NETSPEAK
A re-look at targeted search netspeak
A search engine that indexes only PDF and DOC Documents might come in handy while looking for documents
Search engines that focus on resources pertaining to a specific subject domain are increasingly becoming popular among netizens.
This edition of NetSpeak discusses the latest ones in this realm.
If you wish to know others view point on a particular product or issue, the best technique is to scan through the live web (the Web that comprises blogs, social bookmarking applications, discussion boards and the like).
As mentioned in an earlier piece, the ideal method to find appropriate discussion threads is to enlist the service of a special search service that indexes discussion boards all over the Net (such as Omgili- http://www.omgili.com/). Likewise, to find relevant blog conversations one should seek the service of a blog search engine. The arrival of the new social media search tool WhoIsTalking (http://whostalkin.com/) must be viewed in this context. This service that indexes the content of more than sixty social media services is a good place for monitoring conversations on any subject you choose.
Tool meant for business
Another vertical search service that caught NetSpeak’s attention is Biznar (http://biznar.com/), a tool meant for the business. In response to a query, the service consults a set of selected on-line services (BusinessWeek, CNN Money, Financial Times, Forbes.com, Google news, Guardian and others) that deals with business content, compiles the results, organises and displays them under various subject-specific clusters.
For instance, if you invoke a query with the word ‘recession’ the service collates the results into categories such as “Economic recession’, ‘Global recession’ and the like.
The clusters are listed in the left-column and the corresponding output appears in the right column.
Another valuable feature of the service is the ‘Alert’ tool that lets you receive regular search updates for a specified term via e-mail.
A PDF search engine
Lots of on-line documents are published as PDF and DOC files. A search engine that indexes only PDF and DOC documents might come in handy while looking for such documents. The special search engine ‘PDF Database’ is one such service (http:// pdfdatabase.com/).
Though lots of educational videos can be found on-line, one may find it a little difficult to locate relevant ones. The video-search platform EduTube (http://www.edutube. org/) is an attempt to tame this video overload. The site strives to organise educational videos into categories such as biology, chemistry, economics and others.
Search Shakespeare
Nobody can deny the importance of Shakespeare and his works in the history of English literature.
The special search engine, ‘Shakespeare Searched’ (http://tinyurl.com/l6mqs) lets you search for passages from Shakespeare’s plays and can be a valuable resource for students and teachers of English language and can also be an entertaining diversion.
Despite the availability of a variety of search tools, many netizens are a little averse to use many of the specialised ones.
One reason for this apathy could be the lack of awareness and the difficulty to remember those services.
One solution to overcome this search bottleneck is to enlist the help of a search gateway that lets you access different search services directly from its interface. The vertical search gateway search.io (http://search.io), which presents a variety of vertical search engines in a single interface, assumes significance here.
Search.io divides the search requirements into different categories such as news, videos, torrents, tutorials and others.
To each of the categories, search.io assigns various search engines relevant to it. For instance, if you start a search after selecting the category ‘Torrent’, Search.io loads several torrent search engines on separate tabs. To obtain the search output from any of these search engines, simply click on the relevant tab.
In this regard you may also check out VisittheBest ( http://www.in.visitthebest. com/index.php), a site presenting a good collection of search engines.
A typing tutor
Though typing skills are not essential for thriving in the digital world, being able to type quickly with very little or no errors enhances one’s productivity.
However, many of us don’t have the patience to learn typing and still continue to make lots of mistakes while entering text.
One solution is to enlist the service of a free typing tutor service (off-line or on-line) and improve the typing skills.
If you are not keen to install a typing tutor or unwilling to learn with an on-line service, take a look at the Firefox extension, ‘Addictive Typing Lessons’ ( http://www.geocities.com/creativetom2001/addictive_typing_ lessons.html).
The advantage is that you can invoke the typing tutor at your convenience by simply clicking on the keyboard icon in the browser’s status-bar.
Looking for a product that can read out text content from web pages?
Access the service WebAnywhere (http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/) that does exactly this.
Screen-reader
Once on the application’s interface, simply type-in the address of the web page that you wish to listen. The service loads the page and starts reading out the text content.
The advantage is that you get the functionality of a screen-reader without having to install one.
Rapidshare is one of those on-line storage services where you can find a variety of resources such as e-books, video tutorials and the like. However, unless you have a paid account, downloading from this service is a painful process. Manually downloading a resource involves several steps — with each download one has to wait for a specific period and fill-up the verification code. If all these mundane steps can be automated, the download process can become easier.
The free download manager Raptor (http://raptor.yamasster.net/eng/index.html) is appropriate on this count. You just have to enter the relevant Rapidshare link and Raptor will take care of the rest.
Domain name finder
Several on-line services exist to tell you if a domain-name is available or not.
Domaintyper (http://domaintyper.com/) is one such service worth a try. The advantage of this service is the ease with which one can operate it. As soon as you start entering your preferred domain name, the service displays its availability in real-time.
J. MURALI He can be contacted at e-mail: jmurali@gmail.com A search engine that indexes only PDF and DOC documents might come in handy while looking for documents
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