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| Friday, July 29, 2005 |
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Preview review 
| | Preview Search just showed up as a source in my aggregator. The UI is an overpromotional mess. The emphasis on keyword search is interesting, but... Is there a pony in here somewhere? |
| | The small print at the bottom begins, Copyright © Preview-Search.com € 2004-05. Patent Pending.... That last one's a land mine, not a pony. |
| | Digging at their "top blogs," it looks the thing does blog spam farm aggregation. |
Wanted: more Buzz Uptake testing
| | Mary Hodder has been doing an outstanding job of answering the need for in-depth study of RSS search and related tools (such as aggregators). Here are Part I and Part II. |
| | There are many ways that RSS ("Live Web") search differs from the static Web search done by the big-brand engines. To do your own study of differences in kind, check searches for "ipex bra" on Blogpulse, Google and Technorati. Three very different tools, with three very different results. |
| | But what's the biggest key difference between RSS search and static web search? |
| | That's what I studied in my Sam Test on July 24. In Mary's Part II, she sources the Sam Test alone, because (far as either of us know), no other tests of "buzz uptake" (I believe "speed to index" would be the technical term) tests have been conducted. |
| | So we still need those tests. |
| | They have to be conducted on stories that are brand new, as Sam was when I posted it. Know any? Run your own test. Today's for me (I just decided) is vehicular resume, in quotes (see below, posted at 12:30am PDST today). Check MSN, Google, Yahoo, IceRocket, Bloglines, Blogpulse, Feedster and Technorati for results. As of right now (10:34am PDST), Technorati and Feedster each have three unique results that point back to my post. The rest have none. |
| | [Later...] Here's a good one: BlogHer sessions. Should have thought of that earlier. |
Just remember which side they're on
| | Foxcasting is what Fox calls its own podcasting. The way they describe it, however... "LISTEN NOW. LISTEN LATER. TAKE THEM WITH YOU. YOU'RE IN CONTROL." ... makes me think Fox, which is fundamentally a TV network, is looking to the podcasting model as a way the supply side of TV starts routing around a nettlesome instrument of viewer choice on the demand side: TiVo. |
Who needs analysts when you have analytical bloggers?
Vehicular resumé
| | On my 58th birthday, I find myself thinking, for no reason other than sleeplessness (it's 12:30am), about all the cars I've owned. In rough order, the are: |
| | Black 1963 Volkswagen sedan with a sunroof. Rolled it in the Summer of '66, when I was turning 19. |
| | Black 1961 English Ford Consul sedan. Piece of crap. Leaked oil from everywhere. |
| | Midnight blue 1958 Mercedes 220S sedan. Fast and solid. Had seats that reclined to make the whole interior a bed. Had a "Hydrax" transmission: four on the column, no clutch on the floor. Sold it after the Hydrax died. |
| | Blue 1963 Chevy Bel-Air sedan. 283 V8. Automatic. Great car. Sold it when the transmission began failing. |
| | Yellow 1966 Volvo 122s sedan. Straight 4. Stick. Solid car. Sold it because I needed a wagon. |
| | Dark green 1966 Peugeot 404 wagon. Stick. Would hold anything. Had screw-on hubcaps, among other design oddities. Rusted to death. |
| | Snot-green 1969 Chevy Biscayne sedan. 287 V8. Automatic. Looked like an unmarked cop car. Drove it into the ground. It was this Chevy, more than any other car I've owned, that made me a shadetree mechanic of GM V8 cars. |
| | White 1970 Austin America, with a black stripe down its middle. Belonged to my sister, then my father, then me, then my father. Brilliant design, front wheel drive, transverse 4-cylinder engine, manual-automatic transmission, quirky and way ahead of its time. |
| | White 1970 Pontiac Catalina sedan. 327 V8. 4 door. Automatic. Leaked water into the trunk. Failed often without reason. Real beast of a car. |
| | Dark red 1974 Datsun pickup. Straight 4. Stick. Father's car. Had use of it for a year or so. Seat was so bouncy your head hit the roof. Had two sets of points in the distributor: a vintage Datsun "feature." |
| | Sky blue 1974 Ford Pinto wagon. Straight 4 that was flat on one side and looked like half an engine. Stick. Piece of shit. Moved kind of crabwise, due to an earlier accident. |
| | Blue 1980 Chevy Citation fastback. V6. Automatic. Bought it from my aunt after her stroke. Like the Pinto, but more comfortable. |
| | Sky blue 1970-something Volkswagen fastback. Had to crawl under the back of it with a hammer to hit the starter. Parked on hills so I could start it by rolling a ways and then popping the clutch. Was found burned to the metal on a side road a few months after I sold it. |
| | Blue 1978 Honda Accord fastback. Straight four. One of the first "good" Hondas. Though this one wasn't, turned out. Bought it from a dishonest mechanic, which I didn't find out unti the engine failed after I sold it. The new owner came after me, however. I was then in California and they were in North Carolina. We settled, but both felt burned. |
| | Dark red 1985 Toyota Camry. Straight 4. Stick. First and only new car I ever bought. Also the best, by far. Towed everything I owned in a U-Haul to California in August '85. All but failproof. Eventually gave it to my daughter, who finished driving it to past 300,000 miles, I think. Only car I ever had where the AC actually worked. |
| | Dark red 1988 Subaru wagon. Transverse 4. Stick. Front wheel drive that goes to 4WD, which requires four perfectly-identical tires, so it has never worked quite right. Bought it from Buck Krawczyk in '94. Handy for hauling stuff. I've beat the crap out of it, but it won't die. If I need a nice car I rent one or drive my wife's 1995 Infiniti Q45, which is a good car but not the equal of her 1992 Q45a, which it replaced and I still miss. |
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