April 2005 Archive

Infospace to Add MSN Search

Dogpile and other Infospace search properties will add MSN Search to Google, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo! this summer according to a company press release. With that addition, Dogpile (and other Infospace brands like Webcrawler and Metacrawler) will be the only major meta search engine to include the four primary search engines. Most meta search engines do not have contracts with all four.

Editing Encarta

MSN's Encarta encyclopedia is following in the footsteps of the upstart Wikipedia by allowing readers to suggests changes and additions to articles with Encarta. The suggested changes go through the editors to fact check before they will be added to the page. Encarta does ask contributors to provide their source of information when possible. Remember that a 2 hour free pass to the commercial Encarta content is available when using MSN Search.

MyJeeves Upgraded

MyJeeves from Ask has been upgraded with new ways to add data, thumbnails and links to images, subfolder options, and tagging. More information in the press release and blog post.

Statistically Improbable Phrases at Amazon

Seen intermittently earlier in March, Amazon now has Statistically Improbable Phrases or SIPs displayed in its book records when they also have Search Inside the Book access to the full text.

Ask Offers Spanish Version

Ask Jeeves has announced the launch of a Spanish Jeeves. According to their blog posting (in Spanish and English), it will include a MyJeeves personalized option (as MiAskJeeves). Ask Jeeves Japan is also now out of beta.