LISNews: Librarian News

search-engines-web.com sent along Seeking Better Web Searches from Scientific American. New search engines are improving the quality of results by delving deeper into the storehouse of materials available online, by sorting and presenting those results better, and by tracking your long-term interests so that they can refine their handling of new information requests. In the future, search engines will broaden content horizons as well, doing more than simply processing keyword queries typed into a text box. They will be able to automatically take into account your location--letting your wireless PDA, for instance, pinpoint the nearest restaurant when you are traveling. New systems will also find just the right picture faster by matching your sketches to similar shapes. They will even be able to name that half-remembered tune if you hum a few bars.

So what will this do to the SEO folks?

Carol Terry writes "Resource Shelf, Jan. 12, reports on a "must use" tool: Finding News Faster.This is a fabulous presentation, from Virtual Chase, on using "XML-Based Feeds in Research"."It starts with the basics--what they are, how to display them, and how to find them. It continues with sources and strategies for selecting feeds, or for creating keyword-specific feeds."It can be viewed or downloaded. Highly Recommended."

Although search engines have greatly enhanced access to information, and storage technology has made it cheap to digitize nearly everything, search tools need to be refined to make it easier to digest information or conduct queries. That was the word from researchers and speakers at the New Paradigms for Using Computers Conference, held at IBM's Almaden research lab here last week. Read More.

Here's an article from CNN.com about how police officers are using handheld devices to retrieve information on the spot.

The next minute, he knows who your relatives are, who lives in your house, who your neighbors are, the kind of car you drive or boat you own, whether you've been sued and various other tidbits about your life.