This might have been useful to a lot of people last night, searching with their rabbit ear antennas for the highest quality HDTV signal to watch the Super Bowl, but now, if you know you have a problem, you can use this tool to get the most reliable signal. Just head to this list, click on the name of your city, and you’ll get a Google Map showing where the HDTV stations/transmitters are located in your area.
If all your major stations are in the same general direction, like they are in New York, just set up your antenna pointing in that direction. If you have Fox to your east and ABC to your west, now you know that when 24 is on, you should point your antenna east, and on Wednesday nights, point it west to catch Lost. HDTV signals are tricky, but crucial, and knowing where the transmitters are is the only reliable way to ensure things don’t start dropping out on you.
(via Digg)
February 5th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google Maps, Services, General |
no comments
Google has added some new abilities to Google Mini, the smaller, cheaper version of its Search Appliance, giving it many features that have been added to the big Google Search Appliance. Minis now recognize access settings from Windows NT LAN Manager, Active Directory, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol directories and in HTTP Basic schemes for online transactions.
OneBox for Search Appliances has alos been added, letting owners create OneBoxes to be shown above search results to help on certain types of queries.
Meanwhile, a major search improvement is the OneBox feature, which lets the engine identify the intent of certain queries and compile and present a digest of data at the top of the search results list that may answer the user’s questions, saving them from having to click on search results. OneBox can be configured to compile human resources data, sales transaction details and employee contact and calendar information, for example.
Mini also now integrates with Google Analytics, including tracking searches made on the box, integrates with Google Sitemaps, and allows searching by number ranges (including dates, times or prices).
IT World suggest that Google is concerned that Yahoo/IBM’s OmiFind service, which is free and does much of what Google’s search appliances do, without the need for specialized hardware. OmniFind can index up to 500,000 documents, while the Mini can only do 50,000 in the $1,995 configuration, up to 300,000 in the $8,995 configuration. Google needs to at least think about releasing Search Appliance as an operating system.
February 5th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Search Appliance, General |
one comment
Got word of some cool smart answers Ask.com is running.
The first is all about events. Presumably leveraging the fact that Ask and Ticketmaster are under the same roof, if you enter a type of event, like “hockey”, or a concert, and a location, you’ll get a smart answer with some upcoming matching events. Click to see more and you’ll get forwarded to Ask City local search, and see on a map all the events in your area, with options to buy tickets through Ticketmaster, of course.
Try it out:
“hockey new york city” (notice how you can norrow it by borough)
“concert los angeles” (note the suggestions of Los Angeles other than California, as well as the categories of music)
“comedy boston”
This is an excellent case of the sum of all the parts making for something great. Ask has been building something special with their smart answers, making for a search engine that is more than just about ranking pages from 1 to 10. You gotta love where they’re going with all this.
The other thing is that if you search for kids books (or anything like that), Ask tells you to go to the search engine for the Internation Children’s Digital Library. Google’e been pointing to other companies for a while, although less and less as it gets more competitive, but something about the way Ask does it, with a prominent and descriptive smart answer, just reminds me a bit of Miracle on 34th street.
I’d love it if Yahoo pointed users at Google Groups when it was clear they were looking for something only a USENET archive could provide, or if Google Images pointed to Flickr when it was clear that whatever the user is searching for won’t be met by Google Images. Confidence in your company’s product is important, obviously (hence dogfooding), but if the user isn’t satisfied with the experience, they’re leaving anyway.
Who’s more likely to keep using Google Images, the guy who can never find anything good there, or the guy who gets told, “We don’t have that, so check out Flickr. Just don’t forget that you will always find it through Google, even if you don’t find it at Google”? The answer should be obvious.
February 5th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Ask, Search, General |
one comment
