Daily Cup of Tech

We all spend some time on a search engine. And, believe it or not, some of that information is gathered.

Back a few years ago, there was a leak of information by AOL.  They anonymized the search data of 650,000 AOL users and made the 36,389,629 searches available to academics for research purposes.  Paul Boutin from Slate magazine got his hands on the data and very quickly came to realize that there were seven types of searchers.  He published his findings in Slate and then they were republished in The Best of Technology Writing 2007 (an excellent book, by the way, that I highly recommend reading).

So, according to Paul (and leaked AOL data), these are the seven types of searchers:

1. The Pornhound - lookin’ for love in all the wrong places!  Dedicated to getting that next hit of nudity and inappropriate adult content.
2. The Manhunter - trying to find out more about specific people.  Could be a headhunter, HR manager, or stalker.  (They are, after all, hard to tell apart!)
3. The Shopper - they’ve got money burning a hole in their pocket (or a credit on PayPal using up database records).  Looking to buy the next great thing they absolutely need until the next great thing comes along.
4. The Obsessive - seriously addicted to one topic.  They may look for something else from time to time but they always come back to the same thing.
5. The Omnivore - they don’t have any specific pattern of searching, they are just searching a lot.  They either search for the sake of searching or have an unquenchable thirst to know everything!
6. The Newbie - often search for website addresses (mistaking the search bar for the address bar) or searching for terms that make no sense (e.g. “a”, “the”, “allthebestboybandsintheentireworld”)
7. The Basket Case - overly concerned with why they are not perfect.  Treat the search engine like a therapyst (e.g. “Why am I so ugly?”, “Why won’t Tim go out with me?”)

So, what type of a searcher are you?  Leave us a message in the comments.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/03/28/the-seven-types-of-searchers/trackback/

As any SEO marketer will tell you, your personal brand is critical.  If someone else is using it, it can be a huge issue that can cause you money or, even worse, your reputation.

One way of checking to see if someone is infringing on your brand is to check whether or not your username/screen name is being used by someone else.  Dialusername will allow you to check your username on all of the following social media sites in one fell swoop:

• Digg
• Gmail
• Uservoice
• Xing
• Yahoo
• Yotify
• 12seconds
• Behance
• Blogger
• Brightkite
• Colourlovers
• Corkd
• Dailymotion
• Delicious
• Diigo
• Disqus
• Ebay
• Etsy
• Favtape
• Ffffound
• Flickr
• Friendfeed
• Funnyordie
• Hellotxt
• Hexday
• Identica
• Ilike
• ILikeTotallyLoveIt
• Imageshack
• Isfingawesome
• Jaiku
• Koornk
• Kwippy
• Lastfm
• Linkedin
• Livejournal
• Magnolia
• Meemi
• Mixx
• Multiply
• Myspace
• Odeo
• Pandora
• Picasa
• Plurk
• Posterous
• Pownce
• Rejaw
• Smugmug
• Soundcloud
• Steam
• Stumbleupon
• Technorati
• Tinyurl
• Tipd
• Tipjoy
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Typepad
• Ustream
• Vimeo
• Virb
• Visualizeus
• Vox
• Wakoopa
• Wordpress
• Youtube
• Zooomr

All you need to do is enter your preferred username and click on the check button to see if your username is available or being used by someone else.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/03/23/check-to-see-if-you-are-being-impersonated/trackback/

With Google doing weird things with their ads, you start to wonder if it might be a good idea to start looking around for ways to not use them.  I came across a search portal called Leapfish that combines the search power of all the major search engines into a simple page with the information that you will probably need.

The main page for the website is very clean.  It is not blank like Google or cluttered like Yahoo.  There are four small columns that provide some very useful information such as Market Summary, Date & World Times, News, Latest YouTube Videos, Household Tips, and the Weather.

One of the nice things about Leapfish that I like is the fact that it does not wait for you to click or hit enter.  It starts working automatically when you start typing.  It also lets me pull results from different search engines without starting all over.

And, since they are trying to get their web portal off the ground, they are presently holding a contest where you can win a WiiFit From LeapFish. Nothing wrong with that!

So, if you are just curious about a different search portal or maybe looking for an alternative, you may want to look at Leapfish.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/03/14/leapfish-search-engine-portal/trackback/

Initially, the Internet was designed to be used as a text only tool. These were the days when telnet was king. Man, have things ever changed!

Today, everything is trying to look pretty. CSS, graphics, flash have all changed how we see the web. The one thing that has not changed is how we search the web. We still rely on the basic old concept of words.

But a company called TouchGraph is out to change that. They have created a search tool that lets you see how different websites are related in a visual format.

How TouchGraph works is actually pretty difficult to explain. Think of planets revolving around a star. Each “star” is a central web page with related website “planets” circling around the “star”.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Check out how TouchGraph displays a search for “Daily Cup of Tech“. Simply click here.

I have come to rely on this tool for a number of things, especially when I am looking for inspiration while blogging. It simply presents me with options that I don’t get with regular search engines.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2008/08/26/google-visually-and-blog-better/trackback/

News sites have been noting recently that Myspace and Xanga (and their ilk) have been a place for friends and social networks to grieve for those who have passed away - while this is notable and a very cool use of the technology, it was bound to happen.

If you have been online for a time, you have probably posted here or there in various forums, commented to blog entries, or even (if you are old enough) have posted on various UseNet groups and good old newsgroups (which I still love!)…

The point I am making is that the vestiges of our Internet personas will be, for all intents and purposes, immortal - - well, at least the information will be around far beyond our lifetimes. It is the closest we will be (as far as we know so far) to becoming eternal and be able to prove it to those that are still breathing and logging on to the ‘Net…

With that, I suggest you go Google yourself and see what the Internet has to say about you while you are still here.

There are several articles that talk about this and have great tips if you want to limit or do something about your sensitive information on the ‘Net:

• About.com - Google Yourself
• ZDNet - Why you should Google Yourself, and Often
• WindowsNetworking.com - Google Yourself To Identify Security Holes
• Google - and the list goes on…

I’m somewhat hesitant to admit that I do this quite often… Usually, my goal is to see if I can innocently catch up with someone. Is this a new form of stalking?

However, I did Google a person that I was entering into an auction transaction with. The auction was for a set of wheels and tires, and I discovered that this person was in a car accident recently, as stated by his local paper (I searched for the name of the person, and the city he was from). Of course, this brought up the question, was the set from the car? Would this affect the transaction?

If I did this with a person I was paying money to, it doesn’t take a stretch to realize that potential employers can do the same thing…be aware if you are job-hunting!

So, if you do find information on yourself that you don’t like - here is an interesting…work-around: A search tool that can create higher-scoring search results with more favorable information that you specify (you can read about it via this Wired article). Particularly useful for the shadier folks among us.

Now that I’ve fed your paranoia bug, go Google yourself!

Oh, I still went through with the wheels and tires - my car looks sharp!

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/02/23/why-dont-you-just-go-google-yourself/trackback/