Tech Links – Feb 16, 2007

Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures

This is a dictionary of algorithms, algorithmic techniques, data structures, archetypal problems, and related definitions. Algorithms include common functions, such as Ackermann’s function. Problems include traveling salesman and Byzantine generals. Some entries have links to implementations and more information. Index pages list entries by area and by type. The two-level index has a total download 1/20 as big as this page.

This is an invaluable resource to any one programming. I am glad that there is one place we can go to, to get this information.

How Social Sites Reveal What Your Audience Likes

Understanding your audience is the key to success in any business – including blogging. Lately the Read/WriteWeb authors have been discussing what it is that keeps readers coming back here. Our recent poll indicated that most of you come back to this blog for Analysis and Reviews.

I found the next few links from this blog. It is fascinating to watch what people read on your blog too. I wish the blogging packages do a better job of providing this info. You can do some Google Analytics magic to do this yourself.

The Top-100 Alternative Searches

Ask anyone which search engine they use to find information on the Internet and they will almost certainly reply: “Google.” Look a little further, and market research shows that people actually use four main search engines for 99.99% of their searches: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (in that order). But in my travels as a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), I have discovered that in that .01% lies a vast multitude of the most innovative and creative search engines you have never seen. So many, in fact, that I have had to limit my list of the very best ones to a mere 100

Silicon Valley Meets American Idol

Yes, something like an “American Idol” for the technorati may be coming to Silicon Valley.
Venture capital firms are considering contests that offer competing engineers and entrepreneurs multimillion-dollar prize purses if they come up with innovative technologies in various industries.

I am a fan of both American Idol and American Inventor. This one has great promise. There is something invigorating about watching creative minds at work. Even the ones that do not win, inspire me.

From Read/Write Web on Search 2.0

You may feel relatively satisfied with the current search offerings of Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. Search today is undoubtedly much better than what it was in the second half of the 1990’s. But Internet search is still in its infancy and there’s much room for improvement. Moreover, the super high valuation of Google on NASDAQ pushes investors and researchers to find better search solutions – to be The Next Big Thing. And these wannabes are not only working on discovering better indexing techniques, they’re exploring new horizons like vertical engines, meaning-based search, intent-driven search, new clustering methods, and much more. In this post, we look into latest trends in the search industry.

We have positioned the latest search trends into 3 main categories:

  • UI Enhancements
  • Technology Enhancements
  • Approach Enhancements (Vertical Engines)

In MashupCamp2, I did a session on Next Generation Search Mashups. It is somewhat similar to this. There I divided the search mashups under a different categories:

  • Pre-processing (A set of tools that take searches of different types and convert them to the syntax search engines use)
  • Post-processing (A set of tools that take the search results and massage them to provide different outputs)
  • Extensions (Extensions to search engines themselves to improve search semantics)