Google, Yahoo May Not Highlight The Good Stuff

Researchers are trying to figure out how to make more of the good stuff float to the top of Internet search engines and keep more of the bad stuff buried.
Network World staff, Network World
Monday, March 26, 2007 11:00 PM PDT
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130157-c,searchengines/article.html


Researchers are trying to figure out how to make more of the good stuff float to the top of Internet search engines and keep more of the bad stuff buried.
At Queensland University of Technology in Australia, Professor Audun Josang is trying to come up with a system through which search engines would rank Web sites based on their reputation, based in part on input from the broad Internet community of users. Sites that try to hook visitors via phishing scams, for instance, could be outed by users in a "social control" system and search engines could be notified, he said.

"Just because a Web site ranks highly on a search engine doesn't mean it's a good Web site," he said in a statement. "In fact, highly ranked Web sites can be malicious."
The current Web page rankings are too easily manipulated, he said.
"I think in the future reputation systems, integrated into search engines, can be used to weed out such Web sites by giving them a low ranking and thereby making them invisible to unsuspecting users," Josang said in a statement.

Where's the science?

One effect of having so many dangerous and junky Web sites at the top of search engine results is that the good ones are harder to find.

Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute in England say key science sites are failing to show up in the top 30 Google search results, depending on the topic. Their study is looking at sites on topics such as HIV/AIDS (where online resources tend to be more structured), climate change, terrorism (where online resources tend to be more dispersed) and the Internet. They have used 'webmetric analysis" to plot on graphs how resources are linked to one another across the Web.
One of the researchers' basic observations is that Google and other search engines play a key gatekeeper role and that the Internet isn't just a fair-playing field when it comes to information distribution. They are urging policymakers and educators to pay close attention to this situation and work to make the Web a more useful source of information on important topics. Researchers too need to think about more than just tossing their information onto the Web, but make sure that people will be able to find it.

Check out Network World's Alpha Doggs blog for the latest in networking research at universities and other labs.

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Story copyright 2007 Network World Inc. All rights reserved.

Windows Home Server Tests Find Nearly 2400 Bugs

Microsoft acknowledges reports may delay consumer server's release.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Sunday, March 25, 2007 12:00 PM PDT
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130116-c,servers/article.html

Microsoft's Windows Home Server developers have been inundated with bug reports on the under-construction consumer server software, which--when it was announced in January--was expected to ship this summer. There was no word last week from Microsoft whether the necessary fixes would delay that planned release.

Bugs Tallied
In an entry on Microsoft's Home Server blog, program manager Chris Sullivan said that the group has received nearly 2400 bug reports so far from beta testers, and still had 495, or about 21 percent of the total, classified as "active." In Microsoft nomenclature, an active bug is one still under investigation, pending a response or waiting to be investigated. "As you can see, we have our work cut out for us," said Sullivan. Of the bugs that have been addressed, Sullivan said that only 15 percent have actually been fixed. The remainder are issues that are in the server by design (13 percent), not reproducible (21 percent), will be postponed to later versions (11 percent) or likely won't be fixed (7 percent).

Slow Start Draws Rivals
Windows Home Server, which debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), will be Microsoft's first home-specific server software. In January, company executives said the software would ship before the back-to-school selling season starts in July and August, with a release to manufacturing deadline set for late June. The software, based primarily on Windows Server 2003 code, will connect to systems running Windows Vista and Windows XP for file sharing, media playing and backup; and to Mac OS X and Linux machines for file sharing.
Microsoft did not respond to a call asking for a status update on development, and whether the summer release schedule still holds.

Home Server won't be sold separately, as are other server-based operating systems from the company. Instead, computer makers will package the software as part of ready-to-go appliances. Hewlett-Packard, for example, will sell something it calls MediaSmart Server that runs Home Server on an AMD-powered system.

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Story copyright © 2007 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved