Szilárd VAJDA's blog

I was quite surprised today. I had the opportunity to attend 2 consecutive talks, one about Bing and another about Google from a researcher perspective. The Google talk was presented by Daniel Russel, while the Bing talk was given by Duane Forrester. 

I have seen two different talks. One was rather superficial, a lot of bla bla bla with no real content, and I have seen another talk with working solutions. After utilizing altavista.com, yahoo.com I have switched to Google search engine more than 16 years ago and from that very moment we are inseparable. Just like that ...

However, being a researcher I tried Bing as well but I realized that is not what I was looking for. Today I just realized I was right. Definitely it was not the attitude of the speaker but the product itself. I am not planning to use Bing in the near future, though I found its only utility. Due to its capability to find the shortest co-author graph, part of the Academic Research facility, I was able to see my Erdos number being 4 at this very moment.

However, I have learnt many things today:

1) Know your searching tool and its capabilities.

2) Use different sources in order to succeed in your requests.

3) The social media implications in finding the correct answers is crucial.

4) Combine text, image and common sense in order to formulate your requests.

5) Use simple requests instead of complicated ones.

6) Use synonymies to re-formulate in case your initial request fails. 

However, I am a researcher type, so I can just suggest you to explore! Use the most suitable tool for the job!
I am reading my short messages/e-mails/tweets/comments on my Google Nexus, I am reading my newspapers on my Google Nexus7, I am developing under Windows7, running experiments on Red Hat Linux, and enjoying home surfing, blogging on my MacBook Air. The diversity is the key to the success.     

P.S. For live pics from the talks please visit my page on facebook!