OCLC, the schools of Information at Syracuse and the University of Washington, and numerous libraries are exploring the possibility of building a search engine using the expertise of librarians from around the globe.  The idea is that when users enter a search term, results will be weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at major institutions, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus.

Called Reference Extract, it is envisioned as a web search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN, only with more credibility. A $100,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is supporting the planning proposal.

One of the proposal’s leaders is Michael B. Eisenberg, dean emeritus and professor at Washington’s information school, who has called for people to submit ideas on the project’s Web site.  “Google is everywhere, easy to use, and somewhat effective in offering useful results.  But, I can’t always trust the results,” he wrote.  “Is there a way to improve on that?”  The idea is to cull and promote recommendations from tens of thousands of librarians around the world.  The technical architecture that would power the search engine is as yet unknown.

Thanks to a new partnership with Rhapsody, Lifehacker notes, Yahoo has added playable music clips to their search results.

When you search for and find a popular artist, you can play full-length tracks and/or music videos without leaving the search results.

I had good luck with singers Norah Jones, Alicia Keys, Sinead O’Connor, and even an oldie, Dusty Springfield, but didn’t turn up playable results with a few othes.  Try your favorite artists.

Google Maps
I mostly use, and have written about, Google Maps. 

I like all the search options, layers, and enhancements with photos, Wikipedia articles, traffic information, transportation routes, and so on, that are available in addition to the choices of views. 

The image here shows a hybrid map/sattelite view of Seattle’s Experience Music Project.

Microsoft Live Search Maps
But I noticed a posting at LISNews about Microsoft’s Live Search Maps, which I haven’t used before. 

They told of the “bird’s eye views” offered and I found them even more interesting and useful than sattelite views.

You can drag the picture around to change locations or search for a particular place. 

I input my address and found that the bird’s eye view gave a much better look at the place than the sattelite view. 

So, of course, the same holds true for another place you may be looking for but don’t already know what it looks like.  Looking for your cruise ship?

Yahoo Maps
While I was comparing map search sites, I also took a look at Yahoo Maps which has just released an expansion of real-time traffic, increasing both coverage and comprehensiveness. 

They have added new markets and expanded beyond freeways to major thoroughfares.  They claim you can use drag and drop routing to avoid traffic hotspots.

Yahoo Maps has the customary map, sattelite, or hybrid views available. 

While the major map search sites have much in common, there are obviously some differences to be aware of and take advantage of, depending on your particular map needs and interests. 

At a minimum, I suggest you take a look at each site to examine the options they offer, many of which I have not mentioned here.

Listaculous to-do list
Listaculous is a free, tabbed to-do list manager that you can add to your web page or iGoogle start page.

Keep track of all your tasks and lists in one place — accessible from anywhere on the Web. 

I was happy to add this to my iGoogle page since it seems to be simple and intuitive, as advertised, and I particularly like the tabbed presentation. 

It’s quick and easy to register, log-in, and use from any computer at any location via the web.

Logon to Zoho with your Yahoo or Google ID
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with login account so I was glad to see that popular office productivity suite, Zoho, has removed the need to create a separate account to use their services.  Now you can now log in to any of their products using a Google or Yahoo account. 

Zoho plans to adopt OpenID eventually, but in the meantime they wanted to integrate directly with the most requested third parties.  Their goal is to get users to try Zoho with as little hassle as possible.  They may integrate with others such as Microsoft and Facebook in the future.

Powerset search engine with Wikipedia
Is Powerset  a “natural language” search engine?  Maybe not exactly, but Search Engine Land says it is at least an “understanding engine.”  “Because it actually understands what pages are about, it can extract facts from those pages plus comprehend how those facts — as well as those pages — relate to each other.”

You can use Powerset to search Wikipedia now.  It claims to give you better results than Wikipedia’s or Google’s search because Powerset’s technology has read and understood what every word within Wikipedia actually means. 

I don’t know what your experience will be like, but I read about Powerset a couple of days ago when I was also trying to dig some information out of Wikipedia. 

I had limited knowledge of what terminology the subject might use so was finding it difficult to come up with relevant search terms.  I had already explored using both Google and Wikipedia search engines, and then tried Powerset.  Better results!  Once I found a relevant article, I was able to identify good key words that improved my search results outside of Wikipedia, too.

In possibly the biggest Internet deal since the Time Warner-AOL merger, Microsoft Corp. made a bid to buy Yahoo Inc. for $44.5 billion in cash and stock. 

Described as “its boldest-ever acquisition move, Microsoft sent a letter to Yahoo’s board on Thursday night, offering $31 per share for the Internet media company, a 62 percent premium over its Nasdaq closing stock price that day.”  The Yahoo board will evaluate the offer.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer sees the move as critical to Internet business growth, especially against its major competition, Google.

Major blogging pundits have started to imagine what a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would look like.    Register your opinion at Mashable’s daily poll.

TechCrunch notes that Yahoo is beginnning to test integratation of Delicious’ user-generated bookmarks into Yahoo search results pages.  “Adding this information into Yahoo search is a great idea,” says Michael Arrington.

Not everyone will see Delicious results (at this time) but TechCrunch has an example so you can see what it looks like. 

At first I was pretty interested in a source of public library information and locations I found at Resource Shelf.  Counting Opinions, Ltd. has apparently created a mashup called Libraries411 that combines Yahoo and/or Google maps with 20,000 public library locations in the U.S. and Canada.  You can search by name, zip, or postal code.

Too bad the information is so dated.  When I looked up my local library I noticed the address was for the old building they moved out of a couple of years ago.  I saw that the “update” date was listed as 11-10-2005.  Then I looked for the Seattle Public Library, Central branch, that opened to much public notice on May 23, 2004, and is now located at 1000 Fourth Ave.  The map shows it still at its previous location.  It’s true you can click on the URL and look up the address for yourself, but it certainly diminishes the usefulness of the product to have it so out of date — you really can’t trust the information you are first given.

You might be a little dismayed by some of the other functions, as well.  My search for Manhattan brought up 6 matches.  When I clicked on the 455 Fifth Avenue entry, the map that popped up was for the Science, Industry and Business Library at 188 Madison Ave., which wasn’t even in the search results.  What gives?  

When I went to Google Maps, itself, and searched  for “manhattan library” I got a number of hits with the first one for the Fifth Ave. location.  Clicking on it led me to the correct address and the ability to do a lot more such as sending the info to my phone or saving to “my maps.”  Searching Google Maps for a building is sometimes a challenge, but when I found the Seattle Central Library it was at least listed at the current address.

Yahoo has upgraded its online search engine to make it more helpful and engaging, following the leads of Ask.com and industry leader Google, according to an Associated Press story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Yahoo believes its approach is more comprehensive than its competitors in areas such as music, movies and photos.  Because it owns the popular photo sharing service Flickr, Yahoo’s image index is larger than its rivals, said Vish Makhijani, the company’s senior vice president of search.

As part of its makeover, Yahoo will suggest ways to phrase a search request as a user types into the query box, it will provide a list of related concepts, and it will produce more links to photos, videos and music on the main results page.

The search engine also will pull information from Yahoo’s calendar service, Upcoming.org, to highlight local events when they’re relevant to a request.  Yahoo is second in usage but has been losing ground in the search market.

IA released a new web trend map of the 200 most successful websites.  Download a variety of sizes, a clickable map with Snap Shots, or the screensaver.  [via Mashable]

 Wired Blog Network reports that instead of indexing Flickr photos to make them show up in a search, Yahoo is now doing a large scale integration of Flickr’s live photostream feeds in its image search. 

Since it is estimated that Flickr users upload around 1 million files a day, that is a big gain for Yahoo Image Search over Google.  You can also search by Flickr User ID if you are looking for a specific person’s photos.