New Google Instant Search

I was going to write a post on Instant Search which Google rolled out yesterday, but as usual, ResearchBuzz has gotten to it first, and done it better. I highly recommend the following article for in-depth exploration of the new instant search, tips on searching, complaints about the new feature, and how to turn it off, if you hate it:

Google Instant: Breaking It, Gaming It, and The Future, from ResearchBuzz

Google's Caffeine

Google announced the release of its new indexing system Caffeine yesterday, and you may be wondering what, if anything, this may mean to you. The short of the answer is: not much.

As a searcher, Caffeine will supposedly work behind the scenes to bring you faster and more relevant results, in a more comprehensive way. Google visualizes it thusly:



Which essentially means that when you go to Home Depot to look at paint cards, you will be, instead, minisculized to the size of an atom and sucked into a vortex full of home electronics and user manuals.

In seriousness, though, the illustration is meant to suggest that the new indexing system is a much more dynamic and holistic approach to web indexing than their former, more hierarchical one. It should provide faster listing of new pages in the index, and changes to existing pages should show up faster as well.

Web content owners don't have to worry about making any changes to pages they have created, and searchers don't need to modify their search approaches. It does mean that pages in the Google Cache will see more frequent turnover, as blog resourceshelf points out, so searchers who would like to archive a current version of a page should begin to consider alternative ways to take "snapshots" of a page, since the more frequent updating will mean that Google Cache is no longer a viable option, as the index will most likely always be reflecting the current state of the page.

Wordless Wednesdays: Google, How Do I Love Thee?

Let me count the searches:

Automate Your Online Searches-Google Edition [Quick Tips]

Google now allows you to receive updates from their Google Alerts tool via RSS feed. This change updates the tool and removes one of my long-standing grudges against Google Alerts: that they cluttered my email inbox!

If you don't know what a Google Alert is, never fear. I've got a quick tutorial below which will get you up to speed. Give Google Alerts a shot and rest easier at night knowing that the power of technology is scouring the web for you (even while you sleep!) and alerting you to the newest information being added to the web about your research subjects.

What Google Alerts Are

As I rhapsodize above, Google Alerts are automated searches that you can setup through your Google Account. Much like running a regular Google search, these alerts search the web for sites matching your search terms. The beauty of Google Alerts is that the searches managed through Google Alerts run continuously, and you receive updated search results from your alerts whenever new content matching your terms is indexed by Google! How very handy.

Let's set up an alert, and you'll see better what I mean. (Note that you have to have a Google Account to setup and manage alerts. If you don't have one, you can set one up here. You will also need to use or be using Google Reader or another RSS feed reader in order to make use of the RSS feed.)

Setting up Google Alerts

Once you have signed into your Google Account, go to the Google Alerts page to set up your alert.

Once there, enter your search term in the box on the right. (Note that the intial alert set-up form has not been altered to allow you to select an RSS feed; we'll do that later).

I am entering the name of an ancestor that I am researching. Since this is an unusual name, I won't be adding any qualifiers to the search (like "+Charleston" or "+steamboat") to refine it as I would with a more common name:



Ordinarily, if you set up a standard emailed Google Alert, you can select the frequency with which you receive results. However, once you change to an RSS feed, your frequency request will automatically be reset to "as-it-happens".

Once you have hit "Create Alert" you will be taken to this page, where you will see the alerts you have already setup (if any). Click on the "edit" link to the right of the alert you want to change into an RSS feed:



The alert will change to edit mode. Select "feed" from the drop-down menu, as shown, then click "Save":



The alert now shows up as an RSS feed, and can be viewed in Google Reader:



If you don't use Google Reader, you can click on the Feed chicklet to get the alert feed's URL for use in another reader.

Here's a view of my new Google Alert RSS feed in Google Reader:

Quick Post to Blogger via iGoogle [Quick Tip]

If you use Blogger to wield your virtual pen and muse on all things genealogical, it just got a little easier.

Blogger recently announced the release of the iGoogle Blogger Post Gadget. Meaning as soon as inspiration strikes, you can take it to "print" without even leaving your iGoogle page.

The gadget is a little stark (I'm using it right now). There's no preview, no keyboard shortcuts for things like formatting and anchor links, and no auto-fill when you tag your entry. There's also no access to advanced publishing options like timeset publishing.

Overall, great for a quick jot, but not so hot for more in-depth blogging that requires a more robust feature set. Worth a try though, as anything that makes getting those blog posts out quicker is great, especially if you use your blog as a notepad for research and ideas.

This all reminds me... since iGoogle's massive redesign, we're due for another Site Review on what's new and great (or not so great) about this latest revamp. Keep your eyes peeled for that post coming soon!

Facial Recognition Online [Tidbits]

Earlier this month, it was announced that Google's Picasa had launched a facial recognition feature. The feature helps automate the tagging of photos of people, which, obviously, could be a great tool for genealogists looking to organize collections of family photos. There are limitations on the usage of the tagging, all of which are noted in the article linked above.

I ran a quick test with some photos I had already uploaded. The facial recognition worked well enough to find most of the photos of my son right off the bat, and as I tagged photos, it seemed to learn his face more efficiently:



It even started suggesting tags for photos, and, remarkable, the suggestions tended to be from the same family! Picasa had a hard time identifying some photos, especially profile shots.

Head on over to Picasa to give the facial recognition tagging a shot!

Google Newspapers Announcement

Google's Official Blog today got around to announcing the new newspaper archiving project it has undertaken recently, which I covered last month.

One interesting tidbit is buried in the post:

You’ll be able to explore this historical treasure trove by searching the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News. Not every search will trigger this new content, but you can start by trying queries like [Nixon space shuttle] or [Titanic located]. Stories we've scanned under this initiative will appear alongside already-digitized material from publications like the New York Times as well as from archive aggregators, and are marked "Google News Archive." Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we'll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you'll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well. (Emphasis added).

I love the fact that we are looking at a future integration between the news archive search and general google searches. Imagine a day when you google an ancestor's name and see newspaper articles as results!

What the article doesn't address is the issue of access to what the above excerpt references as "archive aggregators", which, in this case, invariably means sites like ancestry.com and newspaperarchive.com (to name two I have noticed in search results). I have subscriptions to both of these sites, so google's search function is quite helpful for me. But what about general users who are unlikely to have subscriptions to these sites? Will there be a per-article access feature? Will the sites simply be shilling their annual subscriptions to searchers?

I'd personally love to see free access to searchable online newspapers within the next few years, especially since a huge bulk of historic newspapers are public domain; I doubt it will happen, but it sure would be nice.

Research Options Online [Tidbits]

Today I ran across a great post on mashable.com regarding online tools for researchers. It covers some options that were omitted from my discussions of Google Notebook and Google Notebook Alternatives.

Definitely worth checking out if you are shopping around for a new online note-taker.

Google News Archive Search [Reference Shelf]

Google's News Archive search now has some very useful content and features, making it a necessary stop on the research path for genealogists. Whereas the Google News archive used to span 30 days, it now searches historical content from sites such as NewspaperArchive, Google Books, Ancestry Newspapers, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Constitution, and The New York Times Archive, giving the archive a span of over 150 years, and fabulous breadth of content. Articles are marked with ($$) where access is limited by charge. Results from subscription sites work seamlessly if you are logged in to your paid account.

Accessing the Archive
To access the Google News Archive search, visit Google News. The link to the archive search is located in the upper left-hand corner:



Enter your search terms in the search field:



And you'll see your returns in a pretty typical Google search format:



This is well and good, but Google takes it one step further with a handy option to view your results along a timeline, a very interesting way to visualize the coverage of your particular topic across time.

Using the Timeline
The "Timeline" link is at the top of your search results:



Clicking on this link shows you an interactive and clickable graph of the results from the archive search according to years. In this case, of course, the higher the bar on the graph, the more results found in the news that particular year:



Let's say I'm especially interested in researching news reports about the 1905 outbreak of yellow fever in New Orleans. I can click on the ten-year segment in the timeline for 1900-1920, and the graph breaks down into individual years for that decade:



As you can see, the block for 1905 shows a much larger results return than other years in the decade. I can continue to click on the segments I am interested in until I reach the months of 1905. As the yellow fever outbreak began in July and ran through the bulk of the late summer, we see a correlating result list in this graph:



Clicking on the individual months will show only the search results for that time period, allowing me to follow the chronology of the outbreak coverage across months. Very cool!

Open Library: Online Books Resource

While I have a lot of use for Google Books, and utilize the full-view content available from that site quite frequently (enough to begin to create an index of the genealogically significant ones), I am certainly open to other sites and projects that aim to bring the paper and digital worlds together. In this post I look at the Open Library project, and the potential it has to be a huge research timesaver.

What It Is.

Open Library's tagline is "One web page for every book." As in, "every book ever published", a self-described lofty goal. The site ultimately seeks to populate each of these pages with publication information, links to purchase and borrowing options, as well as links to online versions where available.

If you're thinking this sounds an awful lot like WorldCat, you're not alone. The difference, Open Library stresses, is that this project is open-source, and will be worked upon by the public through a Wiki interface. Users can edit book pages by doing things like adding TOCs, descriptions, publication information, etc. The site is still in Beta, so content is limited somewhat, although they have stub pages for, according to the site, over 13 million books (over 200,000 of which are scanned and readable online). User participation, predictably, is low at this point, so it is difficult to tell what a fully fleshed-out page on Open Library would look like.

What it Could Be.

The benefit and promise of Open Library (as I see it) is its potential to become a quality aggregator site for available online materials. I personally don't see much use for the borrowing or purchasing information as that is readily available through sites like WorldCat or even online book sellers. Of course, if Open Library were to integrate some data from OCLC, it could make the site even more valuable as a one-stop portal for finding any and every book you may ever need.

As for the search capabilities for scanned books, a sample search I ran on "Jones genealogy" returned 13 books, from both Internet Archive and Google Books:



A "Scanned books only" search on "genealogy" returned over 1,000 books. (It is unclear what field a simple search from the main page is actually searching; a similar search for full-view books on Google Books yields over 7,000 entries, but of course those searches default to full-text searches. Full-text search is currently unavailable on Open Library, though it is an option under Advanced Search, so should be coming.)

Some Problems

One runs into problems with the site at times due to its overwhelming thoroughness. In terms of the ingenuity of harnessing the work ethic of the public when it comes to labors of love, I worry about the dilution of effort for certain books when every edition of a book gets its own page. Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has 60 separate entries; Shakespeare's Hamlet has 2,781. Which page do you choose to work upon? Which do you ignore? If one page has a robust entry, and 59 others are empty, what is the value to the user in having to wade through 59 unelaborated pages in order to reach the one with the information he or she is seeking? Will that user even bother and just give up?

While most genealogy books aren't going to see 60 (more or less 3) entries, there are multiple identical editions of some books, so the issue still stands. A case in point is Elizabeth Shown Mills' Professional Genealogy:



Duplicates like this are plentiful on Open Library at the moment, although I would imagine that with time and a dedicated user base, these things would eventually get cleaned up. Of course, separate pages for multiple editions of a single book can be useful if user-supplied notes and descriptions managed to distinguish the editions and noted errata, etc.

In Conclusion

Open Library is still in its infancy, possibly even prenatal. I would label this site one to keep an eye on... if they moved effectively toward their goal, Open Library could be an enormous boon to online research. I am a huge fan of any project that makes books more accessible online. I believe that is the future of media (whether or not the publishing companies kick and scream the entire way there), and a website such as this one that operates outside of the corporate environs could be a huge benefit to everyone, genealogists included.

Kicking the New Knol Edge

If you haven't heard, Google recently released Knol to the public. The site, kind of a blend between eHow and Wikipedia, is yet another online platform devoted to bringing out our inner experts. Articles written and posted to Knol are not editable by other users as in Wikipedia, though, so your inner expert can exist in a blissfully untampered state.

As with the myriad new services and websites launched every day, my first question is always "How can this improve my genealogy research and help me accomplish my family history goals?"

There are already two genealogy knol articles posted, both of which are fairly generally introductory pieces, and probably don't add much to the knowledge base of intermediate or advanced researchers.

I can envision, however, series of Knol articles on research in particular localities (think world-class GenWeb page)... a person could outline online and offline resources for a county, for instance. Or how about an article devoted to a particular family history book, analyzing the quality of the information or noting disproved or faulty information?

Typical of the new generation of web pages, this site will be as good as its users make it. With the high profile Knol gains from being a Google product, there is a good shot that the site will attract some good content. At the very least, it is a site to keep an eye on.

Automate Your Online Searches

Googling your ancestors to see if any new information about them has popped up online is just good sense. After all, you never know when a new newspaper transcription, record index or family tree may be uploaded with just the item of info you need.

Remembering to do this, with any semblance of regularity is the hardest part.

To help you in this endeavor, FeedMySearch allows you to continually track search results via an RSS feed, essentially creating a standing "watch list" of your search terms and notifying you when something new is found. The service is alot like Google Alerts, which will email you updated findings. I, of course, prefer the RSS route which doesn't add incoming mail to an already deluged inbox.

You can read more about the service from the great post at Make Use Of.

Google Notebook Bookmarklet

As per the Google Notebook Blog, they have released a Google Notebook Bookmarklet for those who don't use Firefox, or can't install add-ons.

I covered the benefits of using Google Notebook for online research some time ago, and this bookmarklet opens up the possibility of Google Notebook to more users.

The Google blog admits that the bookmarklet lacks the shine of the functionality found in Firefox, but I would imagine if use of the bookmarklet expands, Google will take some steps toward making the Notebook work more universally.

Set Gmail as your Default Email

The Gmail Blog also has up a tip on making Gmail your default email in Firefox, meaning that clicking on a mailto: link on a web page will open your new email in Gmail.

This is great for someone like me, who has been killing accidental launches of my unused Outlook client for ages!

Gmail Hot Tips

The Official Gmail Blog recently posted a list of their most read gmailing tips. Among the highlights:

• Tips for importing old email to Gmail... great if you want to create a centralized genealogy email address and have to move messages from other accounts.
  
• Little known Gmail features, like the fact that you can bookmark individual messages, because every email has its own distinct URL. Who knew?
  
• And the all-important 9 reasons to archive, designed to wheedle, cajole and impress you into laying off that delete button and start archiving.
  

FHL Gets Earthy

The Family Search Labs Blog yesterday blogged about the new release of an FHL catalog plug for Google Earth.

Going to the KML lookup page (.kml is the extension for Google Earth files), you can now access the files for various states.

I love the visualization power this brings to the FHL Catalog. If you use Google Earth in other ways (such as locating homesteads or examining terrain) the option to quickly ascertain what resources FHL has available for your research area is extremely handy!

Quick Tip: Clip images from Google Books to your Google Notebook

Did you know that you can "clip" sections of text from any open copyright (any full-view) book in Google Books and paste that clip into your Google Notebook?

To do so, simply select the "clip" button in Google Books (indicated by the red arrow in the image below). You can opt to embed the image in another web page, send the clip to Blogger, or send the clip to your Google Notebook:




I have selected to send the clip to my Notebook. Here is the clip as it appears in my notebook:




Great way to keep track of the information you find on your ancestors online!

A few caveats with this:

1. Until I upgraded to Firefox 3, I could not get this feature to work. I am unsure if this was peculiar to my system or not.

2. Selecting the "text" option and sending to notebook will still send an image clip to your notebook. The text option only seems to work when sending to Blogger.

3. The selection cannot span more than one page at a time, which stinks if you have something like a biography that spans a page break.

On the bright side, however, the text in the clip you send to notebook is fully searchable!

Quick Tip: Google Blog Search

If you are a blog fan, and are always on the lookout for new blogs covering content that interests you, you should try out Google's Blog Search.

This specialized search engine is easy to use, capitalizing on the same search functionality and phraseology that you can use for any typical search. Simply enter your search:



... and Google will present to you all of the blog posts containing your search term(s). You can refine the dates of the blog posts using the toolbar on the left-hand side of the results:



This feature is helpful for when you are looking for posts on time-sensitive subjects, such as recent announcements, data releases, etc.

Another Tool

Another useful tool, available if you use Google Reader, is the ability to create and subscribe to a feed based on your search term. This customized feed will store your search term, and continuously update itself with applicable posts as those posts are made.

The link to create a customized feed is located at the bottom of the blogsearch screen, underneath the results:



Clicking on the link will take you to your Google Reader account, where you can subscribe to the feed, file it as you please, then sit back and enjoy the customized information streaming into your reader!

More on Ancestry's Search (dys)Function

In case you were wondering how feeble Ancestry's search function can be, I decided to do a test today on an individual I was researching:

Ancestry's search of this particular book, History of Dakota Territory, encompasses all five volumes. I tried to search for my individual, A. S. Jones:



Here's the result I got:



Here's the search results I got performing the same search, solely on Volume II of the book, in Google Books (the photo shows you the first of fifteen accurate search results):



Here is the first search result instance, shown above from Google Books, as found in the volume on Ancestry (it's the last name on the right-hand side, second line from the bottom):



So what's going on here?

Google Books Index Update

I wanted to let everyone know that I have been hard at work on the Google Books Index, an index of full-view books of genealogical interest available at Google Books.

Each state now has its own page, and resources on each page have been organized by type of book.

I have indexed 890 books, mostly county and state histories, some directories, and historical society publications.

Next up will be the indexing of books with vital records and record transcriptions, then surname-based family histories.