Saturday November 14, 2009
It's Saturday, and you know what that means: a chore list as long as your arm and the weekly Web Search news roundup (not necessarily in that order). Let's get right to it:
Did I miss something? Let us know about a Web search news item that happened this week in the comments below, or comment on what's been posted.
Friday November 13, 2009
Wolfram Alpha, the incredibly useful (if oddly named) computational search engine, has won a coveted place in Popular Science's yearly top innovations selection: it's one of the "Best of What's New" in 2009.
A detailed profile of Wolfram Alpha, along with a background piece on Stephen Wolfram, the search engine's founder, will appear in the December 2009 issue of Popular Science, which came out yesterday (November 12). Congratulations to the W/A team - it's a well-deserved honor!
More about Wolfram Alpha: Not your average search engine. Wolfram Alpha is a computational, question and answer engine (it is NOT a search engine, it does NOT scour the Web for information) that will give you statistical-type answers for whatever query you might come up with.
Thursday November 12, 2009
Ever wonder where an image you see on the Web actually came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions? You can use TinEye as a reverse image search engine to answer all of these questions. Here's how it works:
- Upload an image from your computer, or copy and paste a URL that has the image you're investigating.
- TinEye comes back with a list of possible sources for that image.
TinEye has all sorts of interesting possibilities. For example:
- See how the Mona Lisa has been used all over the globe
- The Google logo has a ton of variations
- The official Obama Biden campaign logo shows up in a lot of different places
Definitely an interesting tool. Need to find more images? Try Image Search Engines, or if you're looking for free images for use on your site, check out Thirty Free Image Resources on the Web.
Wednesday November 11, 2009

If you've been looking for an easier way to access the Web on ANY computer, whether it's home, work, a coffee shop, school, etc., then you'll want to check out
WebAnywhere, an open source free screen reader project from the University of Washington.
The beauty of WebAnywhere is that it is entirely web-based, meaning you don't have to download any special software, so you can use it on any machine your heart desires. It's also available on any operating system and via any browser, which makes it even more useful. You can see a demo of WebAnywhere in action here (make sure your sound is turned on), as well as some pretty handy keyboard shortcuts.
WebAnywhere is not intended to replace more sophisticated screen readers, however, it's great for when you're out and about and just need something that will work quickly and easily, without the need for any special software or hardware. Very useful!
More Web usability tools