Friday, July 13, 2007

PayPal Mobile Checkout Lets You Pay While On the Go

paypal.jpgAs a frequent traveler, and eBay addict I've been faced with a small problem. I can watch the auctions for those rare vintage maps, international DVDs and other "junk" that fills my apartment from my mobile phone. I can even place bids for the items. But paying for the stuff was a pain. And many sellers have strange, and even demanding rules on how quickly they want to be paid. If I'm home I'm using checking out 30 seconds after an item ends, but when I'm on the road I'm panicking to get to a PC.

But the auction gods have answered my prayers! PayPal announced this week the launch of Mobile Checkout, a service that will allow users in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada to buy items securely using the mobile Web! PayPal Mobile works like the traditional payment and you can use a credit card or direct transfer from a bank to pay for auctions or other items. I suppose you could even pay back that $10 you owe your buddy, as you now have no excuse for not having the cash in your wallet!

[Via GPShopper News]

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Upload Large Files to YouSendIt from Desktop, Can Resume Uploads

Sharing large files on the internet just got more convenient. Popular file sharing service YouSendIt now comes with a desktop uploader software that will allow you to upload large files from the desktop without using the web browser.

upload yousendit files

What's exciting about the new YouSendIt software is that it can resume uploads - you know the frustration when you are uploading a 100 MB file from the web uploader when suddenly the internet connection breaks or the browser crashes for some reason.

With the new YouSendIt uploader, that problem may be a thing of the past as it will resume file upload from the exact point where it broke earlier. Once the file is successfully uploaded and sent to the intended recipients, you get an email confirmation automatically.

For free YouSendIt accounts, the download link will expire in 7 days and the file will be available for 100 number of downloads. The max file size that you can upload is 100 MB while the limit is 2 GB for paid accounts.

YouSendit earlier released an Outlook add-in to help you email large file attachments directly from Microsoft Outlook.

YouSendIt Standalone App [Windows only]

Olympus developing completely wireless head-mounted displays

Olympus is planning on taking head-mounted displays out of the "giant nerd" category and into the "scary dystopian future" realm with a new project to develop a completely wireless system that can also double as eyeglasses. While most other HMDs we've seen feature a cable snaking across your body to an external power pack, Olympus has expanded on its previous efforts (pictured) and is already prototyping a 3-ounce unit with an internal power source powering two side-mounted 110,000-pixel displays that project email onto the lenses. Olympus is optimistically hoping to bring the tech to market in 2012 -- looks like wannabe Terminators are going to be lugging those battery packs around for a while yet.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Inflatable dummy company sues rival for patent violations

Cory Doctorow: A company that patented the idea of using inflatable dummies for crowd-scenes in movies is suing another company that does the same thing. The defendant has a successful business, the plaintiff does not, so he is seeking to drive the successful competitor out of business.

It's such a misery that the US Patent and Trademark office continues to abdicate its responsibility to the American public, granting virtually every patent application filed before it. Using dummies for crowd scenes fails the "non-obvious" test that every patent is supposed to be subjected to, in spades.

Every entrepreneur I know is pressured to file "defensive patents" for the most basic, simple things, but no one can tell me how these are supposed to work. If the second guy also had a patent on inflatable dummies, he'd still have to bankrupt himself in court proving his patent was good and the other guy's was bad. The plaintiff doesn't care -- he's going out of business as it is, he can lose it in court or in the market. And once he goes under, his patents will be bought by patent trolls, companies that make nothing but lawsuits, and they will sue any successful inflatable dummy business for everything they have.

The only defense against patent abuse is to reform the patent office. For starters, let's change the way they're funded: right now, they pay their bills with the fees they get from patent applications. That means that the more patents there are, the more money they make. Is it any wonder that they've crapflooded the country with bogus government monopolies over the simplest things in the world?

Now the two startups in the market are squaring off in court. Crowd in a Box (crowdinabox.com), which holds patents issued in 2004 and 2005 for the use of inflatable humanoid figures in background scenes, is suing Inflatable Crowd for patent violation.

Joe Biggins, owner of Inflatable Crowd (inflatablecrowd.com), declines to comment on the suit but says he came up with the dummy idea independently in 2002, while working on the crew of Seabiscuit. Since then Biggins, 35, has become the market leader, placing his inflatables in more than 50 feature films, while Crowd in a Box has five (plus five TV shows and 22 commercials).

"He seems to have better connections in Hollywood than we do," admits Crowd in a Box co-owner Mark Woolpert, 58, who anticipates a court date in November. Top of page

Link (Thanks, Ross!)

California to get world's largest solar farm

Filed under:

Cleantech America, a San Francisco based developer, has launched a project to build the world's largest solar farm, giving this Spanish solar tower a run for its money, as well as insulting the work of countless Tesco engineers and their puny, insignificant solar roof. When completed in 2011, the 80-megawatt spread of solar panels will cover roughly 640 acres and be 17 times the size of the largest US solar farm in existence. The project, which will generate enough power for nearly 21,000 homes, will be sold to the Kings River Conservation District, a public agency that purchases power for 12 cities and two counties in California's Central Valley. The company hopes that a solar farm of this size will be an industry-wide tipping point for energy providers, and will drive the cost of solar energy downward. Meanwhile, Tesco and Spain will be plotting their sublime revenge.

Read

Casio Exilim EX-S880, EX-Z77 boast YouTube capture mode

Look out YouTube fanatics, your next digital camera has arrived. Casio's latest pair of Exilims don't deviate much from their predecessors, but a recent agreement with YouTube has enabled the duo to boast a "unique YouTube capture mode," as well as bundle in software "to provide ideal settings for recording, storing, and uploading video." The 8.1-megapixel Exilim Card EX-S880 ($299.99) touts a 2.8-inch monitor, SD / SDHC support, and comes in black or red motifs, while the 7.2-megapixel Exilim Zoom EX-Z77 ($229.99) trims down with a 2.6-inch LCD but arrives in four varying colors. Both cameras' YouTube capture mode records in 640 x 480 H.264, and provides "two step" access to get your clips from the flash card to the web. Look for the video-savvy pair to land in retail outlets next month.

SoonR Talk workaround enables VoIP on your iPhone

For those only interested in fielding VoIP calls on an iPhone, we're pretty sure Cisco could hook you up, but if you've been wondering how to utilize Skype on your Apple iPhone, this here workaround spills the beans. Admittedly, this method is far from seamless, but by installing the famed SoonR Talk application on your home PC and logging into the AJAX-enabled SoonR website on your handset, a new way of calling instantly emerges. As with other handsets that support AJAX interfaces, you can reportedly view and call Skype buddies through your iPhone, but you should be aware that SkypeOut credits will be used due to the PSTN leg needed to dial your mobile. Inelegant as it may be, VoIP has now invaded the (non-Cisco) iPhone.

Musipen DAP concept breaks from convention

Filed under:

Designer Chris Williams has hatched a concept for an DAP called the Musipen which seriously breaks from the common, rectangular conventions of typical audio players (although, it doesn't go as far as we'd like). The most interesting component of the glowstick-esque design is its UI, which utilizes the tubular shape for navigation through menus, allowing for each end to act as a kind of scroll-wheel. While the design is just a concept right now, it does suggest some interesting possibilities for a market which is currently over-saturated with sameness. Check the gallery for all the futuristic goodness.

Good vibes power tiny generator

Tiny generator, Steve Beeby
Here the generator, in the centre of the chip, powers an accelerometer
A tiny generator powered by natural vibrations could soon be helping keep heart pacemakers working.

Created by scientists at the University of Southampton, UK, the generator has been developed to power devices where replacing batteries is very difficult.

The device is expected initially to be used to power wireless sensors on equipment in manufacturing plants.

The generator's creators say their technology is up to 10 times more efficient than similar devices.

Power packed

The tiny device, which is less than one cubic centimetre in size, uses vibrations in the world around it to make magnets on a cantilever at the heart of the device wobble to generate power.

Although the generator produces only microwatts this was more than enough to power sensors attached to machines in manufacturing plants, said Dr Steve Beeby, the Southampton researcher who led the development of the device.

"The big advantage of wireless sensor systems is that by removing wires and batteries, there is the potential for embedding sensors in previously inaccessible locations," he said.

Using the tiny generator also made it possible to use larger numbers of sensors because there was no longer the need to visit them to replace or recharge batteries, Dr Beeby added.

The generator was developed to sit inside air compressors but, said Dr Beeby, it could find a future role in self-powered medical implants such as pacemakers.

In a pacemaker, the beating of the human heart would be strong enough to keep the magnets inside the device wobbling.

It could also be used to power sensors attached to road and rail bridges to monitor the health of such structures.

Work on the project was funded by the EU as part of the 14.3m euros (£9.67m) Vibration Energy Scavenging (Vibes) project that is looking at how to use environmental vibrations to generate power.

King.com got MyGame

If you hadn’t guessed it, casual gaming is so hot that even normally lumbering Electronics Arts has jumped on the bandwagon. Nevermind them, for casual gaming is still the playground of start-ups. We have written about Boonty’s Cafe.com and Kongregate in the past. And now three-year-old casual gaming company, King.com is getting its game on with MyGame.com, a new service that lets you create, play and also share games (via widgets of course.)

The service which is going to be widely available tomorrow allows anyone to create games in 2-minutes, London-based King.com claims. You can pick a game template, personalize it with text, sounds, and a photo, and start playing. Since the company is going for big impact, some of the games are downright hokey, and simple.

You can share the games on social networks, embed them in your MySpace profile, or even post them to your blog. If your game gets really popular, then King.com plans to share advertising money with the game creators. (I have labeled this share-the-profit concept, iCompany, and have written about it in the past.)

Going Bonkers by the Bay

There is no getting away from Facebook: everyone is talking about it on the email lists, on the blogs, in the restaurants. Even grownups are happily confessing their addiction to the Silicon Valley's own Furby. What is more amusing is that seemingly clever guardians of wealth are getting caught up in the euphoria and loosening their purse strings.

Take Bay Partners as an example. A sedate venture fund that typically invests in semiconductor companies and infrastructure start-ups has started a new effort that invests exclusively in Facebook applications. The right applicants can get anywhere from $25,000 to $250,000 as an investment for their applications.

The collateral of this project, imaginatively dubbed App Factory, is interesting, cringe-worthy reading filled with clichés like "application entrepreneurs" and "affect adoption, virality, and usage." Here is just a nugget of wisdom from the press release announcing this new funding strategy. 

 A fully baked business model is also not a requirement, as long as there are reasonable theories and approaches that can be explored together.

Putting my newly acquired Hebrew Yiddish skills to use, I say, Oy-vey!

Facebook, despite the cleverness of its recent platform strategy, is still a start-up, and a funding vehicle focused entirely on its ecosystem seems a bit rash. There is still a fog around these Facebook apps-as-businesses. Advertising on social networks is still a hit-and-a-miss phenomenon, still heavily reliant on banner advertising than anything else.Sure some Facebook apps have been acquired by other start-ups, like Favorite Peeps bought by Slide, but there is less to this land grab than meets the eye. Travel-focused vertical search engine, SideStep recently snapped up Extended Info, which has nothing to do with travel.

Rob Solomon, CEO of Sidestep told Liz earlier today "Trey Philips, the guy who built it, hacked it together at the facebook event. He's a talented young guy who understands these social networks."However, since Phillips is still in school, Sidestep hired him as a summer intern who is basically advising them on building Facebook stuff. As I said earlier, there is fog of confusion.

But Bay Partners (via the press release) rationalizes its decision by saying that since Facebook is a Social OS , it is an opportunity to develop in the marketplace and ecosystem around it.

They are partially right, except for the fact that this OS is inward looking: people work on Facebook's terms, and not the other way around. Last time an inward looking ecosystem caught the imagination of developers, it was Windows 95, the defining moment for Microsoft.

The winner of that movement: Microsoft.

FatFreeCart: Two Carts for the Price of Free

fatfreecartlogo.pngOnline ecommerce was over $100 billion last year. That consists of everything from Amazon.com to the knick knacks people sell on eBay. Last year, PayPal processed about 6% of all online payments worldwide ($11.36 billion). 40% of those sales originated outside of eBay properties, which often requires some kind of online shopping cart to manage the transactions.

PayPal has 133 million account holders and Google Checkout handles one transaction for every 70 that PayPal does, according to Hitwise. EJunkie has a simple free cut and paste solution to this problem for small sellers called FatFreeCart. It lets anyone easily put a shopping cart on their site. PayPal has their own cart creator, but FatFreeCart gives users more choice: both PayPal and Google Checkout can be used.

To install the cart on your site, you just need to cut and paste this code to your page and change the text in red, filling in details like merchant id, product description, and taxes. Customers can add and subtract items from their carts and commit to a final checkout by being taken to a prefilled order form on either of the services. When the order is completed, the merchant is notified of the purchase via email and can fulfill the order.

Readers interested in other simple web solutions should check out JS Kit’s website widgets.

Gigya’s Big Win With Top Widget Companies

For developers designing for the other 99.9 percent of the web not running solely on Facebook, Gigya offers Wildfire, a simple interface for spreading, tracking, and monetizing your widget across 12 social sites. They’ve been chosen to handle distribution and tracking for 6 of the top 10 Widget properties (RockYou!, PictureTrail, BunnyHeroLabs, BlingyBlob.com, POQbum and Projectplaylist.com), as categorized by ComScore’s Widget Metrix. Combined, the 6 partners have a total audience of 193 million unique visitors.

Gigya’s “embed this” widget is a simple tabbed menu of social sites that lets anyone post your embed code to their page by just entering their credentials. It even works with Facebook applications. You can see the full list of partners here.

It’s a distinctly different strategy than what other widget tool startups are doing. We reported on another company, ClearSpring, which similarly helped developers track and spread their application. However, in contrast to Gigya, ClearSpring is open to any developer and focuses on widgetizing content, not easily posting them to social sites. Gigya is aimed at enabling large widget publishers low friction adoption on social sites.

Gigya recently closed a round of funding with Benchmark and First Round Capital $2.4 million on June 25th.

Diesel's "bioluminescent mechanic cephalopod" runway show: video

Xeni Jardin:

BB reader Jeremy Tolbert says,

Fashion designer Diesel recently held a fashion show in Florence that featured 3D holographic sea creatures accompanying the fashion designs. The art is amazing and very fluid, like creatures from the deep sea or another world. The technology behind it seems similar to the recent live appearance by the Gorillaz at an awards show.
Link to photos and writeup at Creative Review, and here's the entire "Liquid Space" show on Youtube: Video Link. The reviewer describes the hologram quality as "incredible," and even from the shitty YT footage, you can see this is accurate.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Fashion show promises bioluminescent mechanic cephalopods

Reader comment: Spence says,

I don't believe this is a hologram, but an incarnation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's obviously taking a public event to show itself in all its grandeur. Maybe Diesel has proven to be a loyal follower and this is the reward!
Anonymous sez,
From the article, it appears that Diesel's "bioluminescent mechanic cephalopods" were not actually holigrams. Like the Gorillaz Grammy performance (or the ghosts in Disney's Haunted Mansion), they were created using the pepper's ghost effect, in which an image is reflected off of a glass-like (or in this case mylar) surface between the stage and the audience. More info on the tech behind the Gorillaz performance in the link.

TED talks videos

Mark Frauenfelder: Picture 14 I went to TED2007 as a member of the press and was profoundly impressed by the quality of the events and the speakers. I drove home dumbfounded by the cascade of mind-boggling information in the presentations I saw there.

I told my friends about TED and its effect on me, but I knew I wasn't able to convey how wonderful the speakers were. Fortunately, TED is offering the talks on its website in the form of 20-minute videos. There very high quality, and they're free.

I recommend starting with researcher Hans Rosling's presentation of his Trendalyzer software, which converts inscrutable database numbers into instantly-understandable and revealing dynamic animations.

In a follow-up to his now-legendary TED2006 presentation, Hans Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software -- which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats. (Ten days later, he announced a deal with Google to acquire the software.) He also demos Dollar Street, a program that lets you peer in the windows of typical families worldwide living at different income levels. Be sure to watch straight through to the (literally) jaw-dropping finale.
Link

Web zen: illusion zen

Timeline of hazardous made-in-China products, 2007

Xeni Jardin: Who-Sucks.com has compiled a master timeline of incidents involving dangerous (sometimes lethal) "made in China" products banned or recalled by the US Consumer Products Safety Commission in 2007.

It's a big list. Well-known killers like Thomas the Tank Engine of Death and Antifreeze Toothpaste are in here, but so are less-known gems like "razor blades for kids," "lead bracelets," "toxic jackets," and "dangerously crappy hammocks."

Link (thanks, Fred Hall)

Reader comment: Dan says,

This reminded me of the great old SNL skit with Dan Akroyd portraying a purveyor of such "exciting" toys:

"Okay, Miss, I wanna correct you, alright. The full name of this product, as it appears in stores all over the county, is Johnny Switchblade: Adventure Punk. I mean, nothing goes wrong.. little girls buy 'em, you know, they play games, they make up stories, nobody gets hurt. I mean, so Barbie takes a knife once in a while, or Ken gets cut. You know, there's no harm in that. I mean, as far as I can see, you know?"

Link

Wellcome Trust releases 2000 years of medical images under Creative Commons

Cory Doctorow: Ian sez, "The Wellcome Trust, one of the UK's largest medical charities, has released its image collection under Creative Commons licenses, with a new web site to search through it. I'm not sure how many thousand images there are, but for science teachers and anyone doing research into the history of medicine and biosciences, this will be a huge bonus." Link (Thanks, Ian!)

NASA scientist: ban coal plants now!

Cory Doctorow: Alex from WorldChanging sez, "We just published a new letter from NASA's Jim Hansen, in which he essentially says the world can't afford to burn coal any more, and we should have a moratorium on coal-burning (except perhaps in a new generation of power plants with carbon capture and sequestration technologies)."
The resulting imperative is an immediate moratorium on additional coal-fired power plants without CCS. A surge in global coal use in the last few years has converted a potential slowdown of CO2 emissions into a more rapid increase. But the main reason for the proposed moratorium is that a CO2 molecule from coal, in effect, is more damaging than a CO2 molecule from oil. CO2 in readily available oil almost surely will end up in the atmosphere, it is only a question of when, and when does not matter much, given its long lifetime. CO2 in coal does not need to be released to the atmosphere, but if it is, it cannot be recovered and will make disastrous climate change a near certainty.
Link (Thanks, Alex!) (Image ganked from Jay Dugger's Flickr photostream: Unknown Coal Plant Near Saint Louis, Missouri)

Mileage Runners hack air travel for maximum miles

Cory Doctorow: Wired News has a great story today about "Mileage Runners" who tweak the airline reservation system to plot insane (and insanely cheap), multi-hop air trips that accumulate bazillions of air miles. A hacker friend of mine recently came out to me as a mileage runner, and described a system he'd worked out for gaming the reservations computers to get $400, round the world business-class fares.

Mileage Running isn't good for the planet, but it makes a certain perverse sense as a response to the airlines' incomprehensible pricing schemes, capricious upgrades policy, and emphasis on mileage. It's probably not a coincidence that Southwest Airlines, who pioneered simple, transparent pricing schemes, is more profitable than all the other US airlines put together.

In my last job, I flew to 31 countries in three years, fighting copyright treaties and DRM standards, and made top-tier on three different airlines. I didn't get much sport out of it, but I can now locate a working electrical outlet in the meanest airport.

"I personally find airlines and airplanes to be really neat," explains Joshua Solomin, a 28-year-old mileage runner who works as a software manager in San Francisco. Solomin began running in 2006 after a year of business travel vaulted him into the Premier tier of United's Mileage Plus program, giving him his first taste of the first-class upgrades and other coveted perks that come with elite-level frequent flyer membership. "Mileage runs are a way to maintain that status," he says.

Of Solomin's five runs to date, one of the more impressive was a trip from San Francisco to Tampa via Los Angeles, San Diego and Washington, then back with connections in D.C., Seattle and Portland. Thanks to his Premier status, he earned double miles for the trip, more 16,000 of them, for just $232.

On Sunday, he completed his first international run: a $1,450 round trip between San Francisco and Singapore with stops in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Sure, he had only five hours in the middle of the night to explore Singapore, but with United's July triple mileage bonus he earned a whopping 78,000 miles. And he flew business class the entire way.

Average box office per movie: total chaos

Cory Doctorow: This chart, showing the per film/per year box office for Hollywood movies from 2000-2006, is the biggest laugh I've had all day. We always hear about how entertainment execs earn their giant salaries by being incredibly shrewd selectors and marketers of motion pictures, but this chart shows that you could get the same result by throwing dice. Link (via Wonderland)

Update: Adam found this great chart, showing box office gross adjusted for inflation -- the field peaked in 1939, with Gone the With the Wind in top place, with an adjusted gross of $450.5 million. The only movie from later than 1990 in the top ten is Titanic.

Update 2: Adam sez, "The figure listed for Gone with the Wind is adjusted to 1977 dollars...when adjusted to 2007, it's the much more impressive $1,329,453,600."

MIT: The iPhone's Untapped Potential

c77-7-10-07.jpg Core77 picks up on a June MIT Technology Review article describing some of the unrealized potential in the iPhone.

"Turns out that, in addition to having the interface to kill all portable interfaces, it is tricked out with a number of just slightly utilized sensors; specifically an accelerometer, an ambient light meter, and an IR motion sensor.

While Apple has applied these to the admirable goal of rotating your screen and adjusting your brightness for you, some other smart people have already been busy using them for more creative ends. Like learning about human nature."
Start with the iPhone, Work Back to Human Nature
Posted by: Carl Alviani on Tuesday, July 10 2007

c77-7-10-07.jpg

MIT Technology Review put a brief article up at the end of June describing some of the unrealized potential in the iPhone. Turns out that, in addition to having the interface to kill all portable interfaces, it is tricked out with a number of just slightly utilized sensors; specifically an accelerometer, an ambient light meter, and an IR motion sensor. While Apple has applied these to the admirable goal of rotating your screen and adjusting your brightness for you, some other smart people have already been busy using them for more creative ends. Like learning about human nature.

Now, take a step back: Accelerometers are motion detectors--they get used to help measure distance walked (pedometers) and the intensity of car crashes (impact meters), among other things. Some creative designers have figured out how to make them fun (Nintendo Wii). It's not a huge stretch to combine this sort of data with light, motion and sound sensing to start getting a picture of what a user is doing all day, moment to moment. Standing, sitting, and walking have recognizable signatures, and from there it's a short computational step to recognizing when a user is cooking, working, hanging out, shopping, etc. It's like a diary, but honest. It's like Twitter, but less irritating.

Now, take another step back: Once again, MIT researchers are way ahead of us. Here's a study group called Reality Mining that's been gathering data in this manner from study participants since 2004, combining it with data on proximity sensing between users, and analyzing the hell out of it. Findings are ongoing, but what's already there is massively intriguing. Social networking in the real world has a statistical signature, and measurable patterns called Eigenbehaviors start emerging. It's still mostly in the realm of statisticians and analysts, but the trajectory points insistently toward a new and powerful tool for designers.

Potential applications are significant for....well, who aren't they significant for? Consumer electronics designers looking for new interface methods; medical and fitness product designers looking for better ways to get information from users to devices; design researchers who want higher quality data from a less-intrusive method: pay attention. Things are changing.

JetBlue Uses 'Simpsons' Sweeps as Reward

Things that make you go "huh?" By Amy Johannes
JetBlue is promoting "The Simpsons" movie with a sweeps and extends its tie-in as the official airline of Springfield, the characters' hometown.
JetBlue Airways is kicking off its partnership with "The Simpsons Movie" with a sweepstakes overlay for loyalty program members and an unusual tie to the characters' hometown. The sweepstakes is part of a larger marketing effort to promote the Twentieth Century Fox film. JetBlue has been named the "Official Airline of Springfield." As such, the company will launch its first specialty aircraft, dubbed "Woo-Hoo, JetBlue" at a press event on July 17 in Burbank, CA. The plane, which features an image of Homer and a logo with the company's Springfield status, will be in service that day and added to the regular flight rotation schedule, the company said.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Word of Mouth

Women: share/whisper -- for them to share/whisper to their friends about something, it has to give them a temporary advantage that they want to cure by having their friends get the same advantage as quickly as possible (e.g. did you know there is a secret sale at Jimmy Choo? here's how you get it).

Men: brag -- for them to brag to their friends about something, it has to give them a temporary advantage to articulate (e.g. my new barbecue gets as hot as 1500 C); then their friends have to figure out how to equalize themselves or one-up them a bit further (e.g. mine does 1700 C).

search engines - vertical search niche search

The List, April 2007

Search Engine name URL Category
Accoona www.accoona.com A.I. Search (HM)
AfterVote (SEM) www.aftervote.com Social Search
Agent 55 www.agent55.com MetaSearch
AllTha.at www.allth.at Continuous Search
AnswerBus www.answerbus.com Semantic Search
Blabline www.blabline.com Podcast Search
Blinkx* www.blinkx.com Video Search
Blogdigger www.blogdigger.com Blog Search
Bookmach.com* www.bookmach.com Bookmark Search
ChaCha* (#1 2006) www.chacha.com Guided Search
ClipBlast!* www.clipblast.com Video Search
Clusty* www.clusty.com Clustering Search
CogHog www.infactsolutions.com/projects/coghog/demo.htm Semantic Search
Collarity* www.collarity.com Social Search (HM)
Congoo* www.congoo.com Premium Content Search
CrossEngine (Mr. Sapo)* www.crossengine.com MetaSearch
Cydral http://en.cydral.com Image Search (French)
Decipho* www.decipho.com Filtered Search
Deepy www.deepy.com RIA Search
Ditto* www.ditto.com Visual Search
Dogpile www.dogpile.com MetaSearch
Exalead* www.exalead.com/search Visual Search
Factbites* www.factbites.com Filtered Search
FeedMiner www.feedminer.com RSS Feeds Search
Feedster www.feedster.com RSS Feeds Search
Filangy www.filangy.com Social Search
Find Forward www.findforward.com Meta Feature Search
FindSounds* www.findsounds.com Audio Search
Fisssh! www.fisssh.com Filtered Search (HM)
FyberSearch www.fybersearch.com Meta Feature Search
Gigablast* www.gigablast.com Blog Search
Girafa* www.girafa.com Visual Display
Gnosh www.gnosh.org Meta Search
GoLexa www.golexa.com Meta Feature Search
GoshMe* (SEM) www.goshme.com Meta Meta Search
GoYams* www.goyams.com Meta Search
Grokker* www.grokker.com Meta Search
Gruuve www.gruuve.com Recommendation Search
Hakia www.hakia.com Meaning Based Search
Hyper Search http://hypersearch.webhop.org.90.seekdotnet.com Filtered Search
iBoogie www.iboogie.com Clustering Search
IceRocket* www.icerocket.com Blog Search
Info.com www.info.com MetaSearch
Ixquick* www.ixquick.com Meta Search
KartOO* www.kartoo.com Clustering Search
KoolTorch (SEM) www.kooltorch.com Clustering Search
Lexxe* www.lexxe.com Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Lijit www.lijit.com Search People
Like* www.like.com Visual Search
LivePlasma* www.liveplasma.com Recommendation Search (HM)
Local.com* www.local.com Local Search
Mamma www.mamma.com MetaSearch
Mnemomap www.mnemo.org Clustering Search
Mojeek* www.mojeek.com Custom Search Engines (CSE)
Mooter* www.mooter.com Clustering Search
Mp3Realm http://mp3realm.org MP3 Search
Mrquery www.mrquery.com Clustering Search
Ms. Dewey* www.msdewey.com Unique Interface (HM)
Nutshell www.gonutshell.com MetaSearch
Omgili www.omgili.com Social Search
Pagebull* www.pagebull.com Visual Display
PeekYou www.peekyou.com People Search
Pipl http://pipl.com People Search
PlanetSearch* www.planetsearch.com MetaSearch
PodZinger www.podzinger.com Podcast Search
PolyMeta www.polymeta.com MetaSearch
Prase www.prase.us MetaSearch
PureVideo www.purevideo.com Video Search (HM)
Qksearch www.qksearch.com Clustering Search
Querycat http://querycat.com F.A.Q. Search (HM)
Quintura* www.quintura.com Clustering Search
RedZee www.redzee.com Visual Display
Retrievr http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/ Visual Search
Searchbots www.searchbots.net Continuous Search
SearchKindly www.searchkindly.org Charity Search
Searchles* (DumbFind) www.searchles.com Social Search
SearchTheWeb2* www.searchtheweb2.com Long Tail Search
SeeIt www.seeit.com Image Search
Sidekiq* www.sidekiq.com MetaSearch
Slideshow* http://slideshow.zmpgroup.com/ Visual Display
Slifter* www.slifter.com Mobile Shopping Search (HM)
Sphere www.sphere.com Blog Search
Sproose www.sproose.com Social Search
Srchr* www.srchr.com MetaSearch
SurfWax* www.surfwax.com Meaning Based Search
Swamii www.swamii.com Continuous Search (HM)
TheFind.com* www.thefind.com Shopping Search
Trexy* www.trexy.com Search Trails
Turboscout* www.turboscout.com MetaSearch
Twerq www.twerq.com Tabbed Results
Url.com* www.url.com Social Search
WasaLive! http://en.wasalive.com RSS Search
Web 2.0* www.web20searchengine.com Web 2.0 Search
Webbrain* www.webbrain.com Clustering Search
Whonu?* www.whonu.com MetaSearch
Wikio* www.wikio.com Web 2.0 Search
WiseNut* www.wisenut.com Clustering Search
Yoono* www.yoono.com Social Search
ZabaSearch* www.zabasearch.com People Search
Zuula* www.zuula.com Tabbed Search (HM)