i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

The article “Hard-Coding Bias in Google "Algorithmic" Search Results”, by Harvard professor Benjamin Edelmen, presents strong evidence that Google is intentionally manipulating search results despite promises to the contrary.

EU launches antirust probe into Google

"The issue could boil down to whether Google has a right to program its search engine the way it wants or whether it is abusing the market power it has accumulated by processing about two out of three search requests made worldwide."

The sentence “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically and semantically valid sentence in English and a great example of the challenges homophony presents for IR. Although a search engine would index this as 8 instances of the same word, there are actually three variations of “buffalo”:

Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain and his team showcased Collage at the Berkman Center today. What's Collage? It's a tool that facilitates the creation of "an online casebook that's free, remixable and that can be used not just for a specific class, but for instructors" in law schools.

 Info 202 Blog Post 1, "Google Social Search Screws Up"
2010Sep11
Walter Koning

Google Social Search launched near the close of 2009.  Since then the features have been refined but one feature is causing grief for users.

Haven’t you run across images online where you’ve wondered what a particular item in the image was? And then read the image caption to discover that it told you nothing about what you were wondering about. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could describe parts of an image that may or may not contribute to the overall message in the name of the file or the image caption? Well, now you can.

Collecting information is not the same everywhere. This article by The Economist reveals different methods used to collect information for digital maps: from using sophisticated GPS systems in England, to note-taking in India and voluntary contributions in Nigeria. There is no single way to get data from every place, and different information is needed by different users in a variety of contexts. The following questions arise: How do we standarize all these different data-collections?

This Economist article describes the use of bar codes in conjunction with mobile phone cameras to provide users with real-time, context-sensitive information. An example of this is the traveller photographing a barcode at a railway station with his mobile phone to obtain train timetables. Despite of varying bar code standards, the author suggests their free, open standard nature will encourage wider adoption. However, for this technology to become pervasive, collaboration between barcode software developer