How many searches do you do a day? If you’re anything like a person with some kind of internet connection, probably more than 2. Speaking in terms of energy, there’s a lot of search energy going on on the net that, like a hybrid car when coasting or braking, could and should be used for some other energy-producing purpose.

Enter Click4Carbon, a search engine that, for every search you make, donates its profits to reforestation projects around the globe. The point is to offset the carbon balance in the atmosphere. The more carbon-sucking machines (i.e. trees) we have on the planet, the less carbon dioxide stays in the air.

Besides funding forestation projects, Click4Carbon also actively raises environmental awareness by helping users to measure their own carbon footprint and provides practical advice and resources to help them to reduce their negative impact on the environment.

These include their Carbon Calculator which can offer an indication of your impact on the environment. I bet you wouldn’t have guessed that given the picture on the right here. (Yes you would have—I know you’re smart if you read this blog.)

Click4Carbon`s mission is to become the preferred search engine worldwide for all environmentally conscious internet users and organizations. Quite a hefty goal and one that I will personally help realize by using it.

Here’s some surprising information though, and encouraging to most capitalists and all Ayn Rand objectivists. Click4Carbon is a for-profit business funding projects managed by the Plant A Tree Today Foundation. It also publishes a 6-monthly report which independently verifies the revenues made by the company and how they have used them, so you can be sure they’re not just buying better quality pens for their office workers or something.

If you would like to become part of the Click4Carbon community either as an advertiser or friend or if you would like to use Click4Carbon or our Carbon Calculator on your site then they say that they would love to hear from you: enquiries@click4carbon.com

Click4Carbon is the brainchild of husband and wife; John and Claire Russell. Give’em a hand folks! (By the way, the site is itself carbon-neutral. No hypocrisy here.)

What is Agency Seeker?
Agency Seeker is an independent and comprehensive directory of UK recruitment companies with easy-to-use search and personalisation features.

How does it work?
Agency Seeker allows employers and candidates to search our directory of recruitment companies by location, by industry or sector and by agency name. You can also search for agencies with an industry or sector specialism in your local area (eg. Bank Agencies in London).

Who is it for?
Employers and candidates use the Agency Seeker website to research and find recruitment companies in a specific location or with an industry specialism. Recruitment agencies use it to promote their company and services via our listing pages to employers and candidates.

What do I need to know about using a recruitment agency?
Visit our article section for information on everything from agency fees to picking the right agency.

By: Hope Leman

Having discussed MedHelp recently and finding that I kept comparing it in various ways to PatientsLikeMe, I have decided to discuss PatientsLikeMe (PLM) in more depth and compare it a bit more to MedHelp.

One notable, striking difference between them is the lack of advertising on PLM versus the obvious, albeit tasteful and relatively restrained prevalence of ads on MedHelp. That is because PLM employs an intriguing business model. In its own words:

“How does PatientsLikeMe make money?”

We take the information patients share about their experience with the disease, and sell it in a blinded, aggregated and individual format to our partners (i.e., companies that are developing or selling products to patients). These products may include drugs, devices, equipment, insurance, and medical services. We do not rent, sell or share personally identifiable information for marketing purposes or without explicit consent. Because we believe in transparency, we tell our members exactly what we do and do not do with their data.

By selling this data and engaging our partners in conversations about patient needs, we’re helping them better understand the real world medical value of their products so they can improve them. We are also helping companies accelerate the development of new solutions for patients. Our end goal is improved patient care and quality of life.”

And:

“Does PatientsLikeMe have advertising?”

No, we have chosen not to pursue an ad-based business model right now. We want to preserve the sanctity of our user experience. Our business is based on aggregating anonymized information to provide insights to industry partners derived from the shared real-world experiences of our patient members.”

Note the wiggle room allowed by, “…right now.”

The PLM business models raise fascinating, multifaceted questions about the practical value to the purchasers of this data and the ethical ramifications of running a patient community for profit.

First of all, what diseases and conditions are covered under the PLM rubric? Again, it its own words:

“What disease communities does PatientsLikeMe have?”

We started by building a strong ALS community, and have expanded to include Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, HIV, and Mood conditions (including depression, anxiety, bi-polar, OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).  We plan to continue to expand to other diseases and conditions. Our focus is extending this powerful platform to the thousands of patient communities that will benefit from this concept.”

This is considerably fewer communities than those offered by MedHelp:

http://www.medhelp.org/forums/list

My own experience with PLM is primarily as a visitor to the ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) community. I have not been a regular visitor for some months, but I found it the experience incredibly moving. There are few diseases that can wreak such physical devastation and emotional turmoil as ALS and it is really is inspiring to be part of a community in which people with increasing levels of disability (many of the members must communicate via various methods of assistive communication technology and indeed much of the discussion offers invaluable insights into the cutting edge of such technologies discussed in very expert ways by those who know all too well the strengths and weaknesses of such devices and services) reach out, often within minutes, to offer practical advice and moral support on the many aspects of a condition that affects everything from the simple act of breathing to how to communicate sans the ability to speak as such or to be able to make much movement whatsoever. This feeling of solidarity and genuine bonding is the core strength of PLM.

At the same time, I was surprised that one PLM member I spoke to seemed surprised when I mentioned the business model, and said, “It’s a business?” And there is a certain, not overly subtle pressure on users to keep their symptom charts updated. After all, no updating, no data for PLM to market to its clients/partners:

http://blog.patientslikeme.com/2008/07/10/patientslikeme-announces-new-partnerships

And some of the members, realizing what a boon PLM is to those who have made good friends on it and who wish the founders well (and given the monumentally important and admirable role the brothers Jamie and Ben Heywood have played in galvanizing research into ALS, who can blame them?), prod their compatriots to update their personal data. But there isn’t much incentive to chart one’s own inexorable decline into greater debility and to expend ever greater amounts of dwindling energy reserves on what on is an inherently demoralizing, depressing activity. There are those on PLM who are eager to regularly update their data so as to further research into ALS and for simple altruistic reasons. Others, though, simply prefer to while away time in the surprisingly joyful, wise-cracking forums and are not motivated to update their symptoms and medication records by offers of PLM T-shirts or appeals to team spirit despite the fact that the web site is so well engineered that updating one’s records is quite easy and takes very little time. This constant need to remind users to update is a problem for PLM in terms of long-term financial viability, one would think.

It will interesting years hence to see if researchers have made use of the PLM data to compare and contrast it with data gleaned from ALS patients who are less wired or who are participating in competing patient communities, (such as that at MedHelp or in a Yahoo group). The PLM group is an interesting case study of a group of people suffering from a horrible neuromuscular disorder who can ask questions of a resident neuroscientist and a nurse and get responses within a day or two. That is a marvelous thing and more power to PLM. MedHelp, while it enables patients to ask physicians questions, has those features basically separated in an “Ask a Doctor” format versus the integration of patient community and expert-patient interactions on a daily basis of PLM.

Why are we covering patient communities on Alt Search Engines? Because more and more, when average people type in the name of disease into a search engine’s box, the results lead them to patient communities. That is a phenomenon that librarians and other information professionals must recognize and harness to their advantage or at least educate themselves about. I was impressed by the sophistication of the discussion of drug therapy regimes and respiratory therapy devices on PLM, for instance, and learned a lot from such forums. And I got to know a remarkable, courageous group of people and made some good friends. That’s quite a selling point for a brand in a competitive environment.

Posted by Martin in gHacks

Searching is probably the one activity that every Internet user is doing on a daily basis. It does not really matter if it is a student doing research for his next essay, a housewife looking for new recipes, youngsters looking for the latest music videos on Youtube or the couple looking for a new health insurance.

Everyone is constantly searching for information and Firefox users are in the great position to be aided by hundreds of search extensions that make searching easier, comfortable and faster.

To much choice on the other hand puts some pressure back on the user who now has to pick the useful extensions and cast the other that are not helping him aside. That’s where this article comes into play. It lists the Firefox Search Extensions that you need to search the Internet professionally. They help you find the information you are looking for faster and efficiently.

The following list contains useful search plugins that can speed up the information finding process tremendously. No toolbar plugins have been included in the list.

General Search Plugins:

Add to Search Bar - Lots of websites provide search forms which can be used to search the contents of those sites. The Add To Search Bar plugin makes it possible to add those to the list of Firefox search engines so that the search can be conducted from the search function in Firefox.

Advanced URL Builder - Add custom searches to the Firefox right-click menu.

CacheIt! 1.0 - It happens sometimes that a website is not responding. It could be down or moving to another server. CacheIt provides access to cached versions of the page so that the information can be retrieved even if the original website is not responding.

Context Search - Only Google Search is available by default when highlighting a term in Firefox. This plugin adds additional search engine options to the menu so that the user can perform searches on Yahoo, Amazon or eBay.

Cooliris - Formerly Piclens. Provides 3D browsing for Image and Videos searches. Creates stunning effects.

CyberSearch - Supercharges the Firefox 3 Location Bar with search results that appear instantly. Perform searches in the location bar without having to open a search engine.Dict - Look up Word definitions of highlighted words by right-clicking them and selecting the appropriate action.

Find In Tabs - Perform searches among multiple tabs. This works pretty well in conjuction with the MultiSearch plugin.

HighlightAll - Pressing Control F in Firefox opens a search form that allows the user to search on the active page. Highlight All highlights all occurrences of the search term on the page making it easier to find them.

Interclue - Find out what’s behind a search result before clicking the link.

MultiSearch - Ever wanted to search for multiple search terms at once? MultiSearch steps in and makes that possible. Just enter search terms and a comma delimiter to open search results for each of the terms in individual tabs. The terms Firefox, Mozilla, Thunderbird would open three tabs each displaying search results for one of the terms.

Search Keys 0.8.1 - Search Keys adds keyboard navigation to search results pages of Google, Yahoo and Delicious. Instead of clicking on a search term the user can press the assigned number on his keyboard to open the website. This makes it possible to perform a search and open results without using the mouse at all.

Searchbar Autosizer - Automatically resizes and clears the searchbar. Can also revert back to the default search engine. Useful add-on for minimalistic Firefox themes.

Surf Canyon - Search Engine Assistant - A search assistant that automatically recommends and ranks search results based on the users choice. It can pull data from search results pages that are currently not shown to the user.

Who Is This Person? - Highlight a name on a webpage and search for information about that person on sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and Google News.

Site Specific Search Plugins:

Bug.gd Error Search - Bug.gd is a user driven website that contains a huge database of errors and solutions. This search plugin adds the error search to Firefox.

Coogle - Highlights the search phrase on websites that have been discovered by searching on Google.com.

Customize Google - Removes unwanted information like ads from Google search results and adds additional useful information like search options on other search engines to it.

Delicious Bookmarks - Keeps the Bookmarks of Delicious and Firefox in sync.

GooglePreview - Adds thumbnail previews of the websites in the search results.

Locator - Locates highlighted addresses on Google Maps.

Webmaster Specific Search Plugins:

SearchStatus - Displays a wealth of information about the current website in the statusbar. This includes the Google Pagerank and Alexarank. Provides Link Reports, whois search, keyword density and nofollow link options among others.

SEOQuake - A useful extensions for webmasters who want to optimize their pages for various search engines.

His name is John Honovich, and if you’re a video surveillance professional, you’re gonna love him. If you’re not, then I’m sure you can still be platonic. Three days ago, John released a search engine, IPVideoMarket

IPVideoMarket is optimized for video surveillance professionals, or even those avid video surveillance enthusiasts who don’t necessarily get paid for their surveillance, but just love the art, if there is such a thing. Important info, pun intended – it’s a .info site, not .com.

What it is, basically, is a search tool whittled to a very fine point to focus just on video surveillance articles. By filtering out millions of pages into the most relevant 100,000 results, John claims that you should be able to quickly find accurate and helpful video surveillance information.

General purpose search engines, of course, cannot assume the intent of a searcher, so they return a lot of information that is not relevant. Because this search engine is only for video surveillance, the engine can aggressively filter information not important for our profession.

Now, I’m no professional so technically I don’t know anything about video surveillance beyond pointing my cell phone at, say, a tree, and taking a 10 second clip, but I was still able to search for something. Thinking about video surveillance, the first question that occurred to me was, “Who should we first and foremost be surveying by video?”

A search for Iran revealed an article about a hydroelectric dam and how it uses IP video to transmit images back to Tehran about the dam, like so:

Not the titillating excitement I was looking for, but maybe that’s a good thing. Honovich was correct, though, in that I didn’t get millions of irrelevant results /a la /Google. He promised me video surveillance articles, and that’s what I got.

“Our search engine assumes the searcher only wants information relevant to video surveillance. As such, very valuable articles, whitepapers and industry research are much more likely to be found with our search. We hope this helps industry professionals find the key information they need to make better decisions,” said Honovich.

The search engine also tracks in-depth coverage of key video surveillance companies including 3VR, 3xLogic, ACTi, ADT, Aimetis, American Dynamics, Agent Vi, ArecontVision, Avigilon, Axis Communications, BRS Labs, Cieffe, Cernium, Cisco, Dedicated Micros, DIGIOP, DvTel, Envysion, Exacq, Flir, Gentec, Grandeye, IQinVision, Intransa, Firetide, FluidMesh, IBM, Immervision, Indigovision, Intellivid, Intransa,ioimage, IQinvision, Milestone Systems, Mobotix, ObjectVideo, Panasonic, Pelco, Pivot3, SightLogix, Vidsys and Vivotek.

Now, if someone were to build a search engine that searched only gorillas, that would be fun. Someone should get on that.