Friday, April 16, 2004

The Nature of Meaning in the Age of Google I seem to be into a search engine focus this week so I'll pass along this article that I first saw in Stephen Downes' OLDaily. The author, Terence Brooks, provides a more technical analysis of search engine operations and issues than the introductory NPR audio pieces. JH ______ Interesting link sent to me by the author, Terrence A. Brooks, describing some of the tricks and tactics used to register content in the Google search service. The author employs the term 'lay indexing' to describe the 'plebiscites' used to organize and rank pages by link freuqency and page rank. The end of the article looks into the question of the 'meaning' missed by Google, both because there are areas of the deep web it still does not harvest, and because the semantics of language do not translate into a purely text-based search. Interesting. More papers are available from the April edition of Information Research, which came online today. By Terrence A. Brooks, Information Research, April 13, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 10:40:12 AM    COMMENT []

The Search Engine Wars--NPR National Public Radio has been running a series about the "Search Engine Wars." I heard the last episode this morning and looked up additional information at the NPR web site. The series does a good job explaining how search engines work--and what they miss. JH _____ "Companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are battling to be the main gateway to the Internet. These companies have gained unprecedented influence over what people see and learn, and have created an industry with brave new rules for business. In a five-part series, NPR's Rick Karr takes a look at the business of search engines." 8:37:27 AM    COMMENT []