Orangeinks

Scour: The Social Search Engine that Pays Users

Scour is many things. It’s a search engine aggregator which displays search results from different and popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. It’s also a social networking site where users are allowed to rate give comments to the search results. Think of it as a Digg style search engine. Lastly, Scour is also a web service that rewards its users for using the service.

The search engine’s interface is clean and easy to on the eyes. Of course, the ranking in search results are very much different from the search engines that it aggregates search results from. However, Scour gives you the power to sort the search results by search engine. If you want search results from Google to appear first, then just click the Google icon above the search results. This is also true for Yahoo and MSN respectively. If I am not mistaken, the Scour ranking will be based on user recommendations. The search results ranked previously by users will be displayed first if you choose to sort by Scour rankings.

When you look at the search results, you will see a small icon from each respective search engine. Along with those icons, you will see a number which is the rank of that URL in that particular search engine. Like most search engines, you can also filter search results by images and videos.

Scour offers rewards to its users. Every time you make a search using Scour, your points increases by 1. This is also true every time you vote on a search result and make a comment. Those points can be redeemed in the form of a Visa Gift Card.

Scour Points Value
25,000 = $100
12,500 = $50
6,500 = $25

This means that you need to do more than 200 searches a day in order to earn 25$ in one month. That’s a lot of searches to make in a day. Or, you can invite friends to join in and you will get 25 percent of what they make.

Putting aside the money making scheme, Scour is still a very promising web service which I won’t mind using even without the rewards.

Tags: Google, msn, rank, scour, search-engine, Social Networking, social voting, Yahoo

Archive your IM Messages Online Using Dexrex

Dexrex is an online solution for IM users who wants to easily archive their IM conversations online. Users will never have to worry about their archived conversations to be deleted in the event of a computer crash. Remembering to backup archived conversations is tough work for novice users and often given low priority even by advanced users.

This is perfect for heavy IM users who are very concerned with their IM conversations. Some of those IM conversations contain important phone numbers, website links and other important and treasured messages from friends and family. Dexrex aims to end that worry of having to lose your treasured IM moments. Dexrex is also a place where you can upload your existing conversations saved in your hard drive.

Registration is not needed in order to start using Dexrex. All you have to do is login using your IM account username and password. There is no sign up because when you type in your information it automatically checks with your IM Network to make sure the screen name and password is a match. Since you own your screen name and password, you confirm this account. You also need to download and install the Dexrex IM plugin for it to recognize what IM you are using. This will enable Dexrex to log your IM conversations in your Dexrex account. You can also link multiple IM accounts together in one single Dexrex account. That way you only have to login using one IM account to see your other IM logs in Dexrex. If you think your regular screen name’s password is too easy to guess, you can always add extra security by turning on the Lockdown feature.

Dexrex works only on Windows 2k, XP and Vista. It supports Pidgin, AIM Lite/Pro, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Trillian, Digsby, Miranda, Instantbird, Meca, Mercury, Emesene and aMSN chat clients. Supported networks include AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber, Windows Live, Skype, Yahoo Messenger and Blackberry (SMS).

A share feature is also available in the service. You can easily do this by clicking the share button just below the conversation bubble. Dexrex will automatically generate a public URL for the selected conversation. This page can be publicly viewed by people you shared the link with. Just be careful in using the share feature. You don’t want your most private conversations fall into the
wrong hands.

Dexrex is a useful tool for saving your chat conversations and easily sharing them.

Tags: dexrex, google talk, IM, IM extension, sms, Yahoo

Powerset: The Natural Language Search Engine

How many times have you searched Google or Yahoo using a phrase or a sentence and returned a search result of a page with just a bunch of keywords related to your search and not the real context that you want? Sometimes you’ll end up browsing the second or third page of the search results just to find what you are really looking for. This is why most people agree that the Google page ranking system is losing its relevance. Given this, most people still use the first page of Google search results as their primary resource of information. Low ranking pages with relevant content still loses the battle in the page ranking system Google has devised. Google’s reliance on keywords in their search algorithm doesn’t entirely mean that all the search results they are providing are totally irrelevant. Sometimes it just takes more time to find what you are really looking for in the Google search pages, especially for novice and average users.

Soon, a new search engine called Powerset will emerge and will change how people search the web.  Powerset is a natural language search company that is building a transformative (learning) consumer search engine. Unlike traditional keyword search that only indexes the keywords that appear on a page, Powerset indexes the meaning of the sentences in each page. By matching the meaning of the query against the meaning of sentences in their index, Powerset promises to often return better, more accurate results and even return results that aren’t possible with traditional keyword search.

The Powerset technology is still under development and there is no official launch date yet. If you must try it out, you can register for an invitation in PowerLabs, a community where users can interact with demonstrations of Powerset’s technolog. You can try out their Wiki Search Sneak Peek demo. It offers you a chance to play with an early application of Powerset’s technology based on an index of Wikipedia. You can also take part and give feedback to help improve their natural language indexing, and suggest ideas for the ideal search engine. This is another great example of user interaction towards the development of new technologies and products.

Tags: Google, google search powerset, search-engine, searching, web search engine, Yahoo

Ecocho: The Green Search Engine

Ecocho is an eco-friendly search engine that promises to grow up to two trees for every 1000 searches made using their site. The green search engine team claims that using Ecocho will not alter or slow down their search. It allows you to search between two search engine giants (Google and Yahoo) who have given their support to the Ecocho project.

A thousand searches on Ecocho allow us to buy enough carbon offset credits to remove 1 ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. This works out at two trees spending a year sucking CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow, which makes us very happy.

Ecocho aims to contribute seventy percent (70%) of their revenue back into carbon offset credits, for the growth of trees. The carbon credits are provided by Global Carbon Exchange (GCX) and KPMG. If you want to help Ecocho in saving the environment, be sure to make your searches using their website. You can also add the Ecocho search bar to your sites by copying the codes which can be found here.

Tags: carbon cycle, carbon offset, ecocho, environment, Google, search-engine, web search engine, website, Yahoo

Yahoo CAPTCHA Cracked By Russians

CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart), is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can’t:

The Yahoo! CAPTCHA being the most difficult CAPTCHA to crack found itself vulnerable to a team of Russian hackers who found a way to read the CAPTCHA with 35% accuracy. Yahoo! Captcha utilizes bended alpha numeric characters and other features that one might expect from a strong CAPTCHA, but is still recognizable by humans.

This is what the hackers said about Yahoo! CAPTCHA:

The CAPTCHA has a vulnerability we’ll discuss later. It’s not necessary to achieve high degree of accuracy when designing automated recognition software. The accuracy of 15% is enough when attacker is able to run 100.000 tries per day, taking into the consideration the price of not automated recognition – one cent per one CAPTCHA.

This is an alarming issue for everybody. This kind of vulnerability will allow more emails to be registered automatically and can be used for phishing spam and fraud. This will clearly have a great negative impact on the online community and businesses. They must find new ways to improve CAPTCHA. Maybe we’ll be seeing some form of evolution in CAPTCHA, what are those billion dollar companies paying their programmers and developers for anyway. If this is not resolved quickly, we can expect automated online businesses, blogs, and any site that utilizes CAPTCHA to take extra effort in making sure that they are safe from spam by checking their comments and transactions manually.

Source: geeksaresexy

Tags: captcha, flaw, security, spam, Yahoo

Vista Exclusive Yahoo Messenger Available for Download

After a long wait for Vista users, the Instant Messaging service of Yahoo is now available for download. The Messenger features Tabbed Windows, Sidebar Integration, Contact Scaling and the usual Skin Editing. Go on to their download page to check the new messenger out for yourself.

Tags: Messenger, Vista, Windows, Yahoo