Search Engines, IE7 v Firefox, Grok Talks and Congrats to Josh
Well it's been 2 weeks since my last post. I know I really need to finish my WSE series, but there are a few items that I think are worth noting.
First, I came across Clusty when someone was critiquing search engine rankings for a website that I did. It does a meta-search using MSN, Ask, Gigablast, Wisenut and Open Directory. What makes Clusty unique however, are the "clusters" of results it displays along the left side of the page. It takes the results of the search and then builds groups (clusters) based on content. Very convenient if one of the clusters happens to center around the search you had in mind. I haven’t had enough time to put this to the test, but my initial impressions are very positive.
Second, Google has a new custom search engine feature. Why do you want to build your own search engine? Well, if you are reading this blog post, there is an excellent chance you are always searching for .NET related items. Sure there is the Microsoft search, but that still is a massive amount of results to sort through. Furthermore, I'm a developer not systems engineer - despite my MCSE certification - so I only want items pertaining to developers. So my first step was to enter "C# VB.NET" into a textbox. Then I decided I like the results I get from msdn.microsoft.com and my website (naturally) so I entered those two sites into another textbox. I didn’t want to search these sites exclusively, so I checked a radio button. And that’s it. I'm still experimenting with this so look for a post on this later.
Microsoft just released the new version of Internet Explorer. I had been using a beta for several weeks and had been very happy with it despite a couple of minor problems. So when IE7 hit the market I downloaded it right away. The most important feature, IMHO, is the separation from Windows Explorer meaning IE does not access your kernel directly. I may take some heat on that statement, but that is my understanding of how this works. Then we get into the feature that makes surfing so much more enjoyable: tabbed browsing. Now instead of having 10 separate IE apps open, I only have 1 with 10 tabs. Much neater.
-pardon for the interuption in flow, but would it make sense to create a browser as an mdi application as opposed to tabs? Maybe a combination of both? hmmmmm…
Naturally, the comparisons to Firefox start. Yes, IE7 looks very similar to FireFox, but then again, how different can 1-inch of real estate at the top of your screen really look? When I was using the beta, I noticed the IE7 started much faster then Firefox, but Firefox seemed to load pages faster. I'm no longer sure that this is the case, especially since fireFox has also updated itself. So among my many projects, I'm comparing the two. Undoubtedly, my opinion will largely be based upon how often I have to shut one or the other down.
I just remembered something else! GANG hosted a grok talk last Wednesday. And I must say that it was probably the worst talk I have ever given. Within 30 seconds of speaking, I realized that I had enough material to last at least 30 minutes, probably longer. John Hopkins, president of GANG and close personal friend, was kind enough to give me 5 additional minutes over and above the 10 allowed to cram as much as I could into the presentation. I had a demo prepared, but because I hadn't timed the presentation, I wasn't sure that i could do it. Live and learn. Thankfully, I did a good enough job to elicit questions from the audience.
For posterity, the speakers were Jason Follas, me, Patrick Steele, Brian Burge (first presentation and a great job at that), Martin Shoemaker (two presentations), Bill Wagner (one of my mentors and the closest thing I have to a boss) and Josh Holmes (the newly instated Breadth Architect Evangelist for the Heartland District).
One last thing. I have not yet publicly congratulated Josh on his new position as the Breadth Architect Evangelist for the Heartland District with Microsoft. Well, congratulations, Josh!
First, I came across Clusty when someone was critiquing search engine rankings for a website that I did. It does a meta-search using MSN, Ask, Gigablast, Wisenut and Open Directory. What makes Clusty unique however, are the "clusters" of results it displays along the left side of the page. It takes the results of the search and then builds groups (clusters) based on content. Very convenient if one of the clusters happens to center around the search you had in mind. I haven’t had enough time to put this to the test, but my initial impressions are very positive.
Second, Google has a new custom search engine feature. Why do you want to build your own search engine? Well, if you are reading this blog post, there is an excellent chance you are always searching for .NET related items. Sure there is the Microsoft search, but that still is a massive amount of results to sort through. Furthermore, I'm a developer not systems engineer - despite my MCSE certification - so I only want items pertaining to developers. So my first step was to enter "C# VB.NET" into a textbox. Then I decided I like the results I get from msdn.microsoft.com and my website (naturally) so I entered those two sites into another textbox. I didn’t want to search these sites exclusively, so I checked a radio button. And that’s it. I'm still experimenting with this so look for a post on this later.
Microsoft just released the new version of Internet Explorer. I had been using a beta for several weeks and had been very happy with it despite a couple of minor problems. So when IE7 hit the market I downloaded it right away. The most important feature, IMHO, is the separation from Windows Explorer meaning IE does not access your kernel directly. I may take some heat on that statement, but that is my understanding of how this works. Then we get into the feature that makes surfing so much more enjoyable: tabbed browsing. Now instead of having 10 separate IE apps open, I only have 1 with 10 tabs. Much neater.
-pardon for the interuption in flow, but would it make sense to create a browser as an mdi application as opposed to tabs? Maybe a combination of both? hmmmmm…
Naturally, the comparisons to Firefox start. Yes, IE7 looks very similar to FireFox, but then again, how different can 1-inch of real estate at the top of your screen really look? When I was using the beta, I noticed the IE7 started much faster then Firefox, but Firefox seemed to load pages faster. I'm no longer sure that this is the case, especially since fireFox has also updated itself. So among my many projects, I'm comparing the two. Undoubtedly, my opinion will largely be based upon how often I have to shut one or the other down.
I just remembered something else! GANG hosted a grok talk last Wednesday. And I must say that it was probably the worst talk I have ever given. Within 30 seconds of speaking, I realized that I had enough material to last at least 30 minutes, probably longer. John Hopkins, president of GANG and close personal friend, was kind enough to give me 5 additional minutes over and above the 10 allowed to cram as much as I could into the presentation. I had a demo prepared, but because I hadn't timed the presentation, I wasn't sure that i could do it. Live and learn. Thankfully, I did a good enough job to elicit questions from the audience.
For posterity, the speakers were Jason Follas, me, Patrick Steele, Brian Burge (first presentation and a great job at that), Martin Shoemaker (two presentations), Bill Wagner (one of my mentors and the closest thing I have to a boss) and Josh Holmes (the newly instated Breadth Architect Evangelist for the Heartland District).
One last thing. I have not yet publicly congratulated Josh on his new position as the Breadth Architect Evangelist for the Heartland District with Microsoft. Well, congratulations, Josh!
posted by Darrell Hawley at
6:23 AM
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