+ Add Footnotes & Endnotes to your Zoho Writer Documents
Hooray! Hooray!! Hooray!!!

+ Google Universal Search: 2008 Edition (via SEL)

+ Hackers Rig Google to Deliver Malware (via PC World)

+ It’s Hard to Hide From Your ‘Friends’ (via WSJ)
Note: No mention of the Ask.com Eraser feature that might also be of interest. You can read about it here. Gary is Director of Online Info Resources at Ask.com.

+ Oklahoma Governor Pushes Bill To Create Rx Drug Web Site

+ Middle East and Asia lose internet access after cable fails (via The Guardian, Hat Tip, Barry)

New Health Topic Resources from MedlinePlus: Diabetes Complications

Source: MedlinePlus

+ Zillow Comes Out of Beta (via ScreenWerk)

+ Baidu to Launch Japanese Version of Search Service After 1-month Delay (via Search Engine Journal)

+ Welcome New Neighbour: New Social Network Launches in UK (via WebUser)
If you don’t want to ring the doorbell and introduce yourself to the new neighbours, you can use ResidentsHQ.

+ Say Hello to Fancast (Beta)
From Comcast. One stop shop to view complete programs online, show clips, options to buy DVD’s, tv listings, movie listings, and more.
See Also: TV Guide Online Directory

+ The Search Party (via New Yorker)
Google squares off with its Capitol Hill critics. By Ken Auletta.
See Also: Summary and Analysis from Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan

Back in 2006 we posted about research at Microsoft dealing with cameraphone searching. We also listed other players in the cameaphone search space. That post is still online and many of the links (have you seen or tried Semapedia?) are live.

On Monday, at the CES Conference, Bill Gates (video here) demonstrated Mobile Navigator.
From the caption:

At CES in Las Vegas, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates shows attendees the company’s new “mobile navigator” technology that can be used to point at a person or place, and get more information. The new software will be incorporated into devices such as cameras, PDAs, and phones.

Source: ZDNet

See Also: Cameraphone Searching in Japan (via SEW Blog)

See Also: Review: Content-Based Image Retrieval: Tools, Writings and Demos

A couple of month’s ago, Shirl posted this Resource of the Week titled, “Free Stuff From Pricey Database Vendors”. Today, another freebie. This time from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (deceased citizens of the UK) and Oxford University Press. A free full textg biography from the dictionary is posted daily and can be accessed via email, RSS, or by visting this page where the full text of DNB bios are kept for one week (so, make sure to save those of special interest). This feature is officially named “Life of the Day” and “Lives of the Week.”

See Also: More DNB Reading

See Also: More Free Dictionaries from Oxford

Source: Oxford University Press

If you’ve never reviewed a list of Scirus sources (besides open web content) you can find a growing list here. Growing in terms of both sources and number of entries in each database. If you want to compare, here’s what the list looked like (below) before the most recent update that’s now online.

• 422,000 articles from American Physical Society
• 444,000 e-prints from ArXiv.org
• 19,000 full-text articles from BioMed Central
• 13,000 documents from Caltech Coda
• 3,000 e-prints from Cogprints
• 72,000 full-text articles from Crystallography Journals Online
• 14,000 documents from CURATOR
• 950,000 documents from Digital Archives
• 19,300 documents from DiVa
• 37,000 full-text articles from Project Euclid
• 2,600 documents from HKUST Institutional Repository
• 16,000 documents - of which 12,000 full-text documents - from HKUTO
• 8,700 full-text documents available from IISc
• 4,800 full-text documents available from Humboldt Universität
• 240,000 full-text articles from Institute of Physics Publishing
• 21.5 million patent data from LexisNexis
• 11,500 full-text articles from Maney Publishing
• 4,600 full-text documents from MD Consult
• 17.0 million Medline citations via PubMed
• 61,000 documents from MIT OpenCourseWare
• 23,900 technical reports from NASA
• 309,000 full-text theses and dissertations via NDLTD
• 6,900 documents from Organic Eprints
• 735 documents from PsyDok
• 800,000 articles from PubMed Central
• 221,000 documents from RePEc
• 60,000 full-text articles from Royal Society Publishing
• 7.2 million full-text articles from ScienceDirect
• 400,000 full-text journal articles from Scitation
• 9,100 articles from SIAM
• 9,600 documents from University of Toronto T-Space
• 14,000 full-text documents from WaY

See Also: Scirus Review by Dr. Peter Jacso (12/2006)

A service we talk about quite a bit on ResourceShelf (it’s a long time fave), NewsNow, has added several new categories to their beta release. ALL pages auto-refresh every five minutes as new content is found.

1) Search Engine Optimization

2) Social Networking

3) Web 2.0

4) Blogging

The “Search Engine” category remains available.

NewsNow aggregates content from nearly 31,000 news sources and blogs.

+ infoUSA Coming to UK
The well-known provider of directory (business and people) listings will begin building a UK database in the next few weeks. Look for additional material at info.UK soon.

+ New “Pictures” Tool from Digg Labs

+ Baidu CFO, Shawn Wang, Killed in Boating Accident (via Reuters)

UK: Databases: The Medical Register

Two databases:

+ List of Registered Medical Practitioners

You can use the List of Registered Medical Practitioners to check details of all the doctors on the GMC’s register.

It gives details of:

* the doctor’s reference number, name, any former name, gender
* year and place of primary medical degree
* registration status
* date of registration
* entry in GP/Specialist Register
* any publicly available fitness to practise history since 20 October 2005

+ List of Registered Medical Practitioners

Personalization with MyGMC

Source: General Medical Council

Something many have wanted for a long time. Look for a longer overview of Trend Tracker soon.

Trend Tracker, [the] new online search tool, offers immediate, interactive access to the Center’s historical financial data on U.S. grantmakers. For the first time, anyone can tap the Center’s database to create statistical reports on the nation’s top 20,000 foundations. Review an individual grantmaker’s fiscal data or compare up to five foundations and create charts, line graphs, or tables displaying historical assets, gifts received, expenditures, or giving information.

Trend Tracker is part of Fact Finder, a suite of free tools including Foundation Finder and 990 Finder, which provide quick access to key information on foundations and other nonprofit organizations. Trend Tracker currently covers the years 2000-2005, and subsequent years will be added as that data becomes available. The Center will also be adding other interactive tools for analyzing data about foundations and their giving.

News Release

Direct to Trend Tracker

Source: The Foundation Center

Many caveats exist when using online phone directories, including:
+ Out of date info
+ Wrong middle names or last names
+ Incorrect addresses

That’s why it’s often useful to use more than directory, and also why we’ve been mentioning Argali (Windows only) for years. It offers federated telephone directory searching and post processing (sorting, neighbors, etc.) that works very well. Oh, it’s also free.

Why mention this topic today?

We wanted to note that WhitePages.com does have a robust set of features in its native format and recently (not sure how new) we’ve noticed that an age range is given for individuals. For example, the person is between 25-29. We checked several friends and relatives and most were correct.

Nevertheless: Caveat Searcher.

See Also: Fee-based services like Intelius also offers (FOR FREE) ages, names of relatives (often incorrect) and former places of residence. The largest issue here is authority control. For the most detailed info you need to pay a fee.

NewsNow Beta Testing New Site, New Look
One of our favorite news sites has tweaked it’s look and continues to increase the number of sources it provides access to (nearing 31,000). However, that’s not all. A NewsNow beta is available.

+ Flags identifying news source still available. Also, notes if a site is subscription based and/or requires registration.

+ The World News category is outstanding.

+ U.S. Sports included in Sports Section (by team)

+ BIGGEST CHANGE: You can now search for MORE than one word in an article headline. ||| Example
You will also be told IF any newsfeeds are available that cover the search terms. ||| Example

We are very excited to see (we will be watching) if NewsNow (Beta) adds any additional tools or features.

Note from Gary: Earlier today I did a presentation for SLA, NewsNow was listed as one of my top two news sites. Amazing resource.

See Also: Compare with the Current Live Version

+ Mapmaking for the masses

+ More State Web Sites To Appear In Searches With Google’s Help (via AP)
Florida joins the “Google Group” of five making it six. The story reads that the content can be crawled by other spiders along with Googlebot.

Under a new partnership announced Monday by Gov. Charlie Crist, Google is providing free consulting and software to help make more files recognizable to most search engines.

Note: Interesting to see that the article makes no mention of the excellent work Vivisimo is doing with USA.gov. If you haven’t used it since it was FirstGov, take a look. It’s MUCH MUCH better. Plus, you get the benefit of Vivisimo’s dynamic clustering which can help you quickly spot concepts and trends that would be difficult to see one result at a time.

+ Stuff We Noticed at Yahoo

Yahoo appears to be testing (beta) a new look for My Yahoo. We noticed a link to the beta on the Yahoo home page today.
1) My Yahoo Beta
++ More Here
UPDATE: First announced in March. We are seeing it for the first time.

2) “Sponsored” Yahoo Shortcuts
Note: Not new. Danny covered this in October on Search Engine Land. However, the about link next to the shortcut does not explain the difference between a regular and sponsored shortcut.

+ Software changing how photos can be cataloged (via The Business Journal of Phoenix)
Say hello to Enoetic LLC and Photology.

+ New: ACRL New Member Wiki

+ Hitwise reports that Blinkx.com recently surpassed Google Video in the UK with weekly market share of visits

+ CBC Moves Children’s Book Week to May (via SLJ)

What can we say, we love Firefox add-ons. This week, two add-ons (one essential favorite) and one add-on we just began using have received updated. Here’s the lowdown. Access and use of both add-ons is free.

1) The Essential Add to Search Bar (1.7) by Malte Kraus makes adding just about any search engine (even some library OPAC databases) to the Firefox Search Bar VERY EASY and VERY FAST. It’s something that can be mentioned at all classes about web browsers and search since no tech skills (except a few clicks) are needed to use it.

In our view, this is one of the most useful and important Firefox add-ons out there.

A) Download/Install the App
B) Go to the search engine you would like to add
C) Place cursor in search box, right click (CLICK #1) and select “Add to Search Bar” (CLICK #2)
D) Box Appears, with name and icon (both can be changed, up to you) (CLICK #3)
E) Now, the search tool should appear in your Firefox Search Bar.
F) So simple but still powerful and very useful.
See the operation in action by viewing this screencast.

Version 1.6 and 1.7 (just released) have added and improved a number of features including:

* all engines with /similar/ names can be added
* non-ASCII characters in parameters are encoded correctly
* HTTP Status Code 304 is successful as well
* corrected Spanish translation
* when an icon selected by the user is rejected, an error message appears that explains why
* engines with the same name can be added (or, in reality: spaces are added at the end)
* engineInfos.xul has IDs so it can have overlays

Btw, you might also find: Organize Search Engines by the same developer of value. We do!

Finally, a similar tool, to add engines to IE is available from MS. Look for the gold “Create Your Own” box.

2) We’ve been using Add to Search Bar for some time and we’re thrilled to see that it continues to be developed.

Recently, we began using another Firefox add-on that also updated this week. It’s named FireShot and integrates directly with Firefox.

It’s free to download and free to use.

We think it’s more than worthy of your attention.

Here’s how the company describes the product:

Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

Screenshots can be saved to disk (PNG, JPEG, BMP), copied to clipboard, e-mailed and sent to external editor for further processing.

Of course, we still have and use SnagIt on our computer for difficult screen caps, image editing, and more.