As many of you know search is a hobby of mine.. I don’t directly make money from it, I just find the high level thought process interesting to study.. I’ll let the pros work out the deatily stuff and then just pump them for info to make my websites better..

Anyway, Google has released another beta search engine called Google Scholar.. This beta engine is geared solely toward academic papers, patents, abstracts, etc.. I love it.. A little copy/paste from the about page..

Features of Google Scholar

* Search diverse sources from one convenient place
* Find papers, abstracts and citations
* Locate the complete paper through your library or on the web
* Learn about key papers in any area of research

Interested in the ranking process??

Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature. The most relevant results will always appear on the first page.

This is a closed search engine from all appearances.. To be included you need to ask for admission in to the SE.. Talk about heavy duty spam control..

While this is cool, and all the other beta searches like Google Books are cool, I see this as the forerunner of things to come.. As more and more pages enter the vast internet, being able to categorize types of sites together to make the search experience better is a good thing.. I see a time coming in the near future where you will search various google portals for more targetted results.. Need an acedemic paper for research, google scholar, looking for a specifc book or quote, google books.. Looking to veiw a little something wearing little less than something, or a big something wearing a little something as your tastes may go, google porn..

It’s a good looking world through google colored glasses..

webguerrilla has a fabulous post about the recent SEO “contest” targetting Dave Pasternack.. It started out like many other SEO contests trying to prove a point.. This time that a guy named Dave Pasternack doesn’t have a clue about SEO..

Unfortunatly this time the contest has swept up another Dave Pasternack in the rampage.. This Dave Pasternack is a master chef and apparently focuses on his food more than his website.. That’s probably a good thing.. But why should he have to worry, I bet he really doesn’t worry, about a silly SEO contest possibly hurting his online presence??

In any case, webguerrilla has a much better Dave Pasternack post than I do. So go read his..

Well that could have gone better..

I decided to give the whole fantasy sports thing a whirl this year.. The ESPN Nascar fantasy league has some friends playing so I decided to join them for a season to see how it goes..

Drivers for Daytona 500

Tony Stewart - Wrecked while leading - 39 points
Dale Jr. - Wrecked while running top 10 - 67 points
Jamie McMurray - Wrecked in the same wreck as Jr. - 70 points
Jaun Montoya - Rookie - 106 points
Robbie Gordon - just because I really like him and he fit my points cap - 118 points

That’s just 400 points for the race.. It wouldn’t be so bad except I got beat by people that picked drivers that didn’t even make the race.. *sigh*

There’s always next week..

And at some point it will snap and lead to an upheaval unprecedented in over 200 years..

The latest attempts of the US Gubment to stretch their reach far beyond it’s bounds has now reached to Japanese TV.. It seems that the ATF is upset about a beer commercial.. bostonherald.com.. Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka is shown taking a drink of what appears to be a tastey beer after throwing a pitch in uniform.. Apparently the actof a sports personality converts skulls of mush into raving alchoholics at the meer sight of such an action.. And the ATF must protect us..

I am actually quite conservative in my beliefs.. But there has to be a line drawn at some point.. And the Feds trying to Japanese people what they can see on TV seems to be a little out of their reach to me.. So what to do?? I don’t know, but I don’t see any currently electable people capable of making things better.. No Republicans, no Democrats.. Each party is simply the other side of the power trip coin.. Each more interested in staying power than actually accomplishing anything useful to the world as a whole.

Looks like it’s time to get involved making phone calls and writing letters again.. Why not start here with the ATF email address.. eps@atf.gov.. Or you can write you US Representative here at http://www.house.gov/writerep/ or your sentator here http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Feel free to copy and paste this message to your own reps..

I’m writing to express my concern that agencies of the US government seem to have lost their focus on exactly what their roles are. Specifically I am referring the ATF spending resources looking in to whether they can apply US law to Japanese television.

Apparently they are concerned that a Japanese man, who happens to play baseball here in the summer, dared to commit the grievous act of actually drinking a beer in a television commercial. I am stunned that with all of the things the ATF is responsible for, with all of the resources at their disposal to protect the US and enforce our laws, they have the time to watch Japanese TV looking for more crime to chase after.

It seems to me that what the Japanese do with their television programs has little effect on the citizens of the United States, and that declaring “Matsuzaka’s Asahi ad may merit punitive action” simply leads to yet another black hole of both resources and international opinion towards the US.

While I am sure that you have little direct control of the day to day operations of the ATF, I feel that it is important that the members of the US congress hear the voices of their constituents on issues that affect us both nationally and internationally. And if my opinions can help you find a voice to bring this issue further light, and hopefully convince the ATF to spend more of their time worrying about things at home, then perhaps something good can come of this.

Thank you for you time.

Oh yeah, here is the scarey commercial that will lead us all to damnation..

Ok, so this really is funny.. Wil over at http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/ post this a couple days ago and I thought it was too funny not to share..

I don’t say that very often.. It’s sort of anti everything I try to do.. But it’s time..

I have been a partner at ForTheWeb.Com since it was founded more than 7 years ago.. We started out as a small web design and hosting firm with 4 partners in Northern California and we have done a lot of good work in that time.. The company has grown and evolved in those years.. But somewhere along the line it quit being “fun”.. A couple of years ago we lost our first partner.. Personality conflicts and other issues kept coming up and three of us decided to buy the fourth out..

With that came more change and some growth.. But lately the “job” has stopped being fun.. It became something I dreaded doing and the extra hours spent on it, above my passion for designing jewelry, just left me tired.. And being a bit of a take or leave it kind of guy, I chose to leave it..

It’s always tough to leave something, especially something that isn’t “finished”.. Over the last 20 years I’ve owned or managed 11 businesses.. Some of them successful, some not so much.. ForTheWeb falls in to that vague middle realm.. The company makes money, has great clients, but doesn’t offer much fullfillment other than that..

This is an amicable parting of the ways, and I expect Shannon and Joel to do quite well in the future with ForTheWeb.. But my days of banging out code for food are behind me now.. Well, except for a couple of pet projects that is - you didn’t expect me to quit cold turkey did you??