Priceless Paintings from W7

I’ve been looking at this web site’s statistics for a while now. Between almost 840 posts, the site covers almost anything under the sun – little of relevance, but a diverse spread of subjects, so that I get a good number of visitors from search engines such as Google, Windows Live (Bing), or, increasingly, Exalead.

It always amazes me to see through which search terms people find my site. Google users would, for example, search for Urban Karahi Hanwell or Pommes Dauphinoise and find my post that mentions the Urban Karahi restaurant in Hanwell (or the one about Pommes Dauphinoise).

On the other hand, Windows Live users seem to be searching for simple generic terms such as summer or geese – a broad search unlikely leading to success.

Would anyone know what is going on?

Are Google users way smarter than Windows Live users? Is someone building a meta-index through Windows Live? Will Windows Live not reveal the full original search term?

I am inclined to think it must be the latter, in which case Microsoft would be one small step ahead in the game of protecting surfers’ privacy. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Web/Tech Google, search engine;

You’ll all know Google, of course. Even the Oxford Dictionary knows about “to google,” a remarkable accomplishment and clever marketing. Few other companies have impacted daily life of so many people so severely, and so quickly.

However, one should never forget that others are really, really, keen to get a slice of Google’s market share, and thus breed pretty daughters, too.

Through some strange coincidence, I discovered Exalead recently. A strange name that won’t ever enter the English language and the Oxford Dictionary, but what the heck?

Hmm, pretty much like Google, I thought. Since Wolfram caused nothing but hype and disappointment so far, and because it was lunch time, I took a closer look.

Oh. Nice! Fast returns, and a nice clickable tool on the far right to narrow down the search. (Others have also found Exalead noteworthy.) The speed will probably reduce as their index and user base builds up, but for now, it’s really nice.

Next, I looked into the free Exalead desktop search tool (EDS) – Google Desktop Search (GSD)struggled with Outlook integration for some while now, and not having shares in Google, I felt free to try Exalead.

Oh. Nice, again! Super-fast indexing, and much better local search results than any other desktop search engine that I tried before. Although slower than GDS, EDS offers a superb tool to narrow down the local search results, much better than all the others.

I was just about to become an Exalead convert when I found out that the Internet search results simply weren’t as good as Google’s (although they were the second best that I have seen so far). Desktop search was brilliant, but incompatible with an essential software tool needed in my work (the Perforce source control client), so I had to give up on Exalead all together.

They never bothered to say Thank you when I told them about the incompatibility, so I guess it serves them right. T’is French anyway.

Web/Tech Google, search engine;, Semantic Web, Web Revolution, wolfram

There’s quite a hype around Wolfram, a web 2 search engine that could change it all. You know what?

Change is needed, but Wolfram –as it stands today- is nowhere near it. The best thing is that Wolfram is polite about its failures: Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input it says to most of my queries. Queries that I know and trust and rely to succeed on Google.

There was a time when this site here came up top for Leberwurst West London and similar important queries. Although this site appears to have dropped somewhat in Google’s esteem, they’re still better than Wolfram’s pathetic Sorry.

What is needed is semantic analysis. Everyone knows that. Oh, yes. I should better stop rambling here and finish that Zemanta-based research tool which I drafted months ago, and put to sleep over the past few months.

It’s high time to show Wolfram its Eureka! moment.

Web/Tech Google, search engine;, Semantic Web, Web Revolution, wolfram

Someone recently claimed on BBC Television that Nectarines were the result of 1950s or 60s experiments with exposure of common plants to intense levels of radio activity.

According to this source, scientists with the blissful ignorance of these years, exposed plants including peaches to intense radiation levels, hoping that an unnaturally high mutation rate would produce useful results. The Nectarine, the Peach’s bold but flavoursome step-sister, apparently resulted from these experiments.

Or maybe not?

A little web research does not confirm this story. In fact, Wikipedia reports that the history of the nectarine is unclear; the first recorded mention is from 1616 in England, but they had probably been grown very much earlier in central Asia.

Who’s right, who’s wrong?

[Edit, many moons later: I get quite a number of search engine hits on this article; evidently, many people wonder about the truth behind the radiation story. Based on everything I have come across since I believe it is fair to say the radiation story is a myth, and the nectarine a genuine fruit.]

Food and Drink, Thoughts BBC Television, search engine;, United Kingdom

One of the fascinating aspects of running a Blog is to look at the statistics and see where hits come from. Articles like the Chilling Blowjob obviously attract a certain kind of hits through search engines. My site also gets frequent hits from search.msn.com, mostly in combinations like THE+WORLD+FAMOUS+PANTINGS and so forth.  Almost seems like their search engine probes for keyword combinations.

However, I am pleased to report that w7 comes out top, yes: top!, (yesterday, anyway) with this genuine query: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Priceless+Paintings.

So, I had my moment of (undeserved) fame. Moving on…

Painting, Web/Tech Google, search engine;