Bob Caswell

Last week I pointed out that the easiest way for Google to improve search would be to allow one query to bring up separated results by regular sites, blogs, news, photos, and/or video. I mentioned that the big three for me would be regular search results, blog posts, and news. I’d be able to get pertinent, organized results in one third the time. Why not put in my search query once and get the top 10 results from each category on the same page?

Well, it turns out Google does do some of that through its experimental site SearchMash.com. Though, personally, I’m even more impressed with Amazon’s A9.com, which offers more customizations for even better search results. Here’s how they compare:

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Carbonite is an automated online backup service that is in the business of pleasing anyone who needs a computer backed up but who hates remembering to do it (that would be most of us). I’ve been giving the service a trial run for the last few days via the company’s two week free trial. Though there may be a couple of features I’d like to see implemented, the company’s mantra of “Backup. Simple.” definitely holds true.

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For an introduction to the concept behind Digg, see A Beginner’s Guide to Community Driven Web Content. This post assumes you know what “Digg-like” means and will dive into the pros and cons / advantages and disadvantages of the top 5 Digg-like sites (read: community driven web content sites; it’s just easier to say Digg-like). The sites to be compared are Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Newsvine, and Shoutwire.

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ReviewMe is a new online service that is in the business of paying bloggers (like myself) to review products or services. The company is owned by Text Links Ads, which was recently acquired by MediaWhiz. I only mention this because both companies are fairly well respected and give the automatically-labeled-as-controversial new business ReviewMe some much needed support.

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Google can’t help but stay in the spotlight. Today’s latest: Google Picasa Web Albums. I quickly signed up for this “test” (rather than “beta” for some reason) product and gave it a test spin. Initial impression: yet another impressive, free tool from Google for online collaboration. Read on for features and screenshots:

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