pages with “ethnic” instruments.

In the grey pages are the modern western style instruments, divided in their obvious different categories. The ethnic pages are divided into general regions, but in such a way that closely related types of instruments are as much as possible on one page. At the top of each region page you can see which countries are included, and usually also on which other page you can find a neighbouring country.

On the Index page is an overview of the contents and all the instruments on the different pages (but without the pictures), which could work easier/quicker if you are just searching for a name. You can search this page with the search button of your browser to find a particular instrument.

Includes an extensive bibliography.

Source: Henny de Bruin (Dutch musician and instrument collector)

Searching historical herbal texts for potential new drugs

Our findings show that potential drugs can be identified by searching historical herbal texts. Although we will never know the exact disorder that was treated with the kernel of the atun tree, these kernels were described nearly 400 years ago as a treatment for symptoms that are treated today with modern antibiotics. The current literature has no descriptions of the use of the atun tree to treat any disease similar to dysentery. By searching historical texts on herbal medicine, therefore, we have identified a potential new drug with antibacterial properties and have recovered lost knowledge of traditional medicine.

• About a quarter of existing prescription drugs come from natural sources, and historical herbal texts contain a wealth of medicinal knowledge that could be used to identify new drugs.
• Searching through historical texts on herbal medicine indicated that extracts of the atun tree (Atuna racemosa) had antibacterial effects, and this was confirmed by laboratory tests.
• Extracts were specifically effective against two Gram positive bacteria, and extracts of the kernels were more efficacious than leaf extracts.
• The extract of A racemosa should be fractionated to identify the active antibacterial compound.

Source: British Medical Journal

2006 Yearly Box Office Grosses (via Box Office Mojo)

The Top 150 motion pictures are listed.
1) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
2) Cars
3) X-Men: The Last Stand
4) The Da Vinci Code
5) Superman Returns

See Also: Box Office Guru

See Also: Year End Box Office Reports for the following countries:

+ Japan

+ Britain

+ France

+ South Korea

+ Germany

+ Spain

+ Italy

+ Australia

+ Mexico

+ Russia

+ Hong Kong

+ South Africa

+ See Also: Weekly Box Office Database (Searchable)
Domestic data back to March 1994.

+ U.S. Motion Picture Opening Database (Thru 2008)

Source: Variety

TIVo Survey Reveals Top 10 Most Unforgettable TV Moments Of 2006 According To American TV Viewers

As the year draws to a close, American TV viewers reveal their top picks for the most memorable TV moments of 2006 in a poll conducted by TiVo Inc. , the company that created the digital video recorder (DVR) and continues to revolutionize the way Americans watch television. These are the moments that got America talking, from the shocking to the hilarious, and stopped viewers in their tracks, becoming the subject of water-cooler conversations, website and blog chatter, and, in some cases, pop culture phenomena in their own right. The TiVo® service makes finding and capturing the most sought-after moments on television simple and easy, leading millions of viewers to agree that it is the best way to watch television. TiVo commissioned a survey through top poll company Synovate to find out what moments Americans remember as the TV highlights of 2006.

Top TV Moments of 2006 Survey Results

Rank

1) Katie Couric’s last day on “Today”

2) Mel Gibson’s interview with Diane Sawyer after his DWI arrest

3) Oprah tells author James Frey he betrayed readers

4) Sara and Grissom get together on “CSI”

5) Faith Hill’s reaction to Carrie Underwood’s win at “CMA Awards”

6) Kirstie Alley’s bikini reveal on “Oprah”

7) “Will & Grace” series finale in which their kids start dating

Kate and Sawyer get together on “Lost”

9) Rosie O’Donnell’s debut on “The View”

10) Connie Chung attempting a sultry serenade of Maury Povich

Source: TIVo

UK: New Year’s Honours List 2007

The Cabinet Office has published the recommendations to The Queen for the Honours list.

These recommendations happen twice a year normally - at New Year and for the Queen’s official birthday in June.

They are awarded to people for all kinds of service. In this list:
10% are going to people in education
8% are going to people in health
17% are going to people in business, science and technology
7% are going to people working in the cultural economy
59% are going to people nominated for work in the voluntary sector
The largest number of awards goes to those providing services to their local communities - mainly volunteers

Complete 2007 New Year’s Honours List
54 pages; PDF.

See Also: UK Honours System
History, nominations, emblems, lists back to 1993.

Source: The Cabinet Office