Information Research Weblog

Grahame Gould drew my attention to the fact that the Free-Conversant server has been down and the last lot of 'Odds and ends' was not reachable - so, as compensation, here's another lot. I've no idea why the server was down, not having had any information about it.

Music piracy is hitting the headlines again. Regular aficionados of this site may recall an earlier message on the subject and today the music industry won plaudits for its suing of a 71-year old grandfather and a 12-year old child. That's the way to do it, guys - go for the soft targets. Naturally, it has been picked up by the other Weblogs and The Shifted Librarian raises a point or two.

The whole thing makes another item from Techdirt all the more interesting: apparently the music industry is using file-sharing networks it abhors to collect market research data.

On the search front, there's a rather curious hybrid at Anacubis, described as an integration of :

...the Amazon and Google search APIs with the anacubis^TM Viewer to deliver an innovative and powerful new way to browse the extensive catalogue of books, CD, DVDs and videos for sale at Amazon.com - and then explore related information amongst Google's 3 billion plus web documents

The demo worked fine the first time I used it, but refused to perform again. Try it out, however, you never know your luck. I'm not sure who it is intended for - perhaps simply to show that the Anacuba visualisation software works - but I'm always chary of visualisation of searches, given the way people search and the limited responses they are happy with. Pictures are not always worth a thousand words. Thanks to ResearchBuzz for that one.