Amaznode is a relation-based search engine for Amazon which is made with Adobe Flash9. It’s pretty slick compared to most search engines and reminds me of Google’s Wonder Wheel.

This search engine visualize a relation network of products in Amazon, from the statistics data “customers who bought this item also bought”, by digging related products again and again. Amaznode is not only for searching but also good for researching and making an associate link.

Amaznode enables you to make a direct link to a specific search query, and you can also add your own Amazon associate link.

You can see it in action at: http://amaznode.fladdict.net/#keywords=iphone&locale=us&searchIndex=Books&affiliate=fladdict-20

Google’s Wonder Wheel?

You can see it in action here:

http://www.google.com/search?q=technical%20writing&hl=en&newwindow=1&output=search&tbs=ww:1&&tbo=1

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Gdocbackup is a freeware application that lets you keep a local copy of your Google Docs. The advantage of this is that you can access your files even if you are not connected to the internet. It also keeps them safe if there were to be any problems with Google Docs.

GDocBackup lets you backup (export) your documents from Google Documents to your PC.

The application is smart enough to simple each document in Google Docs and check if this has a different date, i.e. multiple version of the same document.

No password if required to use this backup utility in case you’re concerned about security issues.

• Open source
• Freeware
• Licensed under the apache license version 2.0
• Uses official Google data APIs (.net version).
• Platform include Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux

You can download it from here: http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup

Ivan Walsh is a technology writer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Learn how to save time, make money and develop digital products.

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Last week I took the plunge and downloaded Internet Explorer 8. I have to admit, it’s a lot better than I expected. I now have three browsers on my PC: Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. Microsoft had put together a comparison chart of Internet Explorer 8 v FireFox and Chrome. Not sure I agree with everything but it made me re-think IE as a browser.

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Security

Internet Explorer 8 claims to have better phishing and malware protection.

Privacy

InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering help Internet Explorer 8 claim privacy victory.

Ease of Use

Features like Accelerators, Web Slices and Visual Search Suggestions make Internet Explorer 8 easier to use.

Web Standards

It’s a tie. Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium’s CSS 2.1 test cases than any other browser, but Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards.

Developer Tools

Debatable. With Internet Explorer 8, there’s no need to install tools separately, and it offers better features like JavaScript profiling.

Reliability

Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other.

Customizability

Sure, Firefox may win in sheer number of add-ons, but many of the customizations you’d want to download for Firefox are already part of Internet Explorer 8.

Compatibility

Internet Explorer 8 is more compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser.

Manageability

Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.

Regards,

Ivan

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

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Wired.com Tracking Every Facet of Life, from Sleep to Mood to Pain #2

Originally uploaded by Tech Writer Boy

Gary Wolf writes in Wired.com that, “two years ago, my fellow Wired writer Kevin Kelly and I noticed that many of our acquaintances were beginning to do this terrible thing to themselves, finding clever ways to extract streams of numbers from ordinary human activities. A new culture of personal data was taking shape.”

The immediate cause of this trend was obvious: New tools had made self-tracking easier.

He adds that much of the data-gathering can be automated, and the record-keeping and analysis can be delegated to a host of simple Web apps.

With new tracking systems popping up almost daily, we decided to create a Web site to track them. Gary has dubbed this project the ‘Quantified Self’.

Read the rest of what Gary has to say. Some very interesting points.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-07/lbnp_knowthyself#

It’s hard to keep up with Google these days. One of the new features is the new text link to the right of the search results URL.
You can see in this example, that when we search for ‘technical writing’, it displays ‘writing’ to the right of each link.

And where does this link take you?

Over to StumbleUpon.com

Which then shows results its users have tagged for ‘writing’.

Not sure what the point of all this is.

I would suggest that if your into SEO type activities, you could do worse than focus on StumbleUpon and see how this effects your ranking on Google.

There must be some connection, surely?

Let me know what you think?

PS – the text link only appears on the first page of the search results. The poor devils on the second pages don’t make the cut.

Regards,

Ivan

50 tips and tricks to get the most from Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft. Here are tips 31-40.

30. Remove the Bing background image

To remove the background image in Bing’s search engine, enter the following url:

http://www.bing.com/?rb=0

This displays the homepage without the background image, making the download faster.
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31. Search sites with filetype
To search for websites that contain links to Microsoft Windows Media Audio (.wma) files, type music contains:wma.

32. Search for files with a particular filetype.
To find document created in PDF format, type the name of the document, eg report, followed by filetype:pdf.

33. Snow reports
Type ‘snow report’ followed by a city. For example, type snow report Cairo.

34. Stock Quotes
In the search box, type the ticker symbol followed by stock or quote. For example to find the financial quotes of Microsoft, type MSFT stock or MSFT.

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35. Statistical Information
In the Bing.com search box, type what you want to find. For example, population of England, or iphones in USA.

36. Track Flight Status

To see the status of your flight:

flight status for United – enter the flight number and press Get Status .

flight status - Bing prompts you to enter the flight name and number on the first result itself.

Enter the flight name and number and click Get Status.

37. MP3 Music Files

Type U2 contains:mp3 will show pages that are about U2 and link to MP3 files.

38. Web pages for a specific language

To find results in a particular language, select the language code after the language: keyword.

For example, if you are searching for laptops then type laptops language:en.

39. Web pages from a specific country
Enter the country or region code directly after the loc: keyword. Use a logical OR to include one more language.

For example, to see web pages about wine from the France or Italy, type wine (loc:FR OR loc:IT).

Image results are shown at the bottom of the page.

40. Used Cars
VIN provides protection against buying a used car with hidden problems.
Type the VIN number and hit Search.

Microsoft still has a lot to learn about search engines. While Bing is very impressive, other parts of the Microsoft websphere aren’t so lucky.

Here is the search engine on the MSDN site.

Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh/3580555906/

Do you see it?

No?

There is no search engine – at least not at first glance – until you click the Search link.

Then, and only then, can you search the Microsoft blogs.

Why has Microsoft designed the site like this?

I don’t know.

I think it’s because they are a software development company and still think like developers – they haven’t made the switch to search. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong.

But I do know they need to re-define their search engine strategy or risk losing more market share.

Will Bing answer this?

We’re going to look at Bing later this week so stay tuned.

For a taster of what you get on Bing, look at the video. Go on, it’s free, and Bing is better than you think.

Find out more about Bing at: http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html

rgs

Ivan

www.ivanwalsh.com