Information Research Weblog

It's been a while since I posted to the log as I'm in Sweden and have been for the past week and too busy to give time to it.

I've also been experiencing server problems - unable to access my Webmail box at Sheffield for the past couple of days, so people may have been trying to contact me with my knowing. My Swedish address will serve for anyone who has been trying to reach me - "tom.wilson@hb.se"

I assume that many of you have been infected by the SoBig virus - I received a message from one correspondent saying that he had had 700 messages in one morning. I don't think I had that many, but I certainly had several hundred over the course of last week. It is no comfort to learn (from BBC News) that this has been the fastest proliferating virus of all time.

News on the search front today: my last entry related to Overture and now we learn (from CNET news) that Google has expanded its index beyond the 3.2 billion pages claimed by Overture. As the report says:

But since then, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has quietly leaped ahead again, expanding its database to more than 3.3 billion Web documents by Thursday this week, according to its home page. A Google representative confirmed the change.

"Google raised the number on its home page to accurately reflect the number of Web pages it offers consumers," a representative wrote in an e-mail. The search company's worldwide index now includes 3.3 billion Web documents, 800 million Usenet pages and 400 million images.

On another front, the legal system hit a new high in the UK this week as a result of the Hutton Enquiry. Its Web site is attracting 'upwards of 80,000 visitors a day', according to the Guardian's Online supplement. The transcripts of the hearings into the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly make fascinating reading as politicians, their public relations staff and journalists dance around the questions put. The big news, of course, related to Tony Blair's appearance before the Inquiry earlier this week - the jury is out on that performance but from what I read it was an assured performance with all the glibness of which the man is capable - whether anything he says these days can be trusted, is another matter, and the polls suggest that the public appreciation of him has waned considerably.

There news and screenshots of the latest versions of MSoft's new (three years down the road?) operating system, code-named Longhorn, at WinSupersite.com. The thrust appears to be more and more towards multimedia integration - so I guess that's another zillion features that the typical user will make little us of!

Enough for now! Have a good week-end