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Business
Weblog Neighbourhood Analysis
WELCOME TO the 150th edition of NetSpeak!
This week NetSpeak discusses a service that enables one to spot the neighbourhood of a blog (weblogs related to a blog).
One of the most fascinating features of the Net is its capability to provide a congenial atmosphere for the creation of unconventional movements that originate purely from individual initiatives. Popular Net phenomena that include open source/free software movements, P2P-based (peer-to-peer) file sharing services, distributed computing applications, and Wiki web (a web page that can be edited by anyone on-line) are some prominent examples. A movement of this type that has gained wide acceptance among netizens is the blog phenomenon, covered in this column long ago.
A weblog or blog is a personal or group website that gets regularly updated with comments, analysis and links to content published elsewhere. The content of a blog is arranged in chronological order so that the latest posting appears on top of the page. Due to the availability of free weblog generation tools such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) which hosts the slogan `Push-button publishing for the people,' tens of hundreds of people have joined this movement. Also, weblogs are now deployed for varied applications that range from political campaigns to knowledge management (refer the article on k-logs published in this column on August 5, 2002, http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/biz/2002/08/05/stories/2002080500030200.htm)
Weblog Neighbourhood
In a weblog, the weblogger logs all the web pages that interest her. That is, a weblog compiled by an expert on a specific subject will contain valuable links related to her subject. Apart from presenting interesting links with comments and writing stories on a specific subject, a blogger generally lists out the URLs of other blogs with similar content, which she reads quite often. This practice is called blogrolling. In fact from being just an on-line diary, blogs have evolved into an excellent collaboration tool.
What we can infer from this is that there is an automatic categorisation or self-organisation of blogs taking place. It is obvious that if we can locate weblogs with similar content — or weblog neighbourhood as it is commonly called — a Netizen can directly go to those sites that deal with his subject instead of spending time on search engines.
The challenge is how to identify related weblogs. That is, if you know about a blog that deals with, say, economics, how to identify weblogs that are in the neighbourhood of this blog? The blog neighbourhood analyser of Blogstreet (http://www.blogstreet.com) is an attempt to locate related weblogs.
By providing the service with the URL of a blog, it displays related weblogs of this blog site by analysing its blogroll data. For example, if you input the address of the `ArgMax Economics Weblog' (http://www.argmax.com/mt_blog/), Blogstreet's weblog neighbourhood analyser (http://www.blogstreet.com/neighborhood.html), it will immediately display a list of blogs related to this weblog. Apart from this service you will also find a reference page (http://www.blogstreet.com/reference.html) with a wealth of weblog related links at Blogstreet site.
Surfwax: a meta-search engine
Though, many netizens may have their own favourite search engine, they cannot ignore the existence of other search engines and directories. Of course, it is not easy or practical to always scan all the available search engine databases while looking for a Net resource. But if we have some mechanism that can automatically probe all the important search engines, collect the search results from each and present it to the user in a more comprehensible fashion, it can provide more enriched search results.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/biz/2002/08/05/stories/2002080500030200.htm A web-based search service of this kind that automatically sends out search strings to various search engines and displays the collected results is called a meta-search engine. SurfWax is a product that falls in this category. Apart from providing search results obtained from multiple search engines, Surfwax features tools for enhancing the productivity of our digital life.
Here is a quick glance at some of its salient features:
When you invoke the service with a search string, it displays the results in the left frame. By clicking at the magnifying icon (available at the left side of each of the results) you can view a small summary of the site.
Another interesting feature of the service is the tool called `facilitator', which allows you to open the full text of the search results in one window. So, using this facility one can view the contents of a set of web pages in one go.
Another notable feature of this meta-search engine is the InfoCubby tool that can be used to save the search results on the Surfwax's server. To avail this service, you need to sign-up with it. After signing-up, you can start adding URLs, local documents and so on to various InfoCubby folders so that these materials can be accessed at any time from anywhere on the web. Apart from this facility, you can also share the InfoCubby folders so that it can be accessed by other Surfwax users; this way the service acts as a collaboration tool. Another highlight of this tool is that by clicking on the 'Facilitator' button, you can get complete details of all the documents stored on the InfoCubby folder. For more details, check out: http://www.surfwax.com/
Instant Office View
It is likely that you are familiar with instant messenger (IM) services such as as Yahoo messenger and MSN messenger. An IM service can be used to send real-time instant messages to people who are in your buddy list. But it will be inefficient if you want to do IM with somebody on your office Intranet or home network. Instant Office View (IOV) is an IM software that can be used to send instant messages to anyone on the Intranet without the help of a central server.
To send messages, the program has to be installed/active on all the nodes whose users are to be contacted. When the software becomes active in your machine, it automatically detects/displays the workstations that are active and running IOV. If your friend's workstation is active you can send messages to him, which will be displayed on his desktop immediately. For evaluating the product, check out: http://www.officeview.com/IOVindex.html.
J. Murali
Email the author at: murali27@satyam.net.in
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