September 11, 2006

Looking Back At Search & 9/11

Five years ago, like so many, I was shocked and horrified by the events of September 11. I spent the day uncertain of what to do, before running for the cover of what I knew, looking at the search engines. Finding Disaster Coverage At Search Engines illustrates how they reacted that day. It underscored what I've long described as the great failure of Google then, having to effectively tell people to go elsewhere for information while its web search results were showing links with descriptions saying things like "View from the WTCA Headquarters." Since that time, the emergence of Google News as a better resource, with improved integration into Google results, has helped. The Effects Of September 11 On The Leading Search Engine from First Monday is another excellent recap from 2001 that those thinking of past history will want to see. Over at ResourceShelf, Gary Price has posted 9/11 Rememberances & Web Resources from Arlington County, VA Public Library & Elsewhere.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:09 AM | Permalink

July 21, 2006

More 3D Maps, an iTunes Video Podcast Directory, .CA Goes Mobile & Wildfires Database: Specialty Search Wrap Up

This weeks specialty search wrap up from Resource Shelf includes more 3D mapping tools, a iTunes video podcast directory, the Canadian government mobile edition, a resource for locating primary sources with international news and a wildfires and forest fire real time database.

Loving 3D satellite mapping tools? Want to spot more North Korean Missiles & Chinese Helicopters? Gary posted a roundup of free open source 3D satellite and aerial imagery. You can even check out images of places outside of this world, seriously! More details at Resource Shelf.
Like to watch videos on your iPod or on iTunes? Well, Gary has the details on Search For Video adding a method of searching for videos that can be downloaded directly to your iPod and iTunes. To view the directory listing of these videos go to Podcast Video portion of the directory. More details here.
Oh Canada on your mobile phone! Do you have a love for the Canadian government? Are you on the road a lot? If so, you can now get your fix at the Mobile Canada Site. You can learn more at http://canada.gc.ca/mobile/wireless_e.html or at Resource Shelf.
Do you hate getting your international news via second hand sources? Gary writes about Diplomacy Monitor, a site that gives you access to "primary documents and news releases from various governments and government agencies."
Is your house burning down? I hope not! This is the season for wildfires and forest fire and Gary has compiled a listings of database that offer real time information and reports. Check them out at Resource Shelf.

That is our specialty search roundup for this week.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:12 AM | Permalink

April 18, 2006

Ask.com Remembers San Francisco's Great Quake Of 1906

As a native Californian, plus having had my mother and sister live in San Francisco for twenty years, the Great Quake Of 1906 is pretty much ingrained in me. It's the 100th anniversary of the quake today, and Ask has a short guide up to some information about it -- plus they are doing a variety of Smart Answer results for searches on the topic. Disappointingly, Google, MSN and Yahoo aren't doing anything like this for searches on "san francisco quake" or "1906 quake." But Google News and Yahoo News bring up plenty of stories about the anniversary, as does Topix.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:37 AM | Permalink

November 29, 2005

New from The Internet Archive: Hurricane Katrina & Hurricane Rita Web Collection

Brewster and crew at The Internet Archive have just debuted a new specialty collection that contains more 25 million fully archived web pages that are also full text searchable that create, "an historical record of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the massive relief effort which followed."

Material in this archive was crawled and compiled from September 4 - October 17th. More in this announcement. A complete list of the urls crawled is available here. I'm honored that our ResourceShelf collection of Katrina resources was included in the archive. Other specialty "web collections" compiled by The Internet Archive can be found in the middle of this page. Btw, the search on the Hurricanes Katrina & Rita Web Archive is powered by Nutch.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:00 PM | Permalink

September 22, 2005

More Hurricane Resources: Watch and Listen to Houston Media on the Web

If you're interested in watching or listening to live local coverage of Hurricane Rita coming out of Houston, here are links to stations streaming their coverage.

+ KPRC-TV (NBC Affilate), Houston Look for the LIVESTREAM link near the top of the page.

+ KTRK-TV (ABC Affiliate), Houston

+ KTRH Radio, Houston All-News station.

+ KSEV Radio, Houston

+ KUHF Radio, Houston Houston Public Radio.

Postscript from Gary: More Maps.

From ESRI: A large collection of maps, imagery, and data for both Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Katrina
From Geodata.gov: Hurricane Rita Tracking Map
From the Harris County (Houston area) Office of Emergency Management: Real-time, interactive rainfall map.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:19 PM | Permalink

Maps & Resources Tracking Hurricane Rita

As Hurricane Rita bears down on Texas, we're obviously hoping for the best. Some new resources for those who want to track the storm's progress are covered below, including very nice MSN Virtual Earth-powered and Google Maps-powered services.

Robert Scoble points to an MSN Virtual Earth-powered map produced by Poly9 for MSNBC. It shows where the storm has been and where it is projected to go, future points in lighter shades of white.

Hover over any future point for a bit more info on forecasted winds. Wondering how the track will impact Galveston? Hard to see on the map, because as a small town, Galveston's not shown unless you zoom in a bit. Basically, find Houston and come down at a 5 o'clock angle until you hit the coast -- or zoom in.

Sadly, if you visit either the actual MSN Virtual Earth site or MSNBC, you don't find any links to this map. How Robert found it, he doesn't say, but it should be a lot easier.

One plus to the exploring, however. MSNBC has another great Hurricane Tracker map that shows the past path and projected route, along with how the storm has grown in strength. Look to the left of the map, and you'll see links for past storms in 2004 and 2005, including Katrina.

Doc Searls points to Central Florida Hurricane Center 2005, or flhurricane.com. As the site says, this is not some official government site but a nice resource run by weather hobbyists.

They've got a Google Maps-based storm track you can follow -- where the storm has been, where it's expected to go, and info when you click on any of the pinned points along the way.

I think it's much nicer with the hybrid view switched on, and Galveston shows easily with only slight zooming. Also check out the legend that explains the storm strength as show with colored dots.

Steve Rubel notes you can now get weather feeds via Yahoo, by the way. I didn't think this was new, but they're adding so much, it's hard to keep track! A page with severe weather alerts is here, Texas here, but these are sent via email only. A Yahoo News feed for "Hurricanes & Topical Storms" is here -- and those who prefer to read online can see the Full Coverage area for hurricanes here.

Hurricane Rita Takes Aim at Texas Coast from Gary yesterday also notes some other news resources tracking Rita. Basically, pick your usual news source suspect, and they're going to be doing something.

FYI, I remarked to my wife when Ophelia came along how quickly we were going through the hurricane alphabet. What happens if we hit Z (or really W, the last letter actually used)? MSNBC writes we move to the Greek alphabet, along with nice background on how storms are named.

Postscript from Gary: More Maps.

From ESRI: A large collection of maps, imagery, and data for both Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Katrina
From Geodata.gov: Hurricane Rita Tracking Map
From the Harris County (Houston area) Office of Emergency Management: Real-time, interactive rainfall map.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:35 AM | Permalink

September 15, 2005

searchkatrina.org: Missing Persons Meta Search from Louisiana Tech University

searchkatrina.org is a meta search tool that scours 10 databases that contains the names of people missing after Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast. searchkatrina.org was built by a computer science faculty member and five grad students at Louisiana Tech University.

From a news release: Noting the site's user friendliness, [Professor] Leangsuksun said, "Simple is beautiful." The group agreed. "If a name is not found in our database, the user is directed to another link. From there the user just has to click," Limaye said. "We wanted the people to have fewer difficulties." The site combs numerous databases of sites containing lists of evacuees. Users can also register their information with the site. In some cases, the Web site provides locations of where the victims evacuated to and an update on their safety.

We've posted links to other missing people meta search tools here, here, and here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:02 PM | Permalink

MSN's Katrina Flyover Offers Many Before-And-After Views Of New Orleans

Katrina Flyover is a new MSN Virtual Earth-powered service that lets you click on camera icons scatted throughout New Orleans to get a birds-eye, before-and-after view of the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I found it a bit buggy, especially in Firefox, where I couldn't get the "after" images to load and the "before" images didn't fill the window properly. It didn't work at first with Internet Explorer, but after reloading, I got along fine.

There's lot and lots to explore. It would be easier if you could see the camera icons when zoomed out just a bit beyond the default level, but you can't. So be sure to scroll around the screen once you see the camera icons, to see just how many points have been mapped.

Chris Pirillo gives some background info here on the project, which was captured by planes last week. Robert Scoble points to this brief mention of the project by one of the developers involved. Robin Good has an excellent review with screenshots and background information here.

See also our past Looking for Katrina Images On Google & Yahoo and Post-Katrina Images On Google Maps, Elsewhere, People Finding Project & Wiki Resources posts for other ways to see views of the area.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:48 AM | Permalink

September 13, 2005

Google Katrina Search For Missing People & Info

Google Hurricane Katrina Search is a new service from Google that allows you to do two things -- search for people who may be missing and search only against sites deemed to be relevant to Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, a full list of what Katrina "relevant" sites are included is not provided. However, a FAQ page explains more on how the service works, including how to get personal information out of the service, if it should appear (it will still remain on the source documents on the web non run by Google, however). In addition to the Google service, also see similar services from Lycos, Yahoo and Velocityscape that we've previously mentioned.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:26 AM | Permalink

September 12, 2005

New Katrina Missing Persons Meta Search Site & Spidering Issues With Red Cross Site

Katrina Search is another new service designed to let you meta search from a variety of web sites that have information about people missing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Search Katrina Missing Persons Sites from Lycos and Katrina: Search for Missing People from Yahoo are two others we mentioned going up last week.

Meanwhile, Sites not yet in sync on searches looks at how Yahoo cofounder David Filo got personally involved to create the Yahoo service. It also illustrates how what sounds to me to be dynamic URLs from a Microsoft server platform meant a new site from the Red Cross became unspiderable by Yahoo and other services.

That's apparently been fixed or will be shortly. The story calls the site "Family First" but I believe it is actually this one: Family Links Registry.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink

September 8, 2005

Resources For Researching Quality Of Charities

At a time when many people want to give to charties after Hurricane Katrina, ResourceShelf (AKA Gary's other blog) has a very timely rundown on researching charities. Put together by Shirl Kennedy, it gives you a variety of watchdog groups and other resources to consult with if you want to further determine if you're putting your money into a good place.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:11 PM | Permalink

Ask Jeeves Offers Smart Search Box with Hurricane Katrina Info

I just noticed that Ask Jeeves is now offering a Smart Search answer, located at the very top of the web results page, when search terms indicate that the searcher is looking for info about Hurricane Katrina. I checked a few other web engines and noticed that AOL Search is the only engine to offer something similar. Other engines only offer news headlines on web results pages.

This new AJ Smart Answer is not only useful but also a good illustration of how Smart Search results can save the searcher time, clicks, effort, and aggravation getting to quality resources (maps, imagery, relief info, etc.) about a particular topic. I'm a big fan of it!

In some cases, Jeeves offers up factual answers mined from well-known web reference tools. In other cases, a Smart Search box might provide direct links straight to quality resources about a particular topic, event, etc. You might want to think of it and similar types of Smart Search results as easy to access "bookshelves" of quality links.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:05 PM | Permalink

September 6, 2005

Katrina Missing Persons Meta Search Tools from Lycos and Yahoo

Lycos has a new Search Katrina Missing Persons Sites meta search service now up. In one go, it checks listings from more than 35 missing person sites that have sprung up since the storm. Sources of these listings are listed in the right-hand navigation. You can also add a site here.

Yahoo also has released a meta search tool that simultaneously searches for names across a number of missing person boards from various sites including Yahoo Groups, NOLA.com, and MSNBC.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:40 PM | Permalink

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