Search tools: new developments

SEARCH TOOLS form one of the most active segments in the on-line arena. NetSpeak readers have been introduced to several search products in the past. A few of the new additions are discussed here.

A distinct feature of the rapidly growing search solutions space is the numerous search services that let users create/store lists of sites pertaining to a specific subject or area. In such services you can find several site-lists on diverse subjects. Before initiating a general search service, a preliminary scan of such services may help in accessing relevant resources with minimum effort.

For instance, a netizen who intends to start a blog on a free blogging site requires information on various free blog-hosting services. Directly hitting on the appropriate ones with the help of a general search engine, though possible, may take time. But on a web site list creation service, someone might already have created/hosted a list of free blog hosts.

We have already seen list generation services (such as Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com/) and Rollyo (http://rollyo.com/). Listible is the latest of this kind encountered by this author.

Listible (http://www.listible. com/) provides tools for creating web link lists on any topic of your choice. Besides helping you start a list, the service allows other users to view it as well. In addition, they can comment/vote/add new content on to it. Also, the service provides web feeds for each of the lists. Top free anti-virus software (http://www.listible.com/list/top-free-anti-virus-software), "Best PC security sources'' (http://www. listible.com/list/best-pc-security-sources) and "Free Blogging hosts'' (http://www.listible.com /list/free-blog-hosts) are useful lists available here.

When we invoke a search engine for a specific query, the output comes from different types of web sites. It may contain pages of diverse kinds such as journal articles, web pages of research institutions, subject-specific journals and so on. If we can get the output clubbed on the basis of web page sources, it will be more valuable.

The newly launched search service Kosmix (http://www. kosmix.com/) seems to fulfill this requirement. Here, together with normal output, the service displays source-specific clusters alongside. If you access its Health search engine for information on `breast cancer,' Kosmix will display results under categories such as medical organisations, blogs, message boards and so on. This vertical search service currently deals with three subjects — health, travel and politics.

DumbFind

DumbFind (http://www. dumbfind.com/) is another search engine trying to gain some foothold in the highly competitive search tool market. The salient feature of this search service is the `related tag' input box, provided for refining the search query. That is, if you are looking for tutorials on `google search,' you may get better output by entering the tag `tutorial.'

Another search service worth a try is the multimedia search engine Tveyes (http://www. tveyes.com/), created for finding TV news clips (from MSNBC, CNN and the like). And those of you who prefer to read search results in big fonts may find the search service Big.com (http://big.com) rather amusing.

Free audio books

Books in the public domain are copyright free and can be used by anyone without restrictions. Tens of hundreds of such books are now available. As discussed earlier, the famous project `Project Gutenberg' (http://www.gutenberg.org/) is an effort to digitise and distribute such books in text format.

The availability of such books in digital format is quite useful as we can read them anytime with our computer or an e-book reader. But, if such a book is available in audio format, we can enhance its reach. Thus, if the famous Aesop's Fables is available in audio format, we may enjoy listening to them while travelling or doing some mundane task. Here lies the significance of the free audio book creation project LibriVox (http://www.librivox. org/). LibriVox offers free audio version of books available in the public domain. The books are provided in both MP3 and OGG formats. Audio version of several famous works such as Pride and Prejudice, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Aesop's Fables and The Communist Manifesto are available.

Ajaxwrite

In the past this column has featured several web-based word processors (such as Goffice Writely). Google's recent acquisition of Writely (http://writely.com/) underlines the importance of this product segment. The latest entrant in this fast changing area is Ajaxwrite (http://ajaxwrite.com/), an MS-Word compatible web based word processor. This platform-independent product can be used to create Word documents with your browser (Firefox 1.5+) from any computer. Though it has some basic word-processing features, the current version of the product lacks facilities (such as spell check) commonly found in mainstream word-processors.

You can open a Word document from your machine and save the document on to your local storage in Word, RTF, Text and PDF formats. However, when this author tried to save a document as PDF it failed. An additional feature worth a mention relates to opening multiple documents in the same window on separate tabs.

New on-line worksheet

An on-line worksheet lets you create a worksheet with your browser and allows you to invite others for collaboratively working on it. NetSpeak has featured a few (like Irows) in the past. Numbler (http://numbler.com/), the latest one intercepted by this author, though not a full-fledged Worksheet package, contains some basic features.

When you click on a PDF link, generally the document gets loaded on to the default PDF viewer. But, if you want to control the PDF document loading process, check out the PDF download extension available here: http://tinyurl.com/bfkpy. With this Firefox extension you can either download the document on to your machine or get it loaded on to your browser. If you do not want either of these, you can convert the PDF into an HTML file.

Idiomsite

Idioms and proverbs are quite important in any language and a good understanding of them will enhance your communication skills. Here is a good site (http://www.idiomsite.com/) with several idioms in the English language.

On-line applications expanded

MANY DESKTOP applications are getting enabled on the Web. In the past this column featured several such applications (like on-line word processors). This edition of NetSpeak brings to light new developments in this front.

On-line data analysis

As observed in the past, worksheet is a popular desktop application, used in many computing tasks such as budget analysis, simple payrolls and data analysis. Some of the tasks mentioned above may sometimes involve the participation of several people. If the participants are geographically distant, we need to exchange data through e-mails or some other means. Naturally, in such instances a web-based worksheet would be a preferred alternative. The on-line social worksheet service, NumSum, discussed in the past (http://www. hindu.com/biz/2005/04/ 11/stories/2005041100161600. htm) is an example of such a product.

However, in terms of features, Numsum pales in comparison with the popular desktop worksheet packages (like MS-Excel). This does not help you do beyond some basic stuff. JotSpot Tracker (http://tracker.jot. com/) is another product in this genre. One notable feature of this application is the facility for copying data from an Excel worksheet stored in your machine.

Though the products mentioned above help in doing simple computations, to solve real life problems we need a better alternative. Such a service should allow us import normal worksheet files, provide different mathematical/financial functions normally seen in the mainstream desktop worksheet packages and support tools for drawing graphs.

The newly launched on-line worksheet service, Irows (http://www.irows.com), has almost all these features.

Irows, a free service, helps you create a worksheet with your browser and store it on-line. The distinct aspect of this on-line application is the numerous features it provides- for manipulating worksheets and analysing data. You can import/copy data from Excel sheets and draw charts.

Also, Irows provides several mathematical/financial functions such as average, log, max, min, sum and so on. Besides all these advantages, Irows lets you share and collaboratively edit/analyse the data with your remote colleagues.

Presentation service

The web based presentation software, Thumbstacks (http://www.thumbstacks.com/), meant for preparing presentations with your browser is yet another on-line application tested by this author. This service lets you create simple presentations and store them on-line to access it anytime from anywhere on the Web. For a demo check out: http://tinyurl.com/ghqfm.

InstaColl: Instant collaboration

In response to an earlier column on `collaboration tools,' Mr. Narain, a reader of this column, pointed out InstaColl (http://instacoll.com), an innovative web based application, developed for collaboratively editing MS-Office documents.

To use this free product just register with the service and download/install the set-up software.

Once the software is installed, you will find a button labelled `Collaborate' on your Word/Excel/PowerPoint menu-bar. Now, if you want to edit a document together with your geographically dispersed clients, click on the `Collaborate' button. The InstaColl client starts a session using your account details and generates a session link, which can be e-mailed to your clients.

Based on the details from this e-mail, your clients can join the session. On their joining the session, you will get the notification.

Anyone connected to the session will be able to view/edit the document in real-time. If a participant wishes to add/edit the document, she should seek the permission to do it.

Once she completes the editing, click on the `Publish' button to make the newly typed matter available to all other participants. A highlight of this service is its `Made-in-India' tag.

Nation Master

There cannot be two opinions on the relevance of statistics in the modern information age. For instance, if you want to gauge the performance of your country on various fronts, you need to know how it compares with other countries.

For this you need country-wise statistics on various parameters such as agriculture, economy, health and the like. If you are one of those interested in statistical data, jump over to the site NationMaster (http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php), which makes available more than 5,700 different statistics across various countries on your fingertips. Using this site, you can easily find Net penetration across countries, country-wise distribution of ISPs, countries with broadband access and so on.

We have come across different types of search engines that include general search services (Google, Yahoo), blog search tools (like Daypop, Technorati), reference services (like Wikipedia, Answers), news sites (like CNN, YahooNews) and so on. Generally, depending on the requirements, we make use of an appropriate service. However, remembering the multitude of search services available on the Net is not that easy.

The search interface Trovando (http://www.trovando.it/) may come handy in dealing with such situations. From its interface you can easily select the appropriate search service, before initiating a search process

A shortening service

Lengthy web addresses are difficult to handle and to shorten them we enlist the service of a URL shortening tool like TinyURL (http://tinyurl.com/).

If you are a Firefox user, you can use the TinyURL service directly from the browser by installing the extension `TinyURL creator' (http://www.roundtwo.com/ product/tinyurl)

Though TinyURL is a good service, the short link produced by TinyURL is very cryptic- from it we get little clue on the page it represents.

If you want to get a short and meaningful URL, try out the service Thnlnk (http://thnlnk. com/), which provides you links like this: http://thnlnk.com/hindu/ netspeak/jf9.