Rob Parker - Real Estate Undergraduate
student at University of Reading
This is a great little plugin that adds a message to each post instructing the user to subscribe to an RSS feed, follow, friend or bookmark the site. It is so easy to use and to install and it is just another tool to get repeat subscribers and to help push up awareness of your site and to build links.
I would really recommend it and I hope you go and try it out!
What a strange phrase to use – a decision engine. Personally, I find search most often not for decisions but for information, yet perhaps, to inform a decision, somehow!
Anyway, today we get to hear the first about Bing. Its going to be Microsoft’s new search engine, replacing what was MSN Search, then Windows Live Search, then just Live Search. Some would suggest they are, as always, trying to topple the mightly Google, yet others suggest this is way beyond their aspirations, and they are aiming lower, at Yahoo say.
Now, I haven’t actually read a great deal on this, but there’s a million and one links and stuff to click-through to via twitter posts. Interestingly, I’ve actually not used a search engine at all to research this, only on links from Twitter – literally the people’s search engine. But the essence of the project seems to be to bring every source of information together, and to display it as the result of a bing search.
Whether this be your weather or searching for a new camera, it appears to be able to find appropriate sites, route out the appropriate content and then select this and use it on its own pages, formatted together neatly. That is a massive ask.
The product / holiday selection features seem to be particularly notable in the promotional video, with bing acting like a combination of all the various price comparison websites for pretty much everything in one search result page. If achievable, this would be very impressive, time-saving and useful, but it is achievable? Microsoft obviously think so, but it would be a miracle if they have.
As yet its not yet available to use online, but I look forward to giving it a try. Oh, and not sure if it is taking on the other upcoming new-kid-on-the-block site Wolfram Alpha, but by the looks of the video bing can answer specific questions – or is it just showing that this is basic search and they are above that??
More? Have a look at…
I was recently looking at the increasing availability of various online form submission systems. Here’s one I came across recently which certainly has a more professional and corporate appearance about it (not least as its a mainly paid service)
But there are new alternatives, such as Forms now available as an easy to integrate part of Google Docs. There’s lots more out there, but these are just a few. Of course, you cannot forget simply using the features that come with WordPress.
I was just looking through some flickr pages this afternoon, in the search for a new homepage feature for robparker.org.uk, when I hit on the flickr blog and I noticed their new announcement…
Video, which was previously only for paid ‘pro’ members, is now available for all! Admitedly, you can only upload 2 per month and they will only be shown in standard definition, but you can upload video.
However, the same issue arises as when flickr initially launched video – is it really wanted? We use flickr for photos and youtube for videos. I understand that they (flickr and yahoo) want a slice of the youtube (google) pie, at the fact they have rolled it out to everyone for free indicates the ‘trial’ worked well, however I certainly just don’t see flickr as the place.