Searching #78: Video

I was watching the Ellen Degeneres Show on TV and then I went to work and read the assignment for this post and thought about searching for a video from the Let's Dance portion of her show that day. I used Blinkx and Truveo to try and find it but ended up going straight to Ellen's website, searched for it there and found it. Even after I had the name of the particular clip I couldn't find it using Blinkx but it came right up with Truveo. When I typed in Ellen Degeneres Show February 4 I got 4 results from Truveo whereas I got 47,000 results with Blinkx and in this case Truveo did not list the particular clip I was looking for, though it's from the show on February 4th. I don't know if is was among the 47,000 clips on Blinkx but then I wasn't going to look through that many. Suffice it to say it wasn't on the first page of results. If I were looking for a particular video I might not use a video search engine to find it and would probably go to a different, more direct source. However if your just browsing I'd use Truveo, Blinkx, YouTube or Hulu.

I've not only explored HCPL’s YouTube channel, I've uploaded videos to it. When I was at the Fairbanks branch I made some video (using the branch camera) of a Guitar Hero event we had at the branch during Teen Tech Week. If you want to check these out go to our channel and look for FB Celebrating Teen Tech Week.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Video from The Ellen Degeneres Show
Image credit: http://www.medgear.org/entry/save-your-child-from-dvds-overuse/

Searching #77: Images

Using AllFreeClipArt was just an exercise in patience as far as I was concerned. I never found a color Santa that didn't look like a troll but I could have guessed this from the very first page. My father always said you get what you pay for. In this case if your not willing to pay for your santa it is going to look like a troll.

Now reading the article “10 Places to Find Free Images Online” was much more helpful. I especially liked the simply straight forward definitions for Public Domain images, Right Protected images, and Royalty free images. Two of the sites I checked out from his list of 10 were moregueFile (come on, just the name got my attention) and Flickr.com.

Flickr - I chose this one because I have a Flickr account that I haven't used in awhile so I wanted to familiarize myself with Flickr again as well as gain a better understanding about using others photos from this source and others potentially using my photos from Flickr (not that they'd really want to my pictures are just your run of the mill type stuff nothing like those raspberries on the the home page of morgueFile that currently have my stomach growling).

MorgueFile - Again I choose to explore this one because of the name and believe me none of these photos are ready for the grave. They are top quality, high resolution, digital photos. Again you must check out the incredible photo of raspberries at http://mrg.bz/A1d1uz

I have used the clip art program for HCPL use. The illustration I picked to use for this blog entry came from the HCPL subscription with clipart.com.

Image credit: item #33371746 from clipart.com school edition. http://downloads.clipart.com/33371746.jpg?t=1265828881&h=bc65729c8edefd45ea518a9647099fc8

Searching #76: Sound Effects

Ok, so when I think of animal sounds I think of the little people animal farm from when I was a kid and every time you opened the barn door a cow would say Moo!



Using FindSounds I found the following animal sounds:
A Dog Barking (a sound I actually am missing these days...)
A Whale
and A Dolphin

While in library school we made a presentation that had to have sounds effects in it and I remember searching for them and finding some really great ones but these two search engines for sounds would have made it easy work.
Using Simply the Best Sounds site, I found:
The sound of an airplane flying past (another sound I miss)
a sound from the "archive", a typewriter
and the ever popular drum roll...

There were some really great sounds that weren't in the public domain, actually the copyright said "unknown" but you might want to go listen. Search pacman and McEnroe.

Searching #75: Google and Beyond

Searching with Blindsearch: My first of the three queries in Blindsearch I searched for strong female characters in literature and Yahoo got my vote. My second query in Blindsearch I searched for jobs for teenagers in Houston and Google got my vote. My final query in Blindsearch I searched for the school code for FAFSA for Lonestar college and once again Google got my vote though Bing also had the same webpage listed as its first return Google's looked like this:

How To Apply
http://www.lonestar.edu/financial-aid-steps.htm
Note: The following school code is required for the FAFSA and LSCS financial ... Your financial aid award is valid at any Lone Star College System college.

and Bing's looked like this

How To Apply
http://www.lonestar.edu/financial-aid-steps.htm
Lone Star College System consists of five colleges, including ... If this is your first time completing a FAFSA, start by getting your PIN. Note: The following school code is ...

I would say Google's description of the result was clearer. The first thing listed is the information about the school code. With Bing, you had to read the entire description and the information about the school code was the very last thing in the description.

So Google got my vote 2 out of 3 times and Google is the search engine I use most often. Though it was interesting to see the similarities and difference between the search engines, it will probably not affect the why I search in the future.

Google was the #1 search engine on Hitwise this week. Below are the top ten according to Hitwise this week. The usage statistics do match my personal choice of a favorite for Google as a search engine.

Top Search Engine - Volume
1. www.google.com 71.61%
2. search.yahoo.com 14.76%
3. www.bing.com 9.13%
4. www.ask.com 2.66%
5. www.aolsearch.com 1.04%

Top Search Engines - Visits
1. Google 63.57%
2. Yahoo! Search 10.77%
3. Bing 9.28%
4. Google images 4.17%
5. Ask 2.39%
6. AOL Search 1.00%
7. Yahoo! Image Search 0.50%
8. Dogpile 0.47%
9. Sphere 0.40%
10. Bing Video Search 0.39%

I recently took a webinar called Google's Hidden Libraries which was very informative. So much so I've signed up for More of Google's Hidden Libraries which will be on 1/27. One of the best things about Google's book search is that it uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) which makes the content of the scanned page searchable. Google is so much more than just a search engine. I use it regularly as a calculator, a dictionary, a thesaurus, to check the flight status for arriving and departing U.S. flights, and check movie times.