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NewsCred Goes Public With
Credibility-Based News Source TechCrunch Aug. 19, 2008
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NewsCred, the news aggregator that
ranks stories by the credibility of
their source, has launched to the
public. Instead of relying on
popularity, as many social news
sites do, NewsCred instead allows
users to rate each story, author,
and publication's credibility, which
is then plugged into an algorithm to
determine the site's prominent...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=9251&m=44681 Newscred at:
http://www.newscred.com/ ##
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SortFix.com lets you type in a search query and compare the results from Google, Yahoo and the Open Directory Project. (Yes, maybe not the directory I would have chosen, but it’ll work for proof of concept.) What is noteworthy, though, is in the search results screen. In addition to the usual Google (or Yahoo or ODP) results, there are three large colored boxes at the top of the search results page. (click here to see the search result for the search “biomass (energy OR power)” If you don’t see any text in the boxes, try again using Internet Explorer.)
The left-most box shows “power words” – related words and concepts that frequently appeared in the search results. The middle box shows your current search words, with a Boolean OR indicated by a line connecting the two terms. The right-most box is for words you want to exclude from search results.
What sets SortFix apart is that you can drag and drop words among these boxes. In my search for biomass energy, for example, my Power Words included “renewable” and “wind [and] solar”. I can drag either of those Power Words from the left box to the middle box, adding these words to my query. I can also NOT any word of phrase by moving it to the right box.
Having these three boxes makes it very easy to construct complex Boolean searches without worrying about the search syntax. But that’s not all… If you change your setting to “Expert”, you also have access to two more boxes in the search results page – Dictionary and Standby. The Dictionary box is as you might expect –drag a word into that box and a short definition of the word is displayed. But the feature that almost exploded my brain was the Standby box. This is brilliant – it is a holding pen where you can put words or phrases that you don’t want to include in the current search but that you might want later. Wow. Can you imagine this function in any of the value-added online services such as Dialog, Factiva or LexisNexis?
The Expert mode adds some other nice features as well. You can add phrases to your search query, and there are two additional buttons under the middle box – [Synonyms] and [OR]. Click any of your search terms and then click the [synonyms] button, and – assuming you are using SortFix on Google search results – it will add a tilde (~) in front of the word. As we Google nerds know, that generates a search for not only the specific word but for similar concepts. For example, a search for ~children will also include results with child, kids and childhood. (Click the “synonyms” link when looking at Yahoo or ODP search results doesn’t do anything.) The default for adjacent words is a Boolean AND, but you can indicate any words you want OR’d together by highlighting the words and click the [OR] button.
The most significant problem with SortFix is that it is designed for Internet Explorer; on Firefox or Safari, you can see the search results but none of the SortFix features are functional. And, curiously, I compared the results from SortFix and Google for the identical search and found quite a few differences among the first ten results.
It appears that the best uses of this search engine are for searches where you know you will be trying a number of alternative words and phrases, and would appreciate the Standby box; when you prefer to, as SortFix says, “Start Dragging, Stop Typing”; and when you want to have a very visual tool for constructing your search logic.
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GMAIL Security. We've mentioned this before: If you check Gmail’s settings, the last option under the “General” tab lets you “always use https” when accessing Gmail. [Go to settings...top right, General tab is first tab...then go to bottom and check the box...] It’s a fairly new option, and it might sound strange; isn’t Gmail secured by SSL (Secure Socket Layer) by default (hence switching to “
https://gmail.com” when you type in “gmail.com” in your browser)?
The answer is: yes and no. Once you log in, Gmail reverts back to an unencrypted connection, since SSL connections are slower than regular ones. This means that whatever you do on Gmail is unencrypted from now on, and someone sniffing traffic on your network can easily obtain sensitive data.
Of course, not everyone has the skills to do that, so the chances of it actually happening are pretty small. Or, better put, they were small until now. As reported by Hacking Truths, a tool has been presented at DEFCON that makes stealing session IDs from Gmail a relatively easy affair. And once someone has your session ID, he/she can log in to your Gmail account without authentication.
In practice, this means that not having the “always use https” option checked, especially if you’re accessing Gmail through a wireless hotspot, or any other unsecure network, has become a hazard, and is not recommended. Google has been fairly silent about this, letting users decide what they want to do, but I’ve switched to SSL and I recommend you do, too, especially if you use Gmail for business purposes.
