« Turn an HTML page into a PDF | Main | Second Life News »
May 15, 2006
Ask.com televison commercial mentions librarians
The Ask.com television commerciable (viewable online here) features Teoma Technologies founder and Ask.com executive vice president of search technology Apostolos Gerasoulis. He says in the commercial "If librarians love us, then I think the world should love us too." Ask.com really does have more of a librarian mindset to finding and organizing information. Their ranking mechanisms, grouped results, and kid-friendly mentality has made them a favorite for school and public librarians worldwide. What do you think about Ask.com? (that's what the comments feature's for!)
found via ResourceShelf
May 15, 2006 | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/12541/4874993
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Ask.com televison commercial mentions librarians:
Comments
I find several of Ask.com's features particularly nice. The one I noticed recently is that I'll get a picture of a dog if I do a search by breed. For example: http://www.ask.com/web?q=german+shepherd&qsrc=1&o=0. I often don't recoginze breeds so a quick picture helps me check and see if the name I'm thinking of and the actual breed really match up. They do something similar with Wikipedia links to car model pictures. They could go even further if they could find a good source for pictures of plants or even mechanical parts or coputer models.
I also just started playing around with their "My Stuff" section. It gives you a nice little tagging system that is semi-comparable to flickr and delicious. You even seem to be able to load as many pictures as you want to their servers. I assume there must be some limit to the space you can take up, but I haven't found one listed yet. There's even a bit where you can use My Stuff to create a public blog. I think all of that is fun, exciting stuff, but the worth is going to depend a lot upon how many users they can get. So far, I haven't seen any press about Ask's "My Stuff" section. I don't know if it's new or I just never noticed it before. It's definitely set up as a way to compete with other Social Networking sites.
Posted by: Alex Grig | May16, 2006
Ooh I like the plants idea. That's the type of reference question that comes up a lot. Ask.com's search results display is great for ready reference questions (biographies, places, etc.). Definitey more in tune with the librarian's way of finding information.
Posted by: Sarah Houghton (LiB) | May16, 2006
