1. Google, Using devise a search strategy for your research statement that uses both phrase searching and the Boolean AND. Be specific, i.e., list the exact search statement and indicate how many Web sites were found. (1 point)Example: "physician assisted suicide" depression "terminally ill" search statement found 3,200 Web sites on October 2, 2004.
Answer: “Holocaust history”search statement found 5,900,000 Web site on January 30, 1933.
2. Using Google, devise a search strategy for your research statement that uses a title field search in addition to a domain search. Be specific, i.e., list the exact search statement and indicate how many Web sites were found. (1 point)Example: intitle:"physician assisted suicide" site:org found 236 Web sites on October 2, 2004.
Answer: “history of the Holocaust- An Introduction”site:org found 5,900,000 Web site on January 30, 1933.
3. Did one search retrieve more relevant information than the other? If so, why? (1 point)
Answer: Yes! It’s because there are so many words that are meanningfull.
4. Did the searches retrieve other than HTML Web sites? i.e., Word or pdf documents? (1 point)
Answer: Yes!
5. Which key terms from your thesis statement retrieved the most relevant information? (1 point)
Answer: “The Holocaust”
6. Discuss the relative merits of phrase searching, Boolean AND searching and field searching. (1 point)
Answer:
7. Select one of the following Meta Search Engines. Devise a search strategy for your research statement that uses both phrase searching and the Boolean AND. Be specific, i.e., list the Meta Search Engine used, the exact search statement and indicate how many Web sites were found. (1 point)
Example: In iBoogie, "physician assisted suicide" depression "terminally ill" retrieved 107 Web sites on October 2, 2004.
Answer:
8. Were some of the same sites retrieved by Google and the Meta Search Engine? (1 point
answer:base on my searching I notice that holocaust have a many discription.
9. What differences did you notice between the results of this search and the results of the Google searches? (1 point)
answer:there are so many diff. for example the meanig of the words.
10. What impact might this have on the validity of the search results? (1 point)
answer:as for me it is verry hard, it's because there are someworsd that i can't understand.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Project in ITE5
ALEXA:
Alexa Internet is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a website (www.alexa.com) that provides information on the web traffic to other websites. Alexa collects information from users who have installed an Alexa Toolbar, allowing them to provide statistics on web site traffic, as well as lists of related links.
LYCOS:
Lycos has one of the greatest global impacts of the search engines. Its merger with Terra Networks in 2000 has made it one of the worlds leading search engines. Lycos searches several other major databases when it provides a search result. For this reason, Lycos is an extensive search engine capable to finding a vast array of information.
DOGPILE:
htttp://dogpile.com
Dogpile has changed a lot since the first time I used it (I guess for the better), now it's becoming more and more like google. It used to be pretty unique and would have a listing of popular searches related to your search (example: if you searched "ford car," in the listing it might have "ford mustang car")
So what do you think of dogpile.com? It would be better if you reviewed it byitself, and then reviewed it comparing with others, because I don't want to hear "that search engine sucks, yahoo.com for life."
BTW, does anybody have any information about google charging people for higher ranks and/or top spots in search results? My dad said you could buy your rank and pay money to google to be at the top spot for a search, and that you could find it through goggle's advertising options... But I couldn't find anything.
• The similarities and Contrast between ALEXA, DOGPILE, and LYCOS include proximity searching, case sensitivity, fields searching, and sorting. Proximity searching refers to how close words should be when searching phrases. All of these search engines use phrase matching, which looks for phrases in the exact order that they are entered in the search. Case sensitivity refers to the ability of the search engine to search all cases in both topic entry and search results. All of these search engines are case insensitive. Fields searching is the ability to define from where a search comes from instead of searching the entire Internet. All of these search engines allow for field searching. Sorting is the ability to organize the results of the search. All of these entire search engines sort by relevance to the search topic.
• For my search, I chose to look for information on VAN HELSING” was a shortened form of “Abraham,” a name Stoker shared with his father. That he selected this name for one of his leading characters suggests a degree of identification with that fictional person. “Abraham” also has biblical resonance, echoing the name of the patriarch and leader of the ancient Israelites.
As for the surname “Van Helsing,” a number of possibilities have been suggested. It may derive from Dr Hesselius, the fictional narrator of Sheridan Le Fanu’s famous vampire tale “Carmilla” (1872). Given Stoker’s familiarity with Shakespearean plays as manager of the Lyceum Theatre, the origin is possibly “Helsingor the Danish town in which Hamlets’ castle is located. A third consideration is Van Helmont, an ancient alchemist mentioned briefly in T J Pettigrew’s On Superstitions Connected with the History and Nature of Medicine and Surgery (1844), one of Stokers known source-texts for Dracula.
CONCLUSION:
In the end, however, search engines are all useful to navigating the Internet. As to which search engine to use, I believe that it is up to the user to decide which one they like best. I tend to find successes using Google, however, someone else may find that another search engine provides them with what they are looking for. Thus, it is the responsibility of the user to research and try different search engines and methods while trying to find information on the Internet. As the Internet continues to grow, search engines will have to adapt and continually update their databases or become outdated. As such, todays search engines could be replaced in the future with better, more efficient ones in the near future.
Alexa Internet is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a website (www.alexa.com) that provides information on the web traffic to other websites. Alexa collects information from users who have installed an Alexa Toolbar, allowing them to provide statistics on web site traffic, as well as lists of related links.
LYCOS:
Lycos has one of the greatest global impacts of the search engines. Its merger with Terra Networks in 2000 has made it one of the worlds leading search engines. Lycos searches several other major databases when it provides a search result. For this reason, Lycos is an extensive search engine capable to finding a vast array of information.
DOGPILE:
htttp://dogpile.com
Dogpile has changed a lot since the first time I used it (I guess for the better), now it's becoming more and more like google. It used to be pretty unique and would have a listing of popular searches related to your search (example: if you searched "ford car," in the listing it might have "ford mustang car")
So what do you think of dogpile.com? It would be better if you reviewed it byitself, and then reviewed it comparing with others, because I don't want to hear "that search engine sucks, yahoo.com for life."
BTW, does anybody have any information about google charging people for higher ranks and/or top spots in search results? My dad said you could buy your rank and pay money to google to be at the top spot for a search, and that you could find it through goggle's advertising options... But I couldn't find anything.
• The similarities and Contrast between ALEXA, DOGPILE, and LYCOS include proximity searching, case sensitivity, fields searching, and sorting. Proximity searching refers to how close words should be when searching phrases. All of these search engines use phrase matching, which looks for phrases in the exact order that they are entered in the search. Case sensitivity refers to the ability of the search engine to search all cases in both topic entry and search results. All of these search engines are case insensitive. Fields searching is the ability to define from where a search comes from instead of searching the entire Internet. All of these search engines allow for field searching. Sorting is the ability to organize the results of the search. All of these entire search engines sort by relevance to the search topic.
• For my search, I chose to look for information on VAN HELSING” was a shortened form of “Abraham,” a name Stoker shared with his father. That he selected this name for one of his leading characters suggests a degree of identification with that fictional person. “Abraham” also has biblical resonance, echoing the name of the patriarch and leader of the ancient Israelites.
As for the surname “Van Helsing,” a number of possibilities have been suggested. It may derive from Dr Hesselius, the fictional narrator of Sheridan Le Fanu’s famous vampire tale “Carmilla” (1872). Given Stoker’s familiarity with Shakespearean plays as manager of the Lyceum Theatre, the origin is possibly “Helsingor the Danish town in which Hamlets’ castle is located. A third consideration is Van Helmont, an ancient alchemist mentioned briefly in T J Pettigrew’s On Superstitions Connected with the History and Nature of Medicine and Surgery (1844), one of Stokers known source-texts for Dracula.
CONCLUSION:
In the end, however, search engines are all useful to navigating the Internet. As to which search engine to use, I believe that it is up to the user to decide which one they like best. I tend to find successes using Google, however, someone else may find that another search engine provides them with what they are looking for. Thus, it is the responsibility of the user to research and try different search engines and methods while trying to find information on the Internet. As the Internet continues to grow, search engines will have to adapt and continually update their databases or become outdated. As such, todays search engines could be replaced in the future with better, more efficient ones in the near future.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
8. Where can you join an association of rabbit breeders?
source:yahoo.com
Home
The Nutmeg Rabbit Breeders Association has been a American Rabbit Breeders Association charted club since 1979.
The goals of the association are to educate and assist in the promotion of responsible rabbit and cavy raising . We actively encourage youth membership and the opportunity to learn from experienced breeders. It is through education that we can help to increase the level of quality of rabbit and cavy raisers.
Rabbit and cavy raisers of all levels are welcome to join. From the beginner interested in keeping a rabbit or cavy as a pet to commercial breeders, we all have information that we can share with one another. Many times there are questions that an individual will ask that we will research and provide the answer back to the group so that many benefit.
The Nutmeg Rabbit Breeder's Association is the sponsor of the annual Nutmeg Rabbit Show held at the Goshen Fairgrounds in Goshen Connecticut. There are opportunities for all members to participate and to help with the tasks required to produce a successful show. It is through this participation that the show has continued to grow in interest.
9.Who was the highes paid athlete in the year 2000 and how much did he or she make?
source: ASK.COM
Yankee Doodle United ... Those of you wondering why the New York Yankees would "deign" to partner with Manchester United in their recently announced joint marketing deal might consider the bottom line: the Yanks are the junior partner in almost every category. The Yanks are worth approximately $500-600 million, according to industry observers; the Red Devils’ market value is estimated by most analysts at at least $1 billion. The Yanks have a lucrative local TV deal; United has its own television channel (MUTV) and its games are viewed around the world. The Yanks have won four of the past five World Series; Man Utd has won the English Premier League title six times in the past eight years. Shortstop Derek Jeter is a heartthrob; United's David Beckham married Posh Spice. Only in the category of player salaries do the Yanks win: Jeter just signed for $189 million over 10 years; the highest paid Manchester player, captain Roy Keane, reportedly makes "only" $3-plus million per year. Manchester United the junior partner? Not bloody likely.
10.Where can you purchase a Durian?
source: CNN.COM
It's durian season and throughout the archipelago, even in elite areas of big cities, durian vendors are offering their wares in bamboo baskets and supermarkets are selling neatly packaged, pre-sliced durian.In more rural areas durian seems to be omnipresent along the road. Heaps of durian are offered from the many durian regions in Indonesia. There are small ones and there are big ones.Lots of people are encircling the tengkulak duren, or vendors who sell durian in large quantities.For some people durian has a special place in their hearts. When one is going to northern Sumatra and happens to pass along the way to Tapanuli, people's love for durian is expressed in a statue and in the name of their home city.Tarutung, for example, in local Tapanuli dialect, means durian, and so they named the town Tarutung. All along the region durian grows abundantly, providing very sweet and succulent fruit flesh which has become an important item to mix into their much liked alcoholic brew tuak.Many people, on the contrary, are definitely against durian and even have allergic reactions when smelling the cloyingly sweet fruit flesh. For them it is torture to be near people eating durian.An aroma of rotten cheese, is one description I once heard of durian. But many people throughout Asia love it and are willing to go far out of their way to purchase the variety and quality of durian they like.For durain novices it is a bit risky to just buy from the store because a palatable durian is revealed upon opening it. If a durian is bland and tasteless you can do nothing about it.Durians deteriorate quickly, therefore one should go with somebody with experience picking the good ones, meaning having sweet flesh. Or buy in places where they sell visible durian fruit flesh which should be rather creamy looking.But in many rural areas they ignore the rather bland fruit flesh and take the pits which can be made into many foodstuffs.To obtain a very fine texture the pits are thoroughly washed, sliced finely and then sundried. They are then put in a traditional mortar which is called a lumpang and alu. But in more developed areas, an electric grinder is used.The sweets made from the durian meal exist in many varieties and the most renown is the dodol durian, which differs in preparation and texture.In the southern regions of Kalimantan and Sumatra dodol durian is made from the pit's meal, whereas in other regions, for example in southern Java, it is made from the durian fruit flesh. For people keen on nutritional value: durian pits contain calcium, iron, protein, fat and carbohydrates.Near the village I live in south of Jakarta, the durian market is in full swing this rainy season and one can hear various languages from around the archipelago. But the most dominant of the durian bosses originate from Lampung.I was told an interesting story about the durian orchards there where elephants roam around looking for ripe durians fallen to the ground. The elephants are very choosy I heard and they never are mistaken in judging delectable durians with creamy and sweet yellowish fruit flesh, and with one step they crush it and enjoy the durian!Another story: in most rural areas the person who hears a durian fall from the tree and runs toward it is the one who may get it even though it was his neighbor's tree. That is why my durian trees are always empty because durians mostly fall in the deep of the night, and my family does not have a sharp ear for falling durians.
source:yahoo.com
Home
The Nutmeg Rabbit Breeders Association has been a American Rabbit Breeders Association charted club since 1979.
The goals of the association are to educate and assist in the promotion of responsible rabbit and cavy raising . We actively encourage youth membership and the opportunity to learn from experienced breeders. It is through education that we can help to increase the level of quality of rabbit and cavy raisers.
Rabbit and cavy raisers of all levels are welcome to join. From the beginner interested in keeping a rabbit or cavy as a pet to commercial breeders, we all have information that we can share with one another. Many times there are questions that an individual will ask that we will research and provide the answer back to the group so that many benefit.
The Nutmeg Rabbit Breeder's Association is the sponsor of the annual Nutmeg Rabbit Show held at the Goshen Fairgrounds in Goshen Connecticut. There are opportunities for all members to participate and to help with the tasks required to produce a successful show. It is through this participation that the show has continued to grow in interest.
9.Who was the highes paid athlete in the year 2000 and how much did he or she make?
source: ASK.COM
Yankee Doodle United ... Those of you wondering why the New York Yankees would "deign" to partner with Manchester United in their recently announced joint marketing deal might consider the bottom line: the Yanks are the junior partner in almost every category. The Yanks are worth approximately $500-600 million, according to industry observers; the Red Devils’ market value is estimated by most analysts at at least $1 billion. The Yanks have a lucrative local TV deal; United has its own television channel (MUTV) and its games are viewed around the world. The Yanks have won four of the past five World Series; Man Utd has won the English Premier League title six times in the past eight years. Shortstop Derek Jeter is a heartthrob; United's David Beckham married Posh Spice. Only in the category of player salaries do the Yanks win: Jeter just signed for $189 million over 10 years; the highest paid Manchester player, captain Roy Keane, reportedly makes "only" $3-plus million per year. Manchester United the junior partner? Not bloody likely.
10.Where can you purchase a Durian?
source: CNN.COM
It's durian season and throughout the archipelago, even in elite areas of big cities, durian vendors are offering their wares in bamboo baskets and supermarkets are selling neatly packaged, pre-sliced durian.In more rural areas durian seems to be omnipresent along the road. Heaps of durian are offered from the many durian regions in Indonesia. There are small ones and there are big ones.Lots of people are encircling the tengkulak duren, or vendors who sell durian in large quantities.For some people durian has a special place in their hearts. When one is going to northern Sumatra and happens to pass along the way to Tapanuli, people's love for durian is expressed in a statue and in the name of their home city.Tarutung, for example, in local Tapanuli dialect, means durian, and so they named the town Tarutung. All along the region durian grows abundantly, providing very sweet and succulent fruit flesh which has become an important item to mix into their much liked alcoholic brew tuak.Many people, on the contrary, are definitely against durian and even have allergic reactions when smelling the cloyingly sweet fruit flesh. For them it is torture to be near people eating durian.An aroma of rotten cheese, is one description I once heard of durian. But many people throughout Asia love it and are willing to go far out of their way to purchase the variety and quality of durian they like.For durain novices it is a bit risky to just buy from the store because a palatable durian is revealed upon opening it. If a durian is bland and tasteless you can do nothing about it.Durians deteriorate quickly, therefore one should go with somebody with experience picking the good ones, meaning having sweet flesh. Or buy in places where they sell visible durian fruit flesh which should be rather creamy looking.But in many rural areas they ignore the rather bland fruit flesh and take the pits which can be made into many foodstuffs.To obtain a very fine texture the pits are thoroughly washed, sliced finely and then sundried. They are then put in a traditional mortar which is called a lumpang and alu. But in more developed areas, an electric grinder is used.The sweets made from the durian meal exist in many varieties and the most renown is the dodol durian, which differs in preparation and texture.In the southern regions of Kalimantan and Sumatra dodol durian is made from the pit's meal, whereas in other regions, for example in southern Java, it is made from the durian fruit flesh. For people keen on nutritional value: durian pits contain calcium, iron, protein, fat and carbohydrates.Near the village I live in south of Jakarta, the durian market is in full swing this rainy season and one can hear various languages from around the archipelago. But the most dominant of the durian bosses originate from Lampung.I was told an interesting story about the durian orchards there where elephants roam around looking for ripe durians fallen to the ground. The elephants are very choosy I heard and they never are mistaken in judging delectable durians with creamy and sweet yellowish fruit flesh, and with one step they crush it and enjoy the durian!Another story: in most rural areas the person who hears a durian fall from the tree and runs toward it is the one who may get it even though it was his neighbor's tree. That is why my durian trees are always empty because durians mostly fall in the deep of the night, and my family does not have a sharp ear for falling durians.
7. What is the title of a story written by Andrei Codrescu?
source:
urnal Article Excerpt
Andrei Codrescu's Mioritic Space
by Richard Collins
It's through that hole, I thought, that I am returning to my birthplace.
--Andrei Codrescu, The Hole in the Flag
In the Romanian folk poem Miorita, a shepherd boy is warned by his beloved ewe, Miorita, that his fellow shepherds plan to murder him and take his flock. Instead of resisting, he accepts his fate, asking only that Miorita go in search of his mother and tell her the story not of how he was betrayed, but of how he was married to the daughter of a powerful King. Thereafter, wherever the ewe wanders, she tells the story--not the true, unadorned facts of death and betrayal, but a beautiful fiction of a transcendent wedding.
This simple story, told and retold in countless versions, is Romania's most enduring cultural text.(1) The popularity of the Miorita can be attributed to the power and simplicity of its poetry, but even more to its mythic structure. The myth has been used to define the Romanian character by several authors, including Mircea Eliade, who has called the "cosmic marriage" of the Miorita an example of "cosmic Christianity"--part pagan, part Christian, but in any case wholly Romanian--"dominated by a nostalgia for nature sanctified by the presence of Jesus."(2) But the most controversial concept of Romanian identity to be derived from the poem is the concept of "mioritic space" defined by the Transylvanian poet and philosopher Lucian Blaga.
For Blaga, the path of Miorita's wandering delineates what he calls "mioritic space," a geography of the Romanian poetic imagination, or, as one recent historian of the Romanians describes it, "a philosophical attempt to explain the Romanian spirit through the Romanian landscape, which [Blaga] saw as the stylistic matrix of Romanian culture" (Georgescu 205). Blaga's critics have charged that this concept has become a liability, nationalistic, escapist and fatalistic. For political analysts, Blaga has been criticized as a romantic aesthete, self-absorbed and disengaged from political realities, while pursuing a mystical communion with nature.(3) In this view, mioritic space is an escapist dream of a romantic nationalist that encourages political apathy. For ethnographers, it is a romantic distortion of the Romanian peasantry's connection to the land that ignores political and historical reality. These critics suggest that it may even account for the tendency of the Romanian people to suffer oppression passively: "one 'cause' of the seeming passivity of the Romanian population may be the fatalistic Weltanschaaung implicit in the Miorita" (Kligman 356). But to Blaga, mioritic space was simply a way of locating the Romanian poetic spirit.
All these theories and criticisms may seem like much ado about a boy and his sheep,...
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source:
urnal Article Excerpt
Andrei Codrescu's Mioritic Space
by Richard Collins
It's through that hole, I thought, that I am returning to my birthplace.
--Andrei Codrescu, The Hole in the Flag
In the Romanian folk poem Miorita, a shepherd boy is warned by his beloved ewe, Miorita, that his fellow shepherds plan to murder him and take his flock. Instead of resisting, he accepts his fate, asking only that Miorita go in search of his mother and tell her the story not of how he was betrayed, but of how he was married to the daughter of a powerful King. Thereafter, wherever the ewe wanders, she tells the story--not the true, unadorned facts of death and betrayal, but a beautiful fiction of a transcendent wedding.
This simple story, told and retold in countless versions, is Romania's most enduring cultural text.(1) The popularity of the Miorita can be attributed to the power and simplicity of its poetry, but even more to its mythic structure. The myth has been used to define the Romanian character by several authors, including Mircea Eliade, who has called the "cosmic marriage" of the Miorita an example of "cosmic Christianity"--part pagan, part Christian, but in any case wholly Romanian--"dominated by a nostalgia for nature sanctified by the presence of Jesus."(2) But the most controversial concept of Romanian identity to be derived from the poem is the concept of "mioritic space" defined by the Transylvanian poet and philosopher Lucian Blaga.
For Blaga, the path of Miorita's wandering delineates what he calls "mioritic space," a geography of the Romanian poetic imagination, or, as one recent historian of the Romanians describes it, "a philosophical attempt to explain the Romanian spirit through the Romanian landscape, which [Blaga] saw as the stylistic matrix of Romanian culture" (Georgescu 205). Blaga's critics have charged that this concept has become a liability, nationalistic, escapist and fatalistic. For political analysts, Blaga has been criticized as a romantic aesthete, self-absorbed and disengaged from political realities, while pursuing a mystical communion with nature.(3) In this view, mioritic space is an escapist dream of a romantic nationalist that encourages political apathy. For ethnographers, it is a romantic distortion of the Romanian peasantry's connection to the land that ignores political and historical reality. These critics suggest that it may even account for the tendency of the Romanian people to suffer oppression passively: "one 'cause' of the seeming passivity of the Romanian population may be the fatalistic Weltanschaaung implicit in the Miorita" (Kligman 356). But to Blaga, mioritic space was simply a way of locating the Romanian poetic spirit.
All these theories and criticisms may seem like much ado about a boy and his sheep,...
End of free preview...
To continue reading this publication, you must have a Questia Subscription.
Try Us FREE Today! Click Here
Questia provides the world's largest online library of scholarly books and journal articles, with integrated footnote and bibliography tools, highlighting, note taking and book marking. With a Questia subscription, you'll have access to the full text of more than 67,000 books and 1.5 million articles.
Already a subscriber? Login:
Username
Password
Forgot Login/Password?
Sponsored Links
Free eNewsletter
Enter email address
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Customize
Customize your search:
[refine search]
Search in:
Books
Journals
Magazines
Newspapers
Encyclopedia
Research Topics
Type your specific word or phrase in the box above after the word and, then click Search.
Put exact phrases in quotation marks. Do not put single words in quotation marks.
6. How did the great Chicago fire start:
source:altavista.com
The Great Chicago Fire
by Horace White
October 14, 1871
Horace White, editor-in-chief of the Chicago Tribune, wrote this eyewitness account of the most destructive fire in American history in a letter to Murat Halstead, the editor of the Cincinnati Commercial. The Chicago fire raged for two days and nights, covering over 2,100 acres, causing 200 deaths, destroying 17,450 buildings and leaving 70,000 homeless (out of a population of 324,000).
As a slight acknowledgment of your thoughtful kindness in forwarding to us, without orders, a complete outfit of type and cases, when you heard that we had been burned out, I send you a hastily written sketch of what I saw at the great fire...
The history of the great fire in Chicago, which rises to the dignity of a national event, cannot be written until each witness, who makes any record whatever, shall have told what he saw. Nobody could see it all -- no more than one man could see the whole of the Battle of Gettysburg. It was too vast, too swift, too full of smoke, too full of danger, for anybody to see it all. My experience derives its only public importance from the fact that what I did, substantially, a hundred thousand others did or attempted -- that is, saved or sought to save their lives and enough of their wearing-apparel to face the sky in...
I had retired to rest, though not to sleep (Sunday, October 8) when the great bell struck the alarm, but fires had been so frequent of late, and had been so speedily extinguished, that I did not deem it worth while to get up and look at it, or even to count the strokes on the bell to learn where it was. The bell paused for fifteen minutes before giving the general alarm, which distinguishes a great fire from a small one. When it sounded the general alarm I rose and looked out. There was a great light to the southwest of my residence, but no greater than I had frequently seen in that quarter, where vast piles of pine lumber have been stored all the time I have lived in Chicago, some eighteen years. But it was not pine lumber that was burning this time. It was a row of wooden tenements in the South Division of the city, in which a few days ago were standing whole rows of the most costly buildings which it has entered into the hearts of architects to conceive. I watched the increasing light for a few moments. Red tongues of light began to shoot upward; my family were all aroused by this time, and I dressed myself for the purpose of going to the "Tribune" office to write something about the catastrophe. Once out upon the street, the magnitude of the fire was suddenly disclosed to me.
source:altavista.com
The Great Chicago Fire
by Horace White
October 14, 1871
Horace White, editor-in-chief of the Chicago Tribune, wrote this eyewitness account of the most destructive fire in American history in a letter to Murat Halstead, the editor of the Cincinnati Commercial. The Chicago fire raged for two days and nights, covering over 2,100 acres, causing 200 deaths, destroying 17,450 buildings and leaving 70,000 homeless (out of a population of 324,000).
As a slight acknowledgment of your thoughtful kindness in forwarding to us, without orders, a complete outfit of type and cases, when you heard that we had been burned out, I send you a hastily written sketch of what I saw at the great fire...
The history of the great fire in Chicago, which rises to the dignity of a national event, cannot be written until each witness, who makes any record whatever, shall have told what he saw. Nobody could see it all -- no more than one man could see the whole of the Battle of Gettysburg. It was too vast, too swift, too full of smoke, too full of danger, for anybody to see it all. My experience derives its only public importance from the fact that what I did, substantially, a hundred thousand others did or attempted -- that is, saved or sought to save their lives and enough of their wearing-apparel to face the sky in...
I had retired to rest, though not to sleep (Sunday, October 8) when the great bell struck the alarm, but fires had been so frequent of late, and had been so speedily extinguished, that I did not deem it worth while to get up and look at it, or even to count the strokes on the bell to learn where it was. The bell paused for fifteen minutes before giving the general alarm, which distinguishes a great fire from a small one. When it sounded the general alarm I rose and looked out. There was a great light to the southwest of my residence, but no greater than I had frequently seen in that quarter, where vast piles of pine lumber have been stored all the time I have lived in Chicago, some eighteen years. But it was not pine lumber that was burning this time. It was a row of wooden tenements in the South Division of the city, in which a few days ago were standing whole rows of the most costly buildings which it has entered into the hearts of architects to conceive. I watched the increasing light for a few moments. Red tongues of light began to shoot upward; my family were all aroused by this time, and I dressed myself for the purpose of going to the "Tribune" office to write something about the catastrophe. Once out upon the street, the magnitude of the fire was suddenly disclosed to me.
5. What is one medication used for the treatment of Asthma?
source: msn.com
Asthma medicines are commonly grouped into two categories: long-term (preventative) medications and quick-relief (rescue) medications. All people with asthma should have a quick-relief medication to treat sudden asthma symptoms immediately when they arise. People with persistent asthma should also use a preventative medication to help prevent symptoms from occurring in the first place. In this section you'll find a brief description of some of the types of asthma medications and their role in the treatment process
source: msn.com
Asthma medicines are commonly grouped into two categories: long-term (preventative) medications and quick-relief (rescue) medications. All people with asthma should have a quick-relief medication to treat sudden asthma symptoms immediately when they arise. People with persistent asthma should also use a preventative medication to help prevent symptoms from occurring in the first place. In this section you'll find a brief description of some of the types of asthma medications and their role in the treatment process
4. What is President's George Bush E-Mail Address?
source: Yahoo.com
E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov
5. What is one medication used for the treatment of Asthma?
sources:mns.com
Goals of asthma treatmentMany experts agree that with today's medications, living an active, healthy life with minimal symptoms really is a realistic goal. In fact, it's what you should aim for. With proper treatment, you can expect to:
Take part fully in everyday activities such as work and school, along with exercise and other physical activities.
Minimize such asthma symptoms as coughing, wheezing, tightness in chest, and shortness of breath.
Sleep through the night without waking up because of asthma symptoms.
Reduce the number of emergency room trips and unscheduled office visits (and the trauma associated with both).
Maintain normal or near-normal lung function, and help prevent permanent damage.
Experience few to no side effects from medicines.
source: Yahoo.com
E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov
5. What is one medication used for the treatment of Asthma?
sources:mns.com
Goals of asthma treatmentMany experts agree that with today's medications, living an active, healthy life with minimal symptoms really is a realistic goal. In fact, it's what you should aim for. With proper treatment, you can expect to:
Take part fully in everyday activities such as work and school, along with exercise and other physical activities.
Minimize such asthma symptoms as coughing, wheezing, tightness in chest, and shortness of breath.
Sleep through the night without waking up because of asthma symptoms.
Reduce the number of emergency room trips and unscheduled office visits (and the trauma associated with both).
Maintain normal or near-normal lung function, and help prevent permanent damage.
Experience few to no side effects from medicines.
3. What is the weather forcast today for Houston, Texas?
source:yahoo.com
Faster local weather, storm alerts & traffic reports!
Temperature always on your desktop
Instant flashing storm alerts
Accurate 3 & 10 day forecasts
NEW: Live local traffic reports
- Desktop Weather products do not contain "spyware".- Windows 2000, XP or later operating system required.- MAC version not currently available.
source:yahoo.com
Faster local weather, storm alerts & traffic reports!
Temperature always on your desktop
Instant flashing storm alerts
Accurate 3 & 10 day forecasts
NEW: Live local traffic reports
- Desktop Weather products do not contain "spyware".- Windows 2000, XP or later operating system required.- MAC version not currently available.
1. Name two possible side effects of Prozac -- or any other medication?
source: ASK.COM
side effect:Rare prozac side effects may include:Antisocial behavior, blood in urine, bloody diarrhea, bone disease, breast enlargement, cataracts, colitis, coma, deafness, decreased reflexes, dehydration, double vision, drooping of eyelids, duodenal ulcer, enlarged abdomen, enlargement of liver, enlargement or increased activity of thyroid gland, excess growth of coarse hair on face, chest, etc., excess uterine or vaginal bleeding, extreme muscle tension, eye bleeding, female milk production, fluid accumulation and swelling in the head, fluid buildup in larynx and lungs, gallstones, glaucoma, gout, heart attack, hepatitis, high blood sugar, hysteria, inability to control bowel movements, increased salivation, inflammation of eyes and eyelids, inflammation of fallopian tubes, inflammation of testes, inflammation of the gallbladder, inflammation of the small intestine, inflammation of tissue below skin, kidney disorders, lung inflammation, menstrual disorders, miscarriage, mouth sores, muscle inflammation or bleeding, muscle spasms, painful sexual intercourse for women, psoriasis, rashes, reddish or purplish spots on the skin, reduction of body temperature, rheumatoid arthritis, seborrhea, shingles, skin discoloration, skin inflammation and disorders, slowing of heart rate, slurred speech, spitting blood, stomach ulcer, stupor, suicidal thoughts, taste loss, temporary cessation of breathing, tingling sensation around the mouth, tongue discoloration and swelling, urinary tract disorders, vomiting blood, yellow eyes and skin
side effect:
More common prozac side effects may include:Abnormal dreams, abnormal thinking, agitation, allergic reaction, anxiety, bronchitis, chest pain, chills, cough, diarrhea, dizziness, drowsiness and fatigue, dry mouth, flu symptoms, frequent urination, hay fever, headache, inability to fall or stay asleep, increased appetite, indigestion, itching, joint pain, lack or loss of appetite, light-headedness, limb pain, muscle pain, nausea, nervousness, sinus inflammation, sore throat, stomach/intestinal disorder, sweating, tremors, weakness, weight loss, yawning
source: ASK.COM
side effect:Rare prozac side effects may include:Antisocial behavior, blood in urine, bloody diarrhea, bone disease, breast enlargement, cataracts, colitis, coma, deafness, decreased reflexes, dehydration, double vision, drooping of eyelids, duodenal ulcer, enlarged abdomen, enlargement of liver, enlargement or increased activity of thyroid gland, excess growth of coarse hair on face, chest, etc., excess uterine or vaginal bleeding, extreme muscle tension, eye bleeding, female milk production, fluid accumulation and swelling in the head, fluid buildup in larynx and lungs, gallstones, glaucoma, gout, heart attack, hepatitis, high blood sugar, hysteria, inability to control bowel movements, increased salivation, inflammation of eyes and eyelids, inflammation of fallopian tubes, inflammation of testes, inflammation of the gallbladder, inflammation of the small intestine, inflammation of tissue below skin, kidney disorders, lung inflammation, menstrual disorders, miscarriage, mouth sores, muscle inflammation or bleeding, muscle spasms, painful sexual intercourse for women, psoriasis, rashes, reddish or purplish spots on the skin, reduction of body temperature, rheumatoid arthritis, seborrhea, shingles, skin discoloration, skin inflammation and disorders, slowing of heart rate, slurred speech, spitting blood, stomach ulcer, stupor, suicidal thoughts, taste loss, temporary cessation of breathing, tingling sensation around the mouth, tongue discoloration and swelling, urinary tract disorders, vomiting blood, yellow eyes and skin
side effect:
More common prozac side effects may include:Abnormal dreams, abnormal thinking, agitation, allergic reaction, anxiety, bronchitis, chest pain, chills, cough, diarrhea, dizziness, drowsiness and fatigue, dry mouth, flu symptoms, frequent urination, hay fever, headache, inability to fall or stay asleep, increased appetite, indigestion, itching, joint pain, lack or loss of appetite, light-headedness, limb pain, muscle pain, nausea, nervousness, sinus inflammation, sore throat, stomach/intestinal disorder, sweating, tremors, weakness, weight loss, yawning
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
history of altavista,excite,google,hotbot,go,lycos,yahoo
ALTAVISTA:
May 2000. AltaVista launched a new "high-end" search engine called 'Raging Search' utilising the same technology and web index as AltaVista's primary engine. It will rely on selling links to businesses rather than banner advertisements.
February 2000. Introduced new multimedia features, with separate search centers for MP3/audio, images and video search, giving access to an index of over 30 million documents, including over 1 million MP3 files.
End-1999. AltaVista replaced by Inktomi in powering MSN Search. AltaVista had taken over from Inktomi in this same role earlier in 1999. MSN Search stills displays a link to AltaVista search at the bottom of its results' pages.
October 1999. Launched AltaVista Shopping.com.Switched to Open Directory and dropped LookApril 1999. Implemented its own version of the Open Directory.
February 1999. Began serving results directly from Direct Hit. Previously, Direct Hit results were offered as an option. Direct Hit ranks pages by the number of users who follow links to those pages.
January 1999. Truncation now available.
November 1998. Launched free e-mail and homepage services in partnership with Lycos’ WhoWhere division.
October. 1998. Agreement by Lycos to purchase Wired Digital (owner of HotBot).
September 1998. Agreement with Netscape to be one of its ‘Distinguished ‘ providers.
September 1998. Personal Page Limit, truncation and language limit introduced.
August 1998. Partnership with ‘Direct Hit’.
May 1998. Redesigned interface, introducing branded version of LookSmart, and placing directory access to the right of the main search options.
May 1996. HotBot launched by Wired Ventures.
October 1992. Wired Ventures founded.smart directory.Agreement with RemarQ to provide Usenet search results, replacing its own Usenet directory. Introduced results from its branded version of Ask Jeeves (database of over 7 million questions ) into its results display. Also introduced Photo search and a filtering option.
October 25, 1999. Launch of redesigned site, incorporating new logo and site features including:- new directory information source (Open Directory); news database; results clustering; new relevancy ranking algorithm; company fact sheets where available.
July 1999. Majority share (82%) in AltaVista purchased by Internet investment company, CMGI, INC. for $2.3b in stock. Compaq retains an 18% share.Introduced My AltaVista personalization feature, and AltaVista Finance, which offers stock quotes and information, market information, news from CBS MarketWatch, Reuters, PR Newswire, etc.Dropped its paid-for Relevant Paid Placement option. Dropped its Refine feature.
15 April 1999. Announced addition of AltaVista Relevant Paid Placement - returns two paid placements above search index results which are marked as Paid Placements. Keywords are auctioned every two weeks.
March 1999. German version of site launched. Based in Munich.
February 1999. Purchased Zip2.Corp for $200m. Also took a 10% stake in online video and image search company Virage, Inc. Integrated Virage's search tools into AltaVista for video and image searching. AltaVista set up as a separate, publicly traded company.Partnership with MSN replacing Inktomi as MSN's search service. To begin powering MSN in the third quarter of 1999.
October 1998. Natural language searching introduced.Branded version of the Ask Jeeves answer service (Ask AltaVista) introduced and accessed via the heading 'AltaVista knows the answers to these questions'. Ask Jeeves editorial team have prepared some 7 million questions which link to sites providing the answers.Also introduced photo search service, and Family Filter option. Announced that Microsoft's Hotmail was to take over from iName as AltaVista's free e-mail service.
Autumn 1998. Automatic phrase searching introduced. Is based on a collection of several million phrases.AltaVista Discovery replaced AltaVista Personal Search.
June 1998. Digital acquired by Compaq in a process which began in January, thereby also acquiring AltaVista search engine. Total cost estimated to be nearly $9m.
June 1998. Content channels introduced in, coinciding with redesigned interface.
Formed an alliance early in 1998 with Looksmart Directory service (founded October 1996 and listing over 400,000 sites categorized into over 16,000 subjects) - co-branded version of LookSmart directory called AltaVista Categories accessed via Explore by Subject (launched January 1998).
December 1997. People Search and Business Search launched.
December 1st, 1997. First mirror site (www.altavista.telia.com) launched.
July 1997. Search by Language introduced.
June 1996. Partnered with Yahoo!. Link severed July 1998 (will continue to be listed at the bottom of Yahoo!’s results’ pages).
Site made public December 15th, 1995.
AltaVista harvesting software 'Scooter' first 'crawled' on July 4th, 1995.
Project started Spring 1995 by Louis Monier
EXCITE:
November 1999. Added LookSmart content (with over 1.2m records) to its directory.
August 1999. Announced new search engine to create 250m page index. Introduced LookSmart-powered directory listings.
June 1999. Partnership to produce Netscape Netcenter ending.
May 1999. Merger with @Home Network completed. New company - Excite@Home.
January 1999. Announcement of merger with @Home Network, a cable TV company, in a $6.7b stock swap.
August 1998. New communities service saw bets launch. Made available to all web users in September.
Summer 1998. Reorganized results page.
October 1997. Added new ‘Business and Investing Channel’ in conjunction with Intuit (channel also available from within Quicken website and WebCrawler).
November 1996. Acquired WebCrawler.
July 1996. Purchased Magellan.
March 1996. Acquired new look with the introduction of Excite 2.0. Version 3.0 appeared in 1997.
October 1995. Excite search service launched.
1994. Excite Inc. founded.
Late-1993. Originally called Architext, developed by five Stanford university graduates (the second engine so developed by Stanford students).
GOOGLE:
Early history
Google began as a research project in January 1996 by Larry Page, a Ph.D. student at Stanford.[1] Larry was soon joined in his research project by Sergey Brin a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student and close friend. Larry Page hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).[2] It was originally nicknamed, "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.[3] A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.[4]
Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The name Google is a play on the term googol, which is the large number 10100. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.
In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to a number of other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. Google received a big break in 1999 when one of the most popular search engines, AltaVista, relaunched itself as a user web entry point, or portal. This unexpected change alienated part of AltaVista's user base. Google quickly outgrew its University Avenue home. The company settled into a complex of buildings, called the Googleplex in Mountain View in 1999. Silicon Graphics leased these buildings to Google.
The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users. They were attracted to its simple, uncluttered, clean design — a competitive advantage to attract users who did not wish to enter searches on web pages filled with visual distractions. This appearance, while imitating the early AltaVista, had behind it Google's unique search capabilities. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to produce enhanced search results for the user. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of "hits" users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. It also only cost a very small amount per click to the websites that advertised this way. This model of selling keyword advertising was originally pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture, then Yahoo! Search Marketing).[5] While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.
U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.
Google's declared code of conduct is, "Don't Be Evil", a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka "red herring" or "S-1") for their IPO, noting, "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."
The Google site often includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and anniversaries.[6] Known as "Google Doodles", most have been drawn by Google's international webmaster, Dennis Hwang.[7] Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but the font design may also mimic a fictional or humorous language such as Star Trek Klingon and Leet.[8] The logo is also notorious among web users for April Fool's Day tie-ins and jokes about the company.
HOTBOT:
April 1999. Implemented its own version of the Open Directory.
February 1999. Began serving results directly from Direct Hit. Previously, Direct Hit results were offered as an option. Direct Hit ranks pages by the number of users who follow links to those pages.
January 1999. Truncation now available.
November 1998. Launched free e-mail and homepage services in partnership with Lycos’ WhoWhere division.
October. 1998. Agreement by Lycos to purchase Wired Digital (owner of HotBot).
September 1998. Agreement with Netscape to be one of its ‘Distinguished ‘ providers.
September 1998. Personal Page Limit, truncation and language limit introduced.
August 1998. Partnership with ‘Direct Hit’.
May 1998. Redesigned interface, introducing branded version of LookSmart, and placing directory access to the right of the main search options.
May 1996. HotBot launched by Wired Ventures.
October 1992. Wired Ventures founded.
GO:
The origins of Go are shrouded in the mists of ancient Asian history, but the game is thought to have originated, at least 4,000 - 5,000 years ago.
Some say that the board, with ten points out from the center in all directions, may have originally served as a forerunner to the abacus. Others think it may have been a fortune-telling device, with black and white stones representing yin and yang. A famous legend holds that an emperor created the game to improve the intelligence of his dull-witted son.
By the time of Confucius (around 600 B.C.), wei-chi (a Chinese name for the game)) had already become one of the "Four Accomplishments" (along with brush painting, poetry and music) that must be mastered by the Chinese gentleman.
Wei-chi entered Korean and Japanese culture through trade and other contact between countries in the first millennium A.D. In ancient Chinese art, noblemen (and noblewomen!) can occasionally be found playing Go (wei-ch'i or weiqi in Chinese
Go in America
The earliest Go players in North America were probably Chinese workers toiling on the transcontinental railroad in the mid-1800s, but if so the game did not attract notice outside the Chinese-American community.
Go first came to the attention of Westerners in the early 1900s when a group of German mathematicians and game players stumbled upon it, including Otto Korschelt and Edward Lasker, a cousin of the legendary chess player Emanuel Lasker and himself a well-known master. With Lee Hartmann (editor of Harper's magazine) and a few others, Lasker formed the American Go Association in New York in 1937.
Today, with about 2000 members, the American Go Association remains a small, tight-knit national community that generally greets a new player as a long-lost member of the family. With over 100 chapters, we may have one near you. If not, write or e-mail for help on how to start your own club! If you'd like to join the AGA, send us an application today.
LYCOS:
January 2000. Lycos Pro began displaying web search results from the FAST database.
November 1999. Launched a new multimedia search in partnership with FAST , an Internet search technology provider. Also launched a co-branded (with Slate.com) news site. Searches on Lycos site will lead to the new sites content.
September 1999. Signed agreement to acquire Quote.com investment information site for c.$78 million. Deal to be finalized by the end of the year.Announced the Lycos 50tm, which indicates what searchers are looking for on the web. Lists the 50 most popular search terms, emerging trends and topics.Launched 'Lycos Zone', an educational web site for kids aged 3 to 12. Includes free access to the Lycos SearchGuard filtering technology.Released search tool 'Lycos SeeMore', a free download allowing you to activate a search on a word on a web page by right-clicking on it. Supported by IE4 or later.
June 1999. Launched its 'Invisible' web service, a joint project with Intelliseek to provide directory of over 7400 databases, many not previously available on the web.
April 1999. Announced it was joining the 'Open Directory Project' which is run by Netscape and includes sites reviewed by users on a voluntary basis.
March 1999. Agreement to create search tool for USATODAY.com news site to search current and archival information at its site.
February 1999. Announced acquisition by USA Networks for $18 billion giving them a 61.5% share in Lycos. To become known as USA/Lycos Interactive Networks.
Acquired Wired Digital (owner of HotBot) for $83 million in stock towards the end of 1998.
August 1998. Acquired WhoWhere Inc. and its directory services, plus Mail City e-mail service for $133 million in stock.
Summer 1998. Language search introduced. Also Redesigned search results page.
April 1998. Acquired WiseWire Corp. WiseWire technology now powers Lycos Web Guide.
February 1998. Acquired Tripod Inc. Proposed acquisition of Wired Digital by Lycos.
June 23, 1997. Lycos Pro launched, introducing new search algorithm.
April 1996. Launched on the stock exchange.
February 1996. ‘Sites by Subject’ (formerly A2Z directory) begun.
June 1995. Company founded. Lycos Inc. is joint venture of CMG @ Ventures and Carnegie Mellon University.
May 1994. Search engine launched. Developed by Dr. Michael Mauldin of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Later sold to AOL.
YAHOO:
Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born.
The Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.
Jerry and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.
Due to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo! was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million.
Realizing their new company had the potential to grow quickly, Jerry and David began to shop for a management team. They hired Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. They secured a second round of funding in Fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.
Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management; and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States.
May 2000. AltaVista launched a new "high-end" search engine called 'Raging Search' utilising the same technology and web index as AltaVista's primary engine. It will rely on selling links to businesses rather than banner advertisements.
February 2000. Introduced new multimedia features, with separate search centers for MP3/audio, images and video search, giving access to an index of over 30 million documents, including over 1 million MP3 files.
End-1999. AltaVista replaced by Inktomi in powering MSN Search. AltaVista had taken over from Inktomi in this same role earlier in 1999. MSN Search stills displays a link to AltaVista search at the bottom of its results' pages.
October 1999. Launched AltaVista Shopping.com.Switched to Open Directory and dropped LookApril 1999. Implemented its own version of the Open Directory.
February 1999. Began serving results directly from Direct Hit. Previously, Direct Hit results were offered as an option. Direct Hit ranks pages by the number of users who follow links to those pages.
January 1999. Truncation now available.
November 1998. Launched free e-mail and homepage services in partnership with Lycos’ WhoWhere division.
October. 1998. Agreement by Lycos to purchase Wired Digital (owner of HotBot).
September 1998. Agreement with Netscape to be one of its ‘Distinguished ‘ providers.
September 1998. Personal Page Limit, truncation and language limit introduced.
August 1998. Partnership with ‘Direct Hit’.
May 1998. Redesigned interface, introducing branded version of LookSmart, and placing directory access to the right of the main search options.
May 1996. HotBot launched by Wired Ventures.
October 1992. Wired Ventures founded.smart directory.Agreement with RemarQ to provide Usenet search results, replacing its own Usenet directory. Introduced results from its branded version of Ask Jeeves (database of over 7 million questions ) into its results display. Also introduced Photo search and a filtering option.
October 25, 1999. Launch of redesigned site, incorporating new logo and site features including:- new directory information source (Open Directory); news database; results clustering; new relevancy ranking algorithm; company fact sheets where available.
July 1999. Majority share (82%) in AltaVista purchased by Internet investment company, CMGI, INC. for $2.3b in stock. Compaq retains an 18% share.Introduced My AltaVista personalization feature, and AltaVista Finance, which offers stock quotes and information, market information, news from CBS MarketWatch, Reuters, PR Newswire, etc.Dropped its paid-for Relevant Paid Placement option. Dropped its Refine feature.
15 April 1999. Announced addition of AltaVista Relevant Paid Placement - returns two paid placements above search index results which are marked as Paid Placements. Keywords are auctioned every two weeks.
March 1999. German version of site launched. Based in Munich.
February 1999. Purchased Zip2.Corp for $200m. Also took a 10% stake in online video and image search company Virage, Inc. Integrated Virage's search tools into AltaVista for video and image searching. AltaVista set up as a separate, publicly traded company.Partnership with MSN replacing Inktomi as MSN's search service. To begin powering MSN in the third quarter of 1999.
October 1998. Natural language searching introduced.Branded version of the Ask Jeeves answer service (Ask AltaVista) introduced and accessed via the heading 'AltaVista knows the answers to these questions'. Ask Jeeves editorial team have prepared some 7 million questions which link to sites providing the answers.Also introduced photo search service, and Family Filter option. Announced that Microsoft's Hotmail was to take over from iName as AltaVista's free e-mail service.
Autumn 1998. Automatic phrase searching introduced. Is based on a collection of several million phrases.AltaVista Discovery replaced AltaVista Personal Search.
June 1998. Digital acquired by Compaq in a process which began in January, thereby also acquiring AltaVista search engine. Total cost estimated to be nearly $9m.
June 1998. Content channels introduced in, coinciding with redesigned interface.
Formed an alliance early in 1998 with Looksmart Directory service (founded October 1996 and listing over 400,000 sites categorized into over 16,000 subjects) - co-branded version of LookSmart directory called AltaVista Categories accessed via Explore by Subject (launched January 1998).
December 1997. People Search and Business Search launched.
December 1st, 1997. First mirror site (www.altavista.telia.com) launched.
July 1997. Search by Language introduced.
June 1996. Partnered with Yahoo!. Link severed July 1998 (will continue to be listed at the bottom of Yahoo!’s results’ pages).
Site made public December 15th, 1995.
AltaVista harvesting software 'Scooter' first 'crawled' on July 4th, 1995.
Project started Spring 1995 by Louis Monier
EXCITE:
November 1999. Added LookSmart content (with over 1.2m records) to its directory.
August 1999. Announced new search engine to create 250m page index. Introduced LookSmart-powered directory listings.
June 1999. Partnership to produce Netscape Netcenter ending.
May 1999. Merger with @Home Network completed. New company - Excite@Home.
January 1999. Announcement of merger with @Home Network, a cable TV company, in a $6.7b stock swap.
August 1998. New communities service saw bets launch. Made available to all web users in September.
Summer 1998. Reorganized results page.
October 1997. Added new ‘Business and Investing Channel’ in conjunction with Intuit (channel also available from within Quicken website and WebCrawler).
November 1996. Acquired WebCrawler.
July 1996. Purchased Magellan.
March 1996. Acquired new look with the introduction of Excite 2.0. Version 3.0 appeared in 1997.
October 1995. Excite search service launched.
1994. Excite Inc. founded.
Late-1993. Originally called Architext, developed by five Stanford university graduates (the second engine so developed by Stanford students).
GOOGLE:
Early history
Google began as a research project in January 1996 by Larry Page, a Ph.D. student at Stanford.[1] Larry was soon joined in his research project by Sergey Brin a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student and close friend. Larry Page hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).[2] It was originally nicknamed, "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.[3] A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.[4]
Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The name Google is a play on the term googol, which is the large number 10100. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.
In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to a number of other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. Google received a big break in 1999 when one of the most popular search engines, AltaVista, relaunched itself as a user web entry point, or portal. This unexpected change alienated part of AltaVista's user base. Google quickly outgrew its University Avenue home. The company settled into a complex of buildings, called the Googleplex in Mountain View in 1999. Silicon Graphics leased these buildings to Google.
The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users. They were attracted to its simple, uncluttered, clean design — a competitive advantage to attract users who did not wish to enter searches on web pages filled with visual distractions. This appearance, while imitating the early AltaVista, had behind it Google's unique search capabilities. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to produce enhanced search results for the user. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of "hits" users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. It also only cost a very small amount per click to the websites that advertised this way. This model of selling keyword advertising was originally pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture, then Yahoo! Search Marketing).[5] While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.
U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.
Google's declared code of conduct is, "Don't Be Evil", a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka "red herring" or "S-1") for their IPO, noting, "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."
The Google site often includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and anniversaries.[6] Known as "Google Doodles", most have been drawn by Google's international webmaster, Dennis Hwang.[7] Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but the font design may also mimic a fictional or humorous language such as Star Trek Klingon and Leet.[8] The logo is also notorious among web users for April Fool's Day tie-ins and jokes about the company.
HOTBOT:
April 1999. Implemented its own version of the Open Directory.
February 1999. Began serving results directly from Direct Hit. Previously, Direct Hit results were offered as an option. Direct Hit ranks pages by the number of users who follow links to those pages.
January 1999. Truncation now available.
November 1998. Launched free e-mail and homepage services in partnership with Lycos’ WhoWhere division.
October. 1998. Agreement by Lycos to purchase Wired Digital (owner of HotBot).
September 1998. Agreement with Netscape to be one of its ‘Distinguished ‘ providers.
September 1998. Personal Page Limit, truncation and language limit introduced.
August 1998. Partnership with ‘Direct Hit’.
May 1998. Redesigned interface, introducing branded version of LookSmart, and placing directory access to the right of the main search options.
May 1996. HotBot launched by Wired Ventures.
October 1992. Wired Ventures founded.
GO:
The origins of Go are shrouded in the mists of ancient Asian history, but the game is thought to have originated, at least 4,000 - 5,000 years ago.
Some say that the board, with ten points out from the center in all directions, may have originally served as a forerunner to the abacus. Others think it may have been a fortune-telling device, with black and white stones representing yin and yang. A famous legend holds that an emperor created the game to improve the intelligence of his dull-witted son.
By the time of Confucius (around 600 B.C.), wei-chi (a Chinese name for the game)) had already become one of the "Four Accomplishments" (along with brush painting, poetry and music) that must be mastered by the Chinese gentleman.
Wei-chi entered Korean and Japanese culture through trade and other contact between countries in the first millennium A.D. In ancient Chinese art, noblemen (and noblewomen!) can occasionally be found playing Go (wei-ch'i or weiqi in Chinese
Go in America
The earliest Go players in North America were probably Chinese workers toiling on the transcontinental railroad in the mid-1800s, but if so the game did not attract notice outside the Chinese-American community.
Go first came to the attention of Westerners in the early 1900s when a group of German mathematicians and game players stumbled upon it, including Otto Korschelt and Edward Lasker, a cousin of the legendary chess player Emanuel Lasker and himself a well-known master. With Lee Hartmann (editor of Harper's magazine) and a few others, Lasker formed the American Go Association in New York in 1937.
Today, with about 2000 members, the American Go Association remains a small, tight-knit national community that generally greets a new player as a long-lost member of the family. With over 100 chapters, we may have one near you. If not, write or e-mail for help on how to start your own club! If you'd like to join the AGA, send us an application today.
LYCOS:
January 2000. Lycos Pro began displaying web search results from the FAST database.
November 1999. Launched a new multimedia search in partnership with FAST , an Internet search technology provider. Also launched a co-branded (with Slate.com) news site. Searches on Lycos site will lead to the new sites content.
September 1999. Signed agreement to acquire Quote.com investment information site for c.$78 million. Deal to be finalized by the end of the year.Announced the Lycos 50tm, which indicates what searchers are looking for on the web. Lists the 50 most popular search terms, emerging trends and topics.Launched 'Lycos Zone', an educational web site for kids aged 3 to 12. Includes free access to the Lycos SearchGuard filtering technology.Released search tool 'Lycos SeeMore', a free download allowing you to activate a search on a word on a web page by right-clicking on it. Supported by IE4 or later.
June 1999. Launched its 'Invisible' web service, a joint project with Intelliseek to provide directory of over 7400 databases, many not previously available on the web.
April 1999. Announced it was joining the 'Open Directory Project' which is run by Netscape and includes sites reviewed by users on a voluntary basis.
March 1999. Agreement to create search tool for USATODAY.com news site to search current and archival information at its site.
February 1999. Announced acquisition by USA Networks for $18 billion giving them a 61.5% share in Lycos. To become known as USA/Lycos Interactive Networks.
Acquired Wired Digital (owner of HotBot) for $83 million in stock towards the end of 1998.
August 1998. Acquired WhoWhere Inc. and its directory services, plus Mail City e-mail service for $133 million in stock.
Summer 1998. Language search introduced. Also Redesigned search results page.
April 1998. Acquired WiseWire Corp. WiseWire technology now powers Lycos Web Guide.
February 1998. Acquired Tripod Inc. Proposed acquisition of Wired Digital by Lycos.
June 23, 1997. Lycos Pro launched, introducing new search algorithm.
April 1996. Launched on the stock exchange.
February 1996. ‘Sites by Subject’ (formerly A2Z directory) begun.
June 1995. Company founded. Lycos Inc. is joint venture of CMG @ Ventures and Carnegie Mellon University.
May 1994. Search engine launched. Developed by Dr. Michael Mauldin of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Later sold to AOL.
YAHOO:
Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born.
The Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.
Jerry and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.
Due to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo! was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million.
Realizing their new company had the potential to grow quickly, Jerry and David began to shop for a management team. They hired Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. They secured a second round of funding in Fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.
Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management; and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States.
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