Future News?

I came across an announcement today for a project out of Google Labs, called Living Stories. It'a an "experiment" between Google, the NYT and the Washington Post to re-present news content for a 21st century audience and in a 21st century medium.

The FAQs (also linked from the bottom of the screen) offer interesting additional information. Clicking on a link from the Living Stories page, though, reveals where the product is going in terms of personalization and other features. Very cool.

And in certain ways, we're back to the future. Google has incorporated into real-time reporting some of the features that Facts.com already offers for historical news (i.e., Recently Deceased or No-Longer-Living Stories).

New on Google Scholar: Legal Opinions

You'll see this yourselves before too long, but as of this week, Google Scholar now contains legal materials.

Read all about it: Finding the Laws that Govern Us. And here's the coverage note:

Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read opinions for US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791 (please check back periodically for updates to coverage information). In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available. Legal opinions in Google Scholar are provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied on as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed lawyer. Google does not warrant that the information is complete or accurate.

Reviews from the legal community, including assessments of how Westlaw and LexisNexis might be affected, are linked to the post.

FYI: Google CSEs

I've always wanted a CSE that might combine SSRI, PROL, HuriSearch and possibly some other gray lit sources. Perhaps in time.

Meanwhile, here's a link to 10 of the "Best Custom Search Englines for Librarians." They include CSEs for finding ebooks, IGO publications, sub-Saharan Africa information, and business materials of many one. One even brings together video, sound, documentaries, radio, and film from across the web. Some neat -- and potentially useful -- stuff here. It's worth checking out!

Hat tip to LISNews.

Google Internet Stats

Here's an interesting new Google product: Internet Stats. In addition to tracking some major macroeconomic trends, the site also provides some media industry numbers. The site is intended to provide snapshots of consumer behavior and technology as both change over time.

You can browse, search, or ask for a "random statistic" to display.

Google's note about sources:

Data provided by the following vendors: B2Bonline.com, BARB, BusinessWeek, Coke, Commission of the European Communities, Comscore, Core Metrics, Datamonitor, Deloitte, The Economist, eMarketer, Enders Analysis, Eurostat, Film Distributors Association, Financial Times, Forrester, GFK, Google Insights for Search, Greenbee.com, Guardian, HarvardBusiness.org, Hitwise, IAB, IFPI, IMF, Internet Retailing, Internetworldstats.com, JP Morgan, KMPG, Media & Marketing, Mediascope Europe, Mindshare, Motorola, Net Imperative, New York Magazine, Nielsen, NMA, Ofcom, Ipsos MediaCT, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, QuickPlay Media Inc., Retail Week, Reuters, TGI Net, Times Online, TNS, Verdict Research, Wall Street Journal, WARC, YouTube, ZenithOptimedia, GM

Take the blind taste test!

A new search engine, appropriately called BlindSearch allows you to try a search simultaneously in Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Once you enter your terms, you're present with 3 (unmarked) columns of results. Just click on the one that matches your needs most closely . . . and you'll reveal the hidden identity!

It's fun -- and depending on what you put in, might yield results that are a bit surprising, too.

Google Tips and Tricks

The Google Book Search Blog is chock full of interesting and helpful information. A revamping of the "search experience" allows you to see results in context, opt for relevancy ranking rather than page order, snag chunks of text /images from books in the public domain, and more.

Worth checking out!

Google Books settlement demystified

ARL has put together an aptly named Guide for the Perplexed, a 23 page document that explains the impact of the Google Book settlement.

This is a topic that's been covered in recent Crimson articles in late October and this past week

Google Tips and Tricks

We all know about site limits in Google, but here are a few more interesting ways to refine a search. The numrange option -- if it works consistently -- would be a great addition to the searching repertoire, given the frequency with which we need to apply date restrictions to queries, even on the Web.

The fullest list of options, as this author points out, is available from Google's own "search features" page.

Government Documents in Google Book Search

In our lightning session on the Google Book Project, we discussed the anomaly of government publications being treated as copyrighted works. There's an interesting discussion of the issue in the Prelinger Library Blog.

Google News

It's debuting something called "Universal Search." You can read about it here.

Only problem is: the examples offered in the news release don't work -- or didn't when I clicked -- the way Google promised. The recipe didn't come up (same old Amazon front page did) and the Rach 3rd video didn't appear (until I typed "video" into the search Google had originally provided). Hmm . . . Good to keep our eyes on this development, though. They're Google. They'll work the kinks out.