Yahoo to Close Del.icio.us?

Amid news this week that Yahoo! is laying off 4% of its workforce, it appears that it is also  going to be ending some of its services. One of the services Yahoo is most likely closing is Delicious, a popular social bookmarking service.

Delicious was an early social site that used cloud computing to store user data. Instead of saving bookmarks and favorites locally within a specific web browser on a specific computer,  Delicious would allow you to save links to a Delicious account. These links were then always available on any computer that was able to access the web. Additionally, you could add tags to your links so that links about similar topics were easier to find. At the Troy Public Library, I used Delicious to track various sites regarding eBooks and eResources. I also tagged reference books that may be of interest.

While Delicious may be closing, there are some alternatives. Xmarks is a popular choice. If you have a Google account, Google offers a bookmarking service. Additionally, Google's web browser, Google Chrome, gives you the ability to sync bookmarks between computers that are running Chrome.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon to Oppose Google Book Scanning Settlement

Not surprisingly, some of Google’s chief competitors – Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon – have joined the Open Book Alliance, opposing the October 2008 legal settlement which would allow Google to digitize and sell millions of books.

The Alliance, headed by the non-profit Internet Archive, has expressed concern about “serious legal, competitive, and policy issues” surrounding Google's book scanning project.

Google reached a settlement last year with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the Internet search giant in 2005. Under the settlement, Google will pay publishers and authors $125 million. In exchange, the company will resume scanning copyrighted, out-of-print books, and provide up to 20% of the text on-line at no charge, under its Google Book Search program.

In addition, the settlement creates a method for how Google, publishers and authors will share the profits of digitized versions of printed books. The company will take 37% of the revenue, leaving 63% for publishers and authors.

In a statement, Google responded to the latest news saying: "This sounds like the Sour Grapes Alliance. The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it’s understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition."

Microsoft, which entered into a 10-year Web search partnership with Yahoo! last month that set the stage for a joint offensive against Google, also had a project to create a vast digital library but shut it down recently. Online retail giant Amazon is a major player in the electronic book sector through its popular e-reader, the Kindle.

The settlement still needs the approval of a US District Court judge, who is to hold a "fairness hearing" on the deal in New York on October 7.

For more background, read Learn More about the Google Book Search Settlement.

[via Yahoo! Tech]

See Which Search Engine You Really Prefer With Blind Search

I have been playing around with Microsoft's new search engine, Bing. I wanted to give Bing a fair shot at being my go-to search engine, but I also wanted to make sure that I was getting the most accurate results.

This led me to a great site, Blind Search, which allows the user to do a simultaneous search of Bing, Google, and Yahoo. The results are displayed blindly (with no identifying label) in three columns. After you vote for the column that best matches your preferred results, the name of the search engine that you chose will appear. You can see which search engine most frequently presents your preferred results without the bias of knowing the site you are on.

Here is a screenshot of the search before you vote for the search engine of your choosing:

Here is a screenshot of the search after you vote.

After using Blind Search for awhile, I quickly noticed that Bing and Google produced the best results for me. The great results that Bing produced were quite surprising as I have always been a die-hard Google-r.

I definitely encourage everyone to check out "Blind Search," and see which search engine works best for you.