Search is generally taken for granted today when we go on the Internet. Who still remembers the days of CompuServe and it’s BBS where you have to use the keyboard to navigate the menus? Or the days when Yahoo was “the” portal where we get access to all the info? Today, search in king - or at least that is what I heard say around the net. But do we know that there are many kinds of search? Here are “some” examples.. and they are all linked.. unless I mess up the html..

* Pay per click search engines (CPC, PPC) Basically it is a service that sells paid listings on a cost-per-click or CPC basis. Example are AdWords, Overture now part of Yahoo.

* Shopping search engines. Yup, helps you shop. You will have heard of these two BizRates and Froogle. Kelkoo which is now also part of Yahoo and MSN Shopping are the others.

* Then there are Kids Search Engines. Didn’t know they existed.. or at least I didn’t. Here are two, Yahooligans and Ask Jeeves for Kids. Both with Kid friendly layouts and colors, although Yahooligans is more like a portal of old.

* Multimedia Search Engines. Ditto Image Search, Kazaa Media Desktop for MP3 or Lycos Pictures and Sound. * Speciality Search Engins. Also called vertical search, they specialize in narrow topics like travel, medical, computers domain search. Too lazy to link, but try this.

* Country Specific Search Engines. Too numorous to list, but here is a French one.

* Metacrawlers, metasearch engines. They don’t do the search themselves, but “leech” results from other major search engines. KartOO a really cool serach that shows your searches visually and Mamma, one of the oldest meta search engines on the web.

* Special News Search like Google News, Alta Vista News, Yahoo News.. or the lesser known

* Main Search Engines.. which we will look at below..

Google changed everything, and changed the way we access info on the net. Well this is not about Google, because that has been done to death. This is all about the little guys in search engines. Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves are the main ones and most likely we use them quite regularly. Live is another, but it is still small in terms of users. Now we will ONLY look at the other smaller guys that you might or might not have heard about, but the are worth a try.

* AllTheWeb.Com - used to be known as FAST, but since Yahoo bought out FAST’s parent company Overture, it is now powered by Yahoo. Confusing, no? Anyway nice clean interface with a dash of light blue which is all the rage on the net these days.

* Search.aol.com - from none-other than AOL itself. Sporting a clean simplified interface with also a blue theme. Slight difference is that you can save your searches from the search page itself.

* HotBot provides easy access to top search engines, Google, MSN and Ask.com. Unlike Metacrawlers, it cannot combine all the searches, you have the ability to choose which engine you want to use. Of course why you cannot go directly to Google or MSN pages themselves, I have no idea.

* Ask.com - has a smaller index but sometimes large isn’t necessarily better in search engines, but relevance. Somehow this is wll known for it’s relevant search results, or so I am told because of ExpertRank algorithm uses subject-specific popularity instead of global popularity.

* Gigablast - has a smaller index also but it is specialized search which shows other terms related to your search term - or something like that.

* Looksmart combines regular search and vertical search - so if you are looking for say real estate, you supposedly get better results. Or that is what is meant to happen. Apparently it includes paid listings, so it is a hybrid search engine.

* Finally Open Directory which uses volunteer editors to catalog the web.

There are a whole bunch of the search engines like Dogpile, DayPop which is currently down and Ananova. I do not cover the obvious ones, in case you are wondering what happened to Google Image Search or Google Maps. So what is the verdict? Which is the best? Well I didn’t set out to do a comparison article or do a scientific research. I just wanted to compile a list of some other search engines that we might or might not know about.

Oh, and how did I get all these results? Which search engine did I use to find all this? Well, it’s from Google of course!!

In the last couple of months, the upcoming launch of Wii and Zune have received a lot of attention from tech fans like me. I neither have a PS2 or an iPOD but as a matter of interest am keen to see what happens to these two new consumer electronic brands. I am also interested to see how each will turn out – considering the fact that both are from well known companies in their own field. I have written about the Wii and Zune previously, separately, but now is a good time to review it together. 

ZUNE

Microsoft recently released news on the detailed specs of the Zune and the consumer offering. Despite the rumors that it will retail around 250 US$ (most likely less), Microsoft hasn’t confirmed or denied it. Additionally it will most likely be released for the upcoming holiday season. Whether it is in 06 or07 remains to be seen.

So the big question on every ones mind is that, will Zune be the iPod killer?

I for one think that the term – iPOD killer is overused and almost a cliché. No one can be the iPOD killer, but based on what Microsoft did with XBOX, we can be sure that it will literally dump a lot of R&D and A&P (advertising and promotion) budget behind it.

But can advertising hype alone sustain the Zune? I doubt it. The feature sets included in the release version of the Zune needs to appeal to a certain amount of consumers. This will buy Microsoft the necessary market share into the Media Player category. In the long run Microsoft stands to profit from this investment.

How long is long enough? That remains to be seen, but it would be foolish of Microsoft to ignore the fast growing consumer segment – especially in the Media Player segment. Invest well Microsoft and try not to piss off the relatively minor but highly vocal tech fans – especially the ones with Blogs, and you will have a XBOX in your hand sin a couple of years.

Nintendo Wii

Despite the relatively low tech specifications of the Nintendo Wii, the fan-boys are excited about this. In any other circumstance, launching a less technically spec’ed product would be suicide. In the case of Nintendo Wii, it is an asset… well almost.

The price is almost about 250 US$ and it will launch two days after PS3. Is that a good thing or not. I don’t know. But one thing I am sure about is that it’s underdog status is what will sell the product to the fan-boys who felt betrayed by PS3. That and the innovative Wiimote and the games that it is expected to release. Note my emphasis on the word expected.

It is clear that Nintendo Wii is trying to appeal to a bigger audience of non-hardcore gamers – which is most likely a wise strategy, considering the fact that XBOX 360 and PS3 are more or less fighting for the same, but limited audience.

Ultimately the hardcore fan-boys could be disappointed by the Wii – as their expectations are probably too high, and they will probably go back to their default gaming console. But either way Wii will carve out a more than decent market share from the non-hardcore, causal gaming audience. If I was Microsoft or Sony, Wii can pose a big threat and I would watch it – closely.

So what does this all mean to the average pro-sumer out there? Well, exciting things are afoot and I for one am excited to see how this will all turn out. Heck, maybe I will even buy myself one of them things.

 A funny thing happened last night. Google was down and I had to use Yahoo search.

Google went down, google.com, gmail.com, google analytics - but not google news. I noticed it as I was searching for something. At first I thought it was my screwy connection and tried again and again. But that didn’t work. Then I had to check my gmail and that was down too. So I thought that was a temporary thing too and tried again in a minute or two and that didn’t work.

While for search it was OK to find an alternative for search engines, but not for mail on gmail. Whatever the reason for the downage - it is still down 14 hours after I first noticed it, it shows that just like Windows, just like IE from Miscrosoft, Google is becoming a target of hackers.

Perhaps there is something about size that attracts hackers on the internet. Either way is this a sign of things to come? Google has almost become an Internet utility - just like water and electricity that when it goes down (for whatever reason) it effects a lot of things.

The funnier thing of course was I had to search for “Google Down,” on Yahoo Search to find out what was going on.

Sooner or later you are bound to find all four in the same place. Using sex to sell stuff from softdrinks to home entertainment systems is as old as advertising, so why not use it to sell cameras. Sex, digital cameras .. now somehow that seems to have a very natural fit. Cameras and sex.. a match made in ad heaven.

Here are two executions from the great minds of advertising. One is from Olympus Camera, and the other for Canon. Both use sex to somehow sell their brands. Call me old fashioned, but I feel that advertising has to have at least some form of message - how the brand is different, or better or even a obnoxious “Buy Now” call to action would do.

Just like the women in the old Wendy’s ads says; Where is the message??

The Canon TVC seems to say that with a Canon Digital Camera, you can make your ugly wife look better or even sexier. And is the way the dorky guy reacts supposed to be funny? Yes, there is a line at the end of the TVC that says that “With Cannon, You Can”. Aside from the cheesy line and bad acting, nothing comes out about Canon. If anything, it did more damage to the brand than anything.
A bit of advice for Canon, you need a new storyboard, new production house and new actors. Oh, yes, while you are at it, a new advertising agency would also help. Either that or probably too many Marketing MBAs stirring the pot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXYN6eWiUUI

Olympus TVC. Firstly, even with the grainy video from You Tube, the production values come through, and it does look great in black and white. While the branding is somewhat subtle at the end it does seem to say that Olympus is cool, trendy and sexy. But it all ends there; other than the coolness message, nothing else seems to come through about the brand Olympus. As far as getting the viewer attention, the TVC worked, but now that the viewer is somewhat paying attention, why not say something interesting about your brand? Better yet, say something that will get him interested in the product. Unless of course they want to say that the whole artsy thing was actually shot by an Olympus (riiiiight) and so can you if you use an Olympus. The thing is that they doesn’t even bother to say that. A wasted opportunity.

Did Olympus actually pay several hundred thousand dollars or a couple of billion won for this TVC? Guess they must have, what with a celebrity like Jeon Ji Hyun in it. Come on guys, image helps, but not if the message is missing about your brand.

I don’t know if those two ads worked, but both Canon and Olympus should ask for a refund from their respective agencies or fire whomever approved storyboards. And by the way, by now you should know that sex will most likely get you the attention you want for your brand, but you also got to have a worthwhile message.

Thanks to www.sillycorner.com where I first came across the TVCs.

EDIT : Upon further investigation, looks lilke there are 2 versions of the TVC. Here is the properly branded version. Can’t embed, so click here.