+ Sprint to upgrade Microsoft mobile search services (via Reuters)
This app offers voice recognition. Say your info need. Microsoft purchased interactive voice response service Tellme (1-800-555-Tell) last year.

+ Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us (via Library Journal)
We’ve had many things to say about tagging on RS. Many of them very recently in this post from earlier this month. Our usual caveat is that tagging for small groups (let’s say a group of students in a class) is much different than for the masses. Make sure to read Dan Giancaterino’s comments at the bottom of this post.

We would have like to have read how some of these libraries handle or will handle tag spam? Adult terms and links? Duplicates? Pluralization, etc. Why Del.icio.us vs. other services like MyWeb2.0 also from Yahoo with more features? Why no mention of specialty tagging services like Connotea aimed at scientists? What are they doing for those who don’t tag, have no interest in tagging, etc. What happens if/when another service comes along that works better? What’s the investment in tagging in terms of time and effort especially if tagging doesn’t grown to reach more people? Our wish is that info pros would take a small amount of time (we’re talking minutes here folks) and use it to promote/market what libraries have to offer from virtual reference to remotely accessible databases (offering free full text content) to audiobooks for Internet download to MOST IMPORTANTLY, the skills we offer.

Finally, what’s wrong with allowing documents/search results (from any database) to speak for themselves and then offer TAG CLOUDS based on those results as a way to discover what might be otherwise missed content? This is precisely what Clusty Clouds offer as a Clusty Labs experiment. Example: Nashville Music or Shakespeare

+ Fast Delivers First Complete Platform For Next-Generation, Personalized Storefronts

* Gary is Director of Online Info Resources at Ask.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 12:39 am and is filed under Cataloging and Metadata, Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.