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Google Businesses The Internet Media

Google Keyhole, Google Scholar 270

Posted by michael from the google-google?-google! dept.
baegucb_18706 writes "The front page of Google has a link to Keyhole where you can download a free trial of satellite imagery. Is it worth the cost for a subscription, and is it the start of the real commercialism for Google? And a challenge to MS's imagery?" D H NG writes "According to CNET, Google introduced a new service for academics called Google Scholar on Wednesday. This service searches scholarly literature such as technical reports, theses and abstracts. This service will not carry ads." And finally, reader ian@FalsePositives.com links to some speculation about how a sufficiently competent search engine could write the news itself.
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Google Keyhole, Google Scholar More

Google Keyhole, Google Scholar

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  • Satelite imagery (Score:4, Interesting)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @09:52AM (#10852914) Journal
    Sure its nice, and fun to browse, but I don't see a real good consistent profit motive for providing satelite imagery. Who needs it that can't get it already at a local courthouse, etc.

    Unless someone can show me otherwise.

    • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:02AM (#10853012) Homepage Journal
      I think people want it right there, right then. I believe most people will get what they need from the 7 day trial.

      It will be an amazing asset for schools and colleges etc. The 3d exploration module looks really good, and combined with being able to switch to a martian map, it increases it uses further.

      I see some of the imagary is scanned at a 3inch resolution (Las vegas for example), but the majority of the planet is at the lesser 70cm-1m range.
      3 inches! Just think about how detailed that is, they can see your Tin Foil Beany. They KNOW your wearing it.

      I live in England and would love this software, but they don't seem to have the resolution here yet (London is down as a 70cm map, I'm nowhere near there so its useless...

      • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:4, Insightful)

        by moresheth ( 678206 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:48AM (#10854258)
        I remember reading once about an in-car guidance system in Japan that shows you directions to your destination in 3d real-world representations, like playing an FPS.

        Now think about how Google recently grabbed up a small mapquest-like mapping company.

        Just thinking aloud here, how much would Google stand to leap over the competition if it were to make software that functions like mapquest, only gives you the ability to fly around, looking at the route?

      • If we can monitor things so closely, can anyone explain to me why we can't watch iraq, or afganastan for movement by terrorists?
        • Its not that they can't see the areas effected, its that the resolution and refresh rate is too slow to pick up small scale movements.

          The military have access to much more data than this, and they still run into the same problems, when you see the movies zooming in and watching the henchman lighting a cigarette or blowing up a compound, you are seeing creative expression.

          Since Google obviously arent the government, they wont have access to the rawest, newest images.

          Infact, most of the sat images used are

    • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:3, Interesting)

      by swordboy ( 472941 )
      but I don't see a real good consistent profit motive for providing satelite imagery.

      I know surveyors who use terraserver multiple times per day. It is a vital tool for them.

      • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:5, Insightful)

        by suso ( 153703 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:13AM (#10853115) Journal
        Ok sure, but I imagine that surveyors seek out the tools they need, they don't expect them to be on the frontpage of google.

        What I'm asking is "is the everyday joe blow going to be using a tool like this on a daily basis for something other than play?".

        • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:4, Interesting)

          by CreatureComfort ( 741652 ) * on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:34AM (#10853305)

          I think the more relevant question is, will the average Joe Blow pay a monthly subscription for this just to occasionally play. I bet, and Google is betting, that the answer to that is yes. Look at all the other garbage people spend money on for play.

          Also, why is using this "for play" not a valid reason for it to be offered?
          • Also, why is using this "for play" not a valid reason for it to be offered?

            It is a valid reason, so long as it lasts. It might appeal to a niche market who will pay for it, but for most people, they will try it for a few days, think its neat to move around the world in 3d. But eventually will find no entertainment in it. IMHO, this is the same problem virtual environments like Second Life fail. There is not much reason to come back. You fly around for a while, get bored and forget about it.

            I think w

        • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:3, Insightful)

          by swordboy ( 472941 )
          Ok sure, but I imagine that surveyors seek out the tools they need, they don't expect them to be on the frontpage of google.

          It is just advertising. Google doesn't intent to keep it on the front page but this is the cheapest way to get exposure for the service. Only a very small percentage of the people out there will need and pay for this but how will google get those people to do so if they don't advertise the fact that they've got this service available?

          What's the best way to let people know what ser

        • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:2, Informative)

          by LnxAddct ( 679316 )
          Considering that the subscription price was 2 to 3 times what it is now and that previous owners were still proftiable, I'd be willing to bet that yes there are people willing to use it.
          Regards,
          Steve
        • I was wondering the same thing, and it concerned me that a company that usually runs so lean, mean and without apologies (e.g. flashy graphics) would provide such an ostensibly superfluous service. If they can tie it into a service to provide directions, that might be useful. I hope they're not just worried about Micros~1.

          Google Scholar seems very promising, though. Is this finally a "web" that school instructors can love?

        • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Bagpiper ( 22751 )
          I found mapquest.com's similar (but free and now sadly missing) service useful when househunting, to get a better idea of what to expect of the neighborhoods I was considering.

          It saved me the trouble of going out to view the house, only to find it shared a backyard with the local GiantSuperWigglyFoodMart. I could find this out from the comfort of my own couch.

    • Re:Satelite imagery (Score:4, Interesting)

      by keefebert ( 535583 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @12:07PM (#10854548) Homepage
      I stumbled upon this a few weeks ago when Google first bought keyhole. I showed it to my boss at work, and 5 minutes later we are iamging properties we manage and looking at potential new customers. Yeah, for Joe Blow it is useless, but for us it will become another key componant to generating business. It fits in perfectly for what we do, and only cost us $30. We'll use it constantly, and I wouldn't have known about it if it weren't posted on the front page.

  • lexis-nexis replacement (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mmkkbb ( 816035 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @09:54AM (#10852940) Homepage Journal
    Is that what Google scholar is going for? I guess it would end up as a pay service before long.
    • Typically you get an abstract free, then pay for the paper. I suspect that google won't charge for the search itself, but will repeat this tried and true business method somehow (maybe they can make arrangements for a commission from the sale of the paper by the site they found for the person. Searching for nonfree content doesn't count as an ad)
      • I did a search on my papers and was a able to view a PDF of them. It looks like they are getting versions posted on distance education websites. These papers are all licensed for free viewing for academic purposes. The only drawback seems to be that supplimentary materials like code and videos are not linked to.
    • If it provides good information then it could be good for more than just schools but for folks in R&D or even just design. To see what others ahve done and are doing is good for keeping at the cutting edge.

    • Re:lexis-nexis replacement (Score:5, Interesting)

      by calibanDNS ( 32250 ) <brad_statonNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:09AM (#10853078)
      My first thought when I read this was that Google could easily challenge Lexis-Nexis [lexisnexis.com] and Westlaw [westlaw.com] for their hold on the law school community in the US. While my wife was in law school I routinely helped her research cases using both of these services, and quite frankly their interface sucks. It took forever to find just about anything, and they had to continually pelt the students with free gifts just to keep them coming back. Google could potentially do very well in this area and I think there is certainly room for another competitor; especially one with Google's name recognition.

    • Re:lexis-nexis replacement (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacobm ( 68967 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:40AM (#10853382) Homepage
      More a CiteSeer [psu.edu] replacement, I think. The idea behind CiteSeer is that in academic computer science, most researchers (and most conferences and journals) make their papers available for free on the web, but there are so many of them and so many places to look that actually finding a paper that's relevant to your research is really hard. The CiteSeer folks realized that web spiders could do a very good job of indexing all those papers and putting them in a searchable form and that it was much cheaper (computationally, financially, effort-wise) than traditional approaches like Lexis/Nexis. CiteSeer has been available for free for years, and Google Scholar seems like it's just a much better interface to the same idea, so I don't see any reason why they'd turn it into a pay service.

      • Re:lexis-nexis replacement (Score:5, Informative)

        by Cade144 ( 553696 ) * on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:18AM (#10853846) Homepage

        I also noticed that Google Scholar lists how many times a paper is cited by other works. This seems like an excellent use of PageRank technology.

        It is also helpful for academics who need to show that their published papers are being cited. Helps with grant applications and tenure review, I would assume.

        • >I also noticed that Google Scholar lists how many
          > times a paper is cited by other works. This seems
          > like an excellent use of PageRank technology.

          CiteSeer lists how many times per year a paper is cited by other works. As a researcher, this shows you when this idea was a topic of interest, which is quite useful.

          When you're looking for CS papers, there's truly nothing better than CiteSeer. Everything is so well cross referenced its rediculous. You can explore entire subject domains with ease.
    • We don't use Lexis-Nexis in the sciences (although I remember it from my debate days), but I believe this could seriously damage Web of Science by ISI. The searches on that are so horrible that I was using Google instead *before* google scholar came out. I could literally pick up a paper, select words from the title, enter them in the search, and WOS won't find the paper. Look it up by the authors, *then* it finds it. Piece of shit.

      I likely won't use WOS again, especially since they won't let me export

  • NASA? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Clemensa ( 800698 ) <Aranell&gmail,com> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @09:54AM (#10852941)
    Is this not very similar to what NASA are doing? NASA's is free, but I think Google's has a much better resolution and can zoom in more detail. However, I remember a while back NASA saying they would probably support Open Source in the near future with their project?
    • I remember a while back NASA saying they would probably support Open Source in the near future with their project?

      Well, that's a good sign :D

    • Re:NASA? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      http://learn.arc.nasa.gov/worldwind/

      runs on PC, uses .NET, so /.ers with their high morals will not get to enjoy this.

      nothing cooler than a USGS 1M in 3D.

  • Not Such Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by dorward ( 129628 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @09:55AM (#10852948) Homepage Journal
    Google isn't linking to Keyhole here. Maybe is it to random users, or selected geographical areas.

  • Winders (Score:2, Informative)

    by doon ( 23278 )
    So I go to Download Free Registration, and it says compatible with Windows for PC's. So I guess I won't be able to use it :(

  • Authors (Score:5, Interesting)

    by endlessoul ( 741131 ) <endlessoul.gmail@com> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @09:57AM (#10852967)
    From the website:
    I'm an author. Why would I want my articles in Google Scholar?

    Your work likely has great value to a number of people who may not know it exists. By including your articles in Google Scholar, others will be more likely to find them, learn from them, cite them and build on the foundation you have laid.

    Sounds like a good way to make yourself known in the writing world. For now, it sounds like a kickass idea. Go Google.

  • Not a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Staplerh ( 806722 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @09:59AM (#10852975) Homepage
    So Google included Keyhole in its list of tools, which now takes another click (on more >> from the google homepage) to get to it. Heaven forbid that Google would do anything remotely business-like.

    Quite frankly, Google is a corporation, and if they can help Keyhole get a few more customers (who need the service for whatever reason) while making a few dollars on the side, I think we should accept it as completely legitimate.

    And no, I don't think this is the start of a slippery slope of Google into outrageous commercialism.

    • Re:Not a big deal (Score:2, Interesting)

      by _Pinky_ ( 75643 )
      I completely agree... Google provides ads, but not obtrusive, like other sites. This just falls in the same line.

      I don't have the link when I hit the main page, but even so, it's a link. You don't want the service, don't click on it...

      It's not a popup, it's not tricking people to click on it... and if it helps google continue providing the service they provide, I'm for it...

    • Re:Not a big deal (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Nutshell_TA ( 830986 )
      Google acquired Keyhole http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html [google.com] so linking to them from their Google tools is totally legitimate IMHO
    • It happened over three weeks ago. The news is on Keyhole's front page.
    • I am just not very impressed. Earthviewer is a cool software, but I used it a year ago and nothing has really changed since then. Google acquiring the company just doesn't look revolutionary. We expect more from them and their infamous PhD team. We expect originality, we expect breakthroughs. And what do we get? Just a product, which is not even new. I mean, it's great that they don't buy innovative campanies just to crush them, but I don't see any added value either.

  • Scholar search! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @09:59AM (#10852978) Homepage
    Excellent! As a postgrad CS student, I've been more or less relying on Citeseer [psu.edu] and Google to search for literature online. Citeseer is really useful, but I find its search rather cumbersome. If Google can create a specialty search for academic papers...I'm more than thrilled! Go Google!

    • It's still just a plain vanilla text search, though. Lots of sites are working day and night to create high-quality metadata for their holdings and share those data around, going out of their way to expose such metadata to spiders, but where do you go to find a search engine which can be told to, for example, find articles *by* $WELL_KNOWN_SCIENTIST as opposed to articles *mentioning* $WELL_KNOWN_SCIENTIST?
    • I second this comment. Another site that is invaluable for me is ACM's digital library (http://acm.org/dl) -- this is essentially citeseer on steroids: links to citations, citation count, reference counts, author relationships, the works. ACM also offers some nice things like full listings of where the publication came from, BibTex entries and the like.

      One really cool thing also is that they give you PDF access to these articles.

      One really sucky thing is that you have to pay to get access to these artic

    • If you really are doing research in computer science or IT, a subscription to the ACM portal [acm.org] is well worth the expense. There is an astounding amount of information available through the portal and I've gotten quite a bit of use out of it. A quick search with Google Scholar shows that at least some of the portal content is indexed by this new tool but I don't know how much and if it is all available for free (I would hope not - at least not for another year when most of the current ACM portal subscription

    • What it really needs is to give a bibtex entry for each paper it indexes. That would be so useful...
      • Dang! Google has risen to the occasion, yet again. I'd like to see them add some of citeseer's functionality (such as BibTeX entries), but as a first cut, it rocks.

        For me, Keyhole is a toy. The 4" resolution they get of Cambridge is kinda scary, though!

  • Worldwind (Score:5, Informative)

    by SammysIsland ( 705274 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:01AM (#10853002)
    ummm.... worldwind [nasa.gov] from NASA is free and seems to be the same thing...

    • Re:Worldwind (Score:3, Informative)

      by entrager ( 567758 )
      As far as I can tell (I'm still downloading it), the highest resolution World Wind provides is 15m/pixel. Keyhole has far higher resolution, down to 1ft/pixel in most areas.

      • Re:Worldwind (Score:2, Informative)

        by stg ( 43177 )
        No, World Wind has tons of black&white 1 meter coverage through USGS, and a few select urban areas at .25 meter, color.

        I've used both, and Keyhole has fairly better US coverage and tools, but had very poor coverage on most of the world - usually just the Blue Marble NASA texture (not even landsat).

        World Wind's Landsat server is still off after an earlier slashdotting but there is some cache files and proxy servers around (info available on their forum). The program is already open source and available

  • EPIC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jamie ( 78724 ) <jamie@slashdot.org> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:03AM (#10853022) Journal
    That last link, http://poynterextra.org/epic/ [poynterextra.org], is really interesting. But the key technological turning point, where Google comes up with a magic algorithm to combine and rewrite multiple news stories to generate a customized, nuanced, original news story for each reader, is not grounded in reality.

    Rewriting English is similar to summarizing it. Using clever tricks, computers are about as good at writing a précis of a block of text as a dull 3rd grader -- every such summary lacks nuance, because the computer that generated it lacks understanding. All there is, is tricks. So the idea that an algorithm can be taught not only to understand the meaning of news stories that were written by humans, but then to rewrite them adaptively, is pure science fiction.

    My favorite example of this is Cyc [cyc.com], a project to feed into a database all the propositions which some believe constitute "common sense." For example, Cyc knows that dogs and cats are mammals, and that they are common pets, so one could tell it "I have a mammal as a pet," and it could deduce that I have a dog or a cat or maybe something else. In the early 1990s, when the project was getting started, its researchers believed that in about five years, it would be intelligent enough to read plain English text on its own and understand it well enough to assimilate into its database. At that point, of course, it would start absorbing all the knowledge in the world until it became the smartest encyclopedia there was.

    And then in the last 1990s, its researchers were again interviewed, and again they said that it would soon be intelligent enough to read plain English text on its own and understand it. When? In about five years. For any time T, strong AI is always about five years away.

    So I'm amused that the strong AI postulated in that excellent Flash animation, the key which allows "big media" to die off because computers will do custom rewrites of amateur news dispatches and form newsfeeds of their own, comes to pass in... about five years. I don't think the New York Times has much to worry about.

    • Re:EPIC (Score:2, Funny)

      by mwlewis ( 794711 )
      I don't think the New York Times has much to worry
      I think the NY Times does have much to worry about...but AI hasn't made the list yet.
    • I think it's funny that the idea has arisen of late that computers can ever parse information as fluidly as the animation suggests. We've had computer science for decades and speech and language analysts for centuries before that and the only thing that they've concluded is that language is a very complex thing.

      I speak English, German, French, and Spanish, so my question is this: how can Google even know the difference of languages without the appropriate headers? Well, Google feeds a set of common words,
      • About language detection, probably a bayesian algorithm should learn that pretty well (i.e. with POPFile [sourceforge.net] would not be so hard to try to classify mails for language.

        But there should be easier ways. As far i remember most languages have its own letter distribution (i.e. around 20% 'e', 10% 'a', etc), i.e. counting frequency of letters from texts in different languages should be enough to differentiate and aggrupate them... at least, if there enough text in it.

      • We've had computer science for decades and speech and language analysts for centuries before that and the only thing that they've concluded is that language is a very complex thing.

        There sort of have been language analysts for hundreds of years, but linguistics as a serious, scientific discipline is a quite recent thing. About the same as computer science really, in more than one way. And I get the impression there's more to it than "language is very complex" - that's true, but if there wasn't more to it

  • Price (Score:4, Informative)

    by alatesystems ( 51331 ) <chris AT chrisbenard DOT net> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:05AM (#10853039) Homepage Journal
    The price is free when you have an Nvidia GPU, which I'm sure a lot of you do.

    Click here [nvidia.com] to get an Nvidia only free(beer) version. Their site seems to be down at the moment, which is odd for such a large company, but when it comes back up, you can get it from there. There are many other cool programs you can get for free if you have an Nvidia card while you are there.

    • Re:Price (Score:3, Informative)

      by isecore ( 132059 )
      The price is free when you have an Nvidia GPU, which I'm sure a lot of you do.

      Yes, you get the software and a trial-subscription.

      But you still need a "real" subscription to use it more than 14 days. You can sign up for a free trial-version every 14 days, but that seems like a fair pain in the derriére.

      Also if memory serves me Nvidia-users get a slight discount when purchasing a subscription.

    • Re:Price (Score:2, Interesting)

      by teeheehee ( 12647 ) *
      Not exactly. It's similar to the LT version where you get a free trial account for 7 days, but then you'll still have to pay. For LT, it's $29.95 for a year, and for NV it's $24.95 [ LT [keyhole.com] and NV [keyhole.com]]

      I purchased this service about a year ago for NV, before the buyout by Google. Their NV version was $10 cheaper than the LT version. I forget the cost at the moment.

      I tried them out after hearing they were the service used by the news media (CNN I think) during the latest Iraq war to display the area and mountainous

  • Keyholes Maps (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IndigoZenith ( 791590 ) <indigozenith&laptopmods,net> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:10AM (#10853082) Homepage
    I think keyhole has more Sat. Imagery of Iraq and Afghanistan, than all of the U.S. put together. This is pretty much a good way to tell if you are on the US hit list, when more and more Imagery is available for your Counrty (At least in the Middle East, otherwise Italy and Greece need to watch their asses). Otherwise, I think this is a great step for Google to take if they are developing their own in-house MapQuest. Plus it is too much fun spinning the planet in circles.
    • This is pretty much a good way to tell if you are on the US hit list, when more and more Imagery is available for your Counrty

      We never liked Alberta anyway...

    • Re:Keyholes Maps (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dustbowl ( 809387 )
      Go take a look in Israel; IIRC, the US Govt place a limit on the detail level that could be displayed for Israel, something like 2km, which would only be increased if a competing service from outside the US went to a higher resolution. I roughly found where my apartment might be though. At 31"09'41.35N and 34"43'41.20E there seems to be some censorship going on maybe?
    • Reasons why there is more imagery in some places than others are probably not as cynical as one might suspect. Demand from the public and news organizations has as much to do with Iraq & Afghanistan being covered so well as do potential military concerns. The best imagery available to the public comes from commercial satellites. Some commercial stuff is better than what you can get from the government, at least w/o being in a highly classified environment. It's not that expensive to pay to have an i

  • 3 inches (Score:3, Interesting)

    by notthepainter ( 759494 ) <oblique@@@alum...mit...edu> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:15AM (#10853137) Homepage
    Hmmm, Cambride Massachusetts is imaged down to a 3 inch resolution. I wonder what they did to deserve that.

    Not quite licenes plate reading, but getting there.

    I think I'll put a brim on my tin-foil hat.

  • I downloaded and installed the 7-day free trial a couple of weeks ago, shortly after Google purchased the service and dropped the price of an annual subscription to a more reasonable level.

    If they could have kept my DSL pipe full (or even occasionally full) when pulling down the image data I probably would have sprung for the subscription but the service was just unacceptably slow.

    They do recommend that users have a broadband connection, so presumably the throughput will improve someday. However, if yo
  • I was giving Google Scholar a whirl, and found this scholarly paper from 1998 at the bottom of my search page [google.com]:

    Sonic hedgehog is essential to foregut development [google.com].

    These days, foregut development is more from playing Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, I suppose...
    • I'm not a biologist/geneticist/etc, but "Sonic Hedgehog" is a protein named because of it's spikey appearance. Biologists are just as bad as physicists when it comes to naming things. Remember particle names? "up", "down", "strange"...

      And don't get me started on the "funny" names us computer people like to give things...

  • Worries about Scholar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 3rd_Floo ( 443611 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:34AM (#10853310) Homepage
    The only thing I worry about with scholar, after giving it a whirl, is that some newer papers that have recently been published dont appear, since it seems it builds its index off of citations first. I worry that if Scholar does take hold, newer more obscure papers that may not get the publicity of more mainstream journals and venues of publication will never be seen again (This is all reliant on their indexing model not getting better). Perhaps i'll have to start submiting abstracts of my work to Google as well now...

  • So it's basically CiteSeer? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:36AM (#10853326) Homepage
    Google Scholar basically seems to be an attempt to replace CiteSeer. It doesn't seem to have quite as many features in terms of displaying information as CiteSeer does, but it does have the important features, and it does lack a couple of the longstanding problems with CiteSeer (for example, that CiteSeer is absurdly slow)...

    I am curious which produces better search results. Google seems to produce its results mainly from a handful of sources, but a couple of tests showed it giving more relevant results than CiteSeer, and Google Scholar also immediately returned a copy of this one specific article I was trying to find awhile back that I knew to exist but couldn't find either on CiteSeer or Google normal search... Hmm.

    At any rate CiteSeer indexes 716797 articles and Google Scholar... interestingly, doesn't provide an index size number at all.
    • No, they seem to have far more content than CiteSeer! In contrast to CiteSeer, Google has indexed stuff that is not available on the web. They seem to have worked with the publishers here, because they seem to know citations of articles. The publically available PubMed [nih.gov] (AKA Medline) can be downloaded for analysis by virtually anyone, but PubMed doesn't have citation information which apparently Google has acquired.

      What I believe will be killed here is the commercial scientific indexing system ISI Web of K [isinet.com]

  • Google is thinking outside the box... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mogrify ( 828588 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @10:39AM (#10853354) Homepage
    Google is clearly making an effort to consider ALL the different kinds of information available on the web. They've grown the idea of a search engine from simply something that indexes HTML pages to include PDFs, Office documents, images, news, products, etc...
    This shows some initiative and creativity in trying to develop new ways for people to find all kinds of information, both on your desktop and on the Internet... just imagine when they get all this stuff integrated... you could search for a friend's address, and not only get a map of their house, but a satellite-guided view of the trip, as well as links to their website, public photo collection, slashdot and blog posts, e-mails you've written them, and scholarly articles they've written. Google wants to be a total information provider, and they're the only ones truly pulling all of this stuff together.

    • Re:Google is thinking outside the box... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by geg81 ( 816215 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @03:42PM (#10857450)
      This shows some initiative and creativity in trying to develop new ways for people to find all kinds of information,

      Well, in the case of Google Scholar, it's a late entry into the market. It also threatens to derail some significant public and free efforts at making scholarly information available on the web. Altogether, I'm not convinced that Google Scholar is something to be welcomed.

  • another thought... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mogrify ( 828588 )
    Don't Google Keyhole and Google Scholar seem rather remarkably like beta versions of the Earth and Librarian programs from Hiro's study in Snow Crash?
  • I downloaded the Keyhole software last night and took it for a test drive with my wife. I mention her because she has a lot of experience with GIS (Geographic Information System) with government and the private sector. We found Keyhole to present a very nice user experience, but downloading the images was a little slow and the data was rather incomplete. My wife was really unimpressed with some of the missing data at a few locations she knew. I checked locations in South Dakota and Wyoming that I had pr


  • Check it out. Either the White house had one BORING roof, or it's been balcked out.

    Checkit, and see.
    • If you look at the buildings next to it, on the east and west, you'll see those also have blacked-out rooftops. I would expect that to be the location of the anti-aircraft defenses either put in place after 9/11 or the other occurrences of people flying/crashing planes into the yard. Every so often someone would put a Piper Cherokee or a small Cessna into the ground there.

  • most online scientific journals not free (Score:4, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Thursday November 18, 2004 @11:02AM (#10853634)
    Unlike most online newspapers and magazines, almost all the scientific journals I know of require a paid subscription to access. The exception are the couple of new bioscience journals in the Public Library of Science and the physics pre-print server (not peer-reviewed). But even that the author must pay $1500 for the cost of review and webification.

    I find this a bit ironic. Science is an epistomological enterprise of creating knowledge by the open publication of results. However, the greedy for-profit academic publishers and professional societies know this wall. They have the academic community by the b*lls with their high subscription and publication page charges.

    Even the index services like Scientific Citations, GeoRef, Lexus-Nexus, etc. charge high fees. Hopefully Google Scholar will do an end-run around these and provide a more accessable search service.

    • ---Unlike most online newspapers and magazines, almost all the scientific journals I know of require a paid subscription to access.---

      Actually, many journals these days allow open access for all articles after a certain amount of time, 12 months in some cases, 6 months in others.

      ---The exception are the couple of new bioscience journals in the Public Library of Science and the physics pre-print server (not peer-reviewed). But even that the author must pay $1500 for the cost of review and webif

  • Speaking of Google commercializing, looks like they've still got a bit of it to do:
    Google Shares Fall on Fourth Quarter Revenue Warning [nytimes.com]

    -----------------------
    www.email-cop.com
  • "the start of real commercialism for Google" Ummm I guess those Google ads don't count? Do you maybe me the start of chargeing for services? I do not see a huge problem with this. If you want keyhole why not buy it. Frankly it looks almost as much fun as Everquest. And the price is low. i am looking forward to paying with it.
  • I cannot see to authenticate, it says "try back in 15 minutes". Cannot figure out if it is /.'ed or something is up with the firewall here at work...

    Anyone?
  • Today I got en e-mail from SCIRUS and they state that they are better than Google in the search of science related information.
    The e-mail has an online version [elsevier.com].

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