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According to Alexa.com's traffic ratings, heres the breakdown of the top 5

1. Yahoo.com
2. MSN.com
3. daum.net (Korean)
4. Naver.com
5. Google.com

And dont forget everyone's favorite portal Pajonet.com, whick ranks in at 82,915th place in the world!

Daily dose of news and views and chics at Pajonet.com!

Black Adder Strikes again!

Google doesn't own the Internet Archive, their competitor Alexa does. Anyone (including you or I) can go look at past versions of pages using it. Pretending to be Google (providing an interface to their search engine, using a similar look and name), and asking people if they have credit cards sounds pretty suspicious to me.

Makes you figure how much asian sites and users make up the whole of the internet while we (read: I) surf only those pages with our western fonts.

I was wondering about that too, especially after looking at things like the alexa top 500, almost half the sites are asian.

....Spam links start appearing?

Another question... When does Alexa get involved in doing "web page entanglement"... It would sort of complement their existing spyware infested "toolbar".

i dunno what's going on now, but i remember that some years ago alexa could bring up a copy of a web site as it was in the past... 6 month, 1 year, etc... like the google "cache:" feature when a site is down (understand ./ed ;) )

/freddo

Inside video from Mars

Better yet, request the Alexa bot to crawl your site for the Internet Archive.

They even archive linked files and images. So, you could post your old mailboxes. Encrypt them, if needed. By the time future archeologists find it, it should be easily crackable, if legal.

more informations

more informations

I'm astonished. I use google for generic searches, but any time I need a specific answer, google is the one I definitely would not use, as it never returns the link I want in the first 3 pages.

So I have a list of twenty-something search engines I use for specific purposes as they all have their sweet spot.

Here are my top 7:

ask.com
altavista.com
findlaw.com
lycos.com
metacrawler.com
alexa.com
alltheweb.com
etc etc

Take a look at www.alexa.com, that's pretty much what they're all about.

From Alexa's website:

Alexa is gathering Web information and learning from content and paths to create the Alexa Service.

As an Alexa user navigates to a web site or web page, the Alexa service retrieves data about the page the user is requesting. We gather information from a number of sources, then organize it to be presented by the Alexa Service, helping the user to be better informed about the site he/she is viewing.

Sounds lika good idea...

I just did it, and noticed that the results looked... familiar. So I then went to Mozilla, and popped up What's Related on the Sidebar on this page as well. Identical. On a lark, I reenabled What's Related on NS4.7, and did the same. Identical, minus the pretty formatting.

So it would appear that the What's Related information is actually a third-party service; in this case, it winds up being done by some company called Alexa that apparently just settled a class action lawsuit... (has to do with the fact that the What's Related database is apparently created by tracking users across multiple websites...)

Anyway, the Smart Tags service probably will be controlled mainly by Microsoft for the main reason that most users never download updates and it's highly unlikely users will bother updating their Smart Tags with other sites information...

Besides, if MS made the word Linux go to their "Linux myth" page, do you think any users would ever download the Slashdot updated tags? And even if they did, would the MS version preempt third party SmartTags?

There are many ways that MS could use this to their advantage, and MS in the past has shown that they are quite likely to do just that.

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I just did it, and noticed that the results looked... familiar. So I then went to Mozilla, and popped up What's Related on the Sidebar on this page as well. Identical. On a lark, I reenabled What's Related on NS4.7, and did the same. Identical, minus the pretty formatting.

So it would appear that the What's Related information is actually a third-party service; in this case, it winds up being done by some company called Alexa that apparently just settled a class action lawsuit... (has to do with the fact that the What's Related database is apparently created by tracking users across multiple websites...)

Anyway, the Smart Tags service probably will be controlled mainly by Microsoft for the main reason that most users never download updates and it's highly unlikely users will bother updating their Smart Tags with other sites information...

Besides, if MS made the word Linux go to their "Linux myth" page, do you think any users would ever download the Slashdot updated tags? And even if they did, would the MS version preempt third party SmartTags?

There are many ways that MS could use this to their advantage, and MS in the past has shown that they are quite likely to do just that.

--

I just did it, and noticed that the results looked... familiar. So I then went to Mozilla, and popped up What's Related on the Sidebar on this page as well. Identical. On a lark, I reenabled What's Related on NS4.7, and did the same. Identical, minus the pretty formatting.

So it would appear that the What's Related information is actually a third-party service; in this case, it winds up being done by some company called Alexa that apparently just settled a class action lawsuit... (has to do with the fact that the What's Related database is apparently created by tracking users across multiple websites...)

Anyway, the Smart Tags service probably will be controlled mainly by Microsoft for the main reason that most users never download updates and it's highly unlikely users will bother updating their Smart Tags with other sites information...

Besides, if MS made the word Linux go to their "Linux myth" page, do you think any users would ever download the Slashdot updated tags? And even if they did, would the MS version preempt third party SmartTags?

There are many ways that MS could use this to their advantage, and MS in the past has shown that they are quite likely to do just that.

--

It may be fair use for the end user to see related pages, as determined by his or her preference, but who really wants to hear what Microsoft thinks is related...

Seriously, I can see reasonable uses for this service, bacause when it comes down to it it's the same as the NBCi Quickclick service, which is really just a combination and expansion of the Alexa and Realnames services.

In all fairness Microsoft does claim that there will be an API that will allow third parties to establish their own work/link associations, which may be good and may be bad. I can see cases where that might be valuable, where a user would be able to download a 'SmartLinks' channel file from the Wall Street Journal which would be updated regularly mich like an RSS channel, and contain links to WSJ articles on the subjects associated with highlighted words, or perhaps the user might want to install the Roger Ebert SmartLinks channel which would link any movie title to Roger's review of that movie. This service has legitimate potential, so long as users have enough control over it to prevent Microsoft from assaulting their senses with useless Microsoft links. I can see where this sort of service might be considered the next evolutionary step beyond Rich Site Summary channels and similar XML meta-content. Realistically, this service could work thew same way, where the channels have similar XML definitions, and are periodically retrieved from the source server, in order to keep up-to-date.

The important thing is the user MUST be allowed to choose which providers to accept link-lists from. There must not be a required set, where if you turn on the service you get Microsofts set of links plus whatever other link sets you want. The user must have the option to add or remove any smartlinks channel, and enable or disable any channel on a site-by-site basis. With these policies in place, the service could be made to be quite baluable and usefult to users

--CTH

In all these cases, the actual web pages are never touched; they are simply annotated on the client side. I don't recall there being any law against a user agent modifying an HTML page when it is displayed. I'm sure if corporations had their way, they wouldn't allow me to use my own stylesheet to view their pages (an option in both IE and Netscape); but I still can, because HTML was never intended to strictly control how content is displayed. If a user agent wants to intersperse every page with links to it's producer's web, well, why not? It may be annoying, but there's nothing illegal or even immoral about it.

--

There has been preliminary approval of a settlement. The court is scheduled to hold a "fairness hearing" on 27 July 2001. It looks like Alexa will lose a couple million dollars. Is this enough to deter others from trying such tricks?

Now, it's basically a gimmick to divert you to merchants who pay Alexa. Sad.

Tim O'Reilly says the following (quote):
"16. Online Minivend Reference Guide "MiniVend -multi-catalog shopping cart and mall," March 14, 1997. Mike Heins, the creator of the MiniVend system (now owned by Red Hat under the name "Interchange") provided some great art. He showed us how to very easily configure his open-source system to perform single-click buying. In writing the system, he put considerable effort into saving customer session information, so that buyers would not have to reenter their information to make purchases.

However, the submission is not a winner, because we don't have evidence that someone made those simple changes and implemented 1-Click shopping in the proper fashion before our Prior To date." (end of quote)

The last sentence is, IMHO, really MORE THAN ANNOYING ! Not that I blame Tim O'Reilly for it, but I simply don't believe it.

I have been reading the minivend mailing list since it started out beginning of 1997. Mike Heins posted to his minivend mailing list as a response to someone who asked exactly for something that represents the implementation of the one-click ordering feature, that this feature CAN be implemented AND THAT IT HAS BEEN DONE. This was on May 13th, 1997 and clearly before the cut-off date of Sept. 27th, 1997.

Please read the short thread of the post on "Retaining user information" here

I am aware of the fact, that Mike Heins might have been under restrictions to release any more information of who had done it at that time, but obviously he knew so much, that he confidently could mention on the mailing list, that it "has been done". I can say, that what later became known as the "famous" one-click feature, was something that was an option to be implemented easily for a programmer who could understand the software, i.e. a person skilled in the trade, and users of MiniVend were aware of it. I am sure several people have thought and played with setting it up, but might not have gone through with it, because many customer didn't like it at that time. It was considered just too mysterious and considered not "slow and clear" enough.

But quite frankly I could very well imagine that in certain industries that feature might have been welcome and that it was implemented. I simply think that the ones, who did it, don't want to come forward for whatever reasons.

Now, may be it is really impossible to find the person or site, who implemented it and prove that it was done, but this is an appeal for whoever it was to COME FORWARD.

So, even if Tim O'Reilly throws the towel, that doesn't mean that the battle is lost.

Would be interesting to know if the site could be found and retrieved in the Alexa archive, which of course now is conveniently owned by Amazon.com itself. What a coincidence. For more on Alexa archives look here and here . The archives have now 16 terabytes of text, audio and graphical files, accumulated from April 1996 on.

Tim O'Reilly says the following (quote):
"16. Online Minivend Reference Guide "MiniVend -multi-catalog shopping cart and mall," March 14, 1997. Mike Heins, the creator of the MiniVend system (now owned by Red Hat under the name "Interchange") provided some great art. He showed us how to very easily configure his open-source system to perform single-click buying. In writing the system, he put considerable effort into saving customer session information, so that buyers would not have to reenter their information to make purchases.

However, the submission is not a winner, because we don't have evidence that someone made those simple changes and implemented 1-Click shopping in the proper fashion before our Prior To date." (end of quote)

The last sentence is, IMHO, really MORE THAN ANNOYING ! Not that I blame Tim O'Reilly for it, but I simply don't believe it.

I have been reading the minivend mailing list since it started out beginning of 1997. Mike Heins posted to his minivend mailing list as a response to someone who asked exactly for something that represents the implementation of the one-click ordering feature, that this feature CAN be implemented AND THAT IT HAS BEEN DONE. This was on May 13th, 1997 and clearly before the cut-off date of Sept. 27th, 1997.

Please read the short thread of the post on "Retaining user information" here

I am aware of the fact, that Mike Heins might have been under restrictions to release any more information of who had done it at that time, but obviously he knew so much, that he confidently could mention on the mailing list, that it "has been done". I can say, that what later became known as the "famous" one-click feature, was something that was an option to be implemented easily for a programmer who could understand the software, i.e. a person skilled in the trade, and users of MiniVend were aware of it. I am sure several people have thought and played with setting it up, but might not have gone through with it, because many customer didn't like it at that time. It was considered just too mysterious and considered not "slow and clear" enough.

But quite frankly I could very well imagine that in certain industries that feature might have been welcome and that it was implemented. I simply think that the ones, who did it, don't want to come forward for whatever reasons.

Now, may be it is really impossible to find the person or site, who implemented it and prove that it was done, but this is an appeal for whoever it was to COME FORWARD.

So, even if Tim O'Reilly throws the towel, that doesn't mean that the battle is lost.

Would be interesting to know if the site could be found and retrieved in the Alexa archive, which of course now is conveniently owned by Amazon.com itself. What a coincidence. For more on Alexa archives look here and here . The archives have now 16 terabytes of text, audio and graphical files, accumulated from April 1996 on.

Another group, the private company Alexa, has also engaged in internet archiving. A couple of years ago Alexa donated an archive to the Library of Congress. It was written up in Brill's Content last November (article text not online, alas).

(Alexa's normal business involves a browser plug-in that is What's Related on steroids.)
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Another group, the private company Alexa, has also engaged in internet archiving. A couple of years ago Alexa donated an archive to the Library of Congress. It was written up in Brill's Content last November (article text not online, alas).

(Alexa's normal business involves a browser plug-in that is What's Related on steroids.)
----

• There's a free service that already does this. They do it even if you don't ask them to, then send you spam telling you about broken links on your site.
• And there's Alexa, which really does archive the Web so that you can find old pages.
• Personally, I like the link checker in Dreamweaver. It's very well integrated with the site maintenance tools.

Alexa also collects detailed information about what you look at with your browser, although they of course claim to use it only in the aggregate.