BuzBadge to ChaCha - Human Guided Search!

We know about Google, Ask.com, About.com, how about a search engine that has a human helping you? You know, sometimes robot just fail to understand what we want, we need a human on our side.

ChaCha! Search with ChaCha! Found it via UncoverTheInternet featured on WriteAbout.Us front page, I arrived at ChaCha thinking of searching for "BlogFeast", a blog community that shares 90% adsense revenue with its bloggers.

Nothing returned. So I searched again with "search with guide", and here's the surprise:

Status: Looking for a guide ...
Status: Connected to guide: SandraS
SandraS: Hi there. I will be helping with your search.
SandraS: Hello
You: hi, wow
SandraS: How are you today?
You: I came here and got surprised!
SandraS: How come?
You: how many guides does ChaCha have?
SandraS: around 10,000
You: I need to search for BlogFeast and see what you have indexed.
SandraS: Ok anything spicific your looking for anbout it? (typo shows she is a human)
You: no, I just want to see how popular it is
SandraS: ok great I will give you some info on that now.
SandraS: Please give me a few moments to search.
You: cool, thanks!
SandraS: Are these results sufficient?
SandraS: Can I find anything else for you?
SandraS: Have a good night. And please RATE ME GREAT!! Thanks for using CHACHA!
You: cool
SandraS: Have a wonderful evening.
You: Ok, these results are real good. Thanks alot! I will rate you great and blog about you.
SandraS: Thanks for searching ChaCha!
SandraS: Please RATE ME. Thanks for using ChaCha.
Status: Session ended.

You got the idea. It is a human aiding you in your search. The following results were returned, plus a rating feature. Obviously, disregarding the relevancy of the search, I rated great.

The relevance? They still have room for improvement. Only the first of the four is relevant to the term "BlogFeast", others are about BlogFest, which is not what I am interested in. However, quality question brings quality answer, my question of "I just want to see how popular it is" does not tell the guide if BlogFeast is a blog community or an event.

It is great to have a guide helping us to search what we want. BuzzBadge goes to ChaCha!

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Adsense.com - Finally Googlelized

The big G, who owns the most popular search engine on the internet, a big lab, 
two video hosts, the most succesful online advertising program, now bought 
Adsense.com

The war has been around for some time. Adsense.com was there before Google 
even started its Adsense publisher program. AdSense does not hold a federal
trademark on its name, while Google does.

The owners of the domain adsense.com have been fielding hundreds of customer service e-mails and phone calls regarding Google's AdSense program since the advertising service launched in March 2003.

Unfortunately for the domain registrants, they have no connection with Google, except for the fact that they happen to share the name.

 

You must think having Adsense.com and riding on Google's shoulder is a good thing:

Actually, the opposite has happened. Due to an influx of, at one point, thousands of spam messages a day, she felt forced to remove her site's e-mail link from clients' web pages. She has lost business, she said, by way of busy phone lines, inadvertently trashed e-mails and distraction from her business.

What can you do if one day you found your domain being a trademark for a new BIG business?

"The courts often look at who used it first," she said, although the outcome of a case is never completely predictable.

Not registering a trademark with the federal registry doesn't mean a business is powerless, said Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But that can make it difficult to go after a business that has the same name trademarked.

"If you have an unregistered mark you've been using for years and someone else has a registered mark, you might pursue an unfair-competition claim," she said.

Garett, the owner of Adsense Consulting, now operates on Adsense2.com.

Full news: Wired.

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