I find the alexa concept interesting -- but find it hard to imagine it
taking the place of portals.
it's not capturing a record of database info --- or at least it doesn't
seem to be -- and when I went there hoping to find the "old" look of
CNN, for example, that didn't exist. It seems to be more for archiving
pages that have moved -- you know, the ones where you get a 404 error.
For those who haven't downloaded it - when you do so, you get a narrow
menu bar that works with your browser. you can minimize, maximize or
quit. This bar has an icon, that when moused over, provides background
info on sites -- so this could be another of the "good housekeeping
seals of approval" options available to folks. Its animated search GIF
drives me to distraction. I haven't seen many sites where the "archive"
icon was active.
Brent Eades wrote:
>
> Vis a vis the recent thread on "portal sites" and their increasing
> homogeneity, I came across an intriguing article about the Alexa
> utility and the potential challenge it poses to the entire (and very
> lucrative) model of "top-down" Web searching arbitrated by Yahoo,
> Infoseek et al. An excerpt:
>
> * * *
> Alexa's power of association (this site is like these other sites)
> emerges out of the desultory travels of the Alexa user base. The
> understanding of the web doesn't reside with any single individual in
> that group; it develops, instead, out of the collective intelligence
> they create simply by surfing.
>
> The fringe benefit of this model -- intelligent software that works
> from the bottom up, and not from the top down -- is that the software
> gets smarter the more people use it. If only a thousand people fire up
> Alexa alongside their browsers, the recommendations simply won't have
> enough data behind them to be accurate. But add another ten thousand
> users to the mix, and the site associations gain resolution
> dramatically. In other words, the software gets better at what it does
> when more people interact with it. This may have a familiar ring to
> readers who have been following the recent debate over the Microsoft
> monopoly, particularly the succession of op-eds and thinkpieces about
> "network externalities": the self- reinforcing feedback loop that
> develops when your product becomes more attractive the more people use
> it.
_____________________________
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Kathy E. Gill
Business Process Information
425.234.2004 - 6X-JT
http://www.dotparagon.com/aboutgill.html
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." -- Ghandi
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