As most of you know I live in Florida. Thankfully, none of my family or friends were hurt during hurricane Charley a couple weeks back. The worst we had was a downed tree on my brother's truck. (Noah, if you read this, send me an email and I'll post a pic of the truck here).

Well, there's a search engine on the West Coast of Florida, directly across the state from me, that apparently wasn't hurt during the storm either. Good deal. Here's an excerpt from the email they sent out to their users yesterday.



FindWhat's Hurricane Charley Letter To Customers

"For those of you not familiar, FindWhat.com's primary headquarters is located in Fort Myers, Florida, approximately 20-25 miles south of where Hurricane Charley made landfall. While the vast majority of the damage done to Southwest Florida was to our north, Charley brought down large trees, knocked down power lines and traffic lights, took off roofs, destroyed homes and left most people in our area without electricity and phones.

I am extremely happy to report that while most FindWhat.com team members did endure some damages, we've had very few reports of major damage and the team is rallying behind those people who need help.

Turning to day-to-day operations, due to our redundant facilities and an excellent team, there were no disruptions other than a few people having challenges getting through on the phones due to the heavy call volume to our area. In fact, the FindWhat.com Network and all private label keyword networks were fully operational, delivering content to affiliate partners and clicks to advertisers throughout the hurricane and its aftermath. As of today, Monday August 16th, we are completely operational and look forward to continuing to serve you. "

Update!
Here's a pic of my brother's truck. He was down from Camp Lageune, North Carolina for 10 days before he's shipped off to Iraq with his platoon.

The Gmail Notifier is a downloadable Windows application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.


The Notifier is in beta. Before you download it, we encourage you to review the system requirements and privacy information.

GMail Notifier System Requirements
To use the Gmail Notifier, you need Windows 2000, Windows XP, or a more recent version of Windows.

GMail Notifier F.A.Q.'s From Google

What is the Gmail Notifier?
The Gmail Notifier is a downloadable Windows application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. After you download the Notifier, an icon appears in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, without having to open a browser.

When you install the Notifier, you will be able to:

• automatically check for new messages every two minutes
• see a snippet of text from up to 30 unread messages
• select a sound to indicate when you have new mail
• make Gmail your default email application

How do I add an audible ‘new mail’ notification to the Notifier?
The Gmail Notifier will play a ‘new mail’ sound each time you receive new messages. To specify an audible new message alert:

1. Open the Windows ‘Control Panel.’
2. Open ‘Sounds and Audio Devices.’
3. Click the ‘Sounds’ tab at the top of the ‘Sounds and Audio Devices Properties’ dialogue box.
4. Select a sound for ‘New Mail Notification.’
5. Click ‘OK.’

Now This GMail FAQ Scares Me

How do I make Gmail my default mail application?
You can designate Gmail as your default mailto handler. This means that when you click on any hyperlinked email address, a Gmail compose window opens so you can send a message to that address, from Gmail.

This feature is turned off by default. To turn this feature on after downloading the Notifier:

1. Choose ‘I Agree’ to the License Agreement
2. Check the ‘Use for outgoing mail’ box and click ‘Next.’
3. Click ‘Install.’

To change this setting, you will need to download the Notifier again and make your change on the ‘Choose Components’ screen.

Full List of GMail FAQs

If you have any issues Google wants you to email notifier-feedback@google.com to report these issues.

Seems like everybody's getting into the client side listener application field now. I mean, I've already got bloglines notifier installed, a real time virus scan installed, and who knows what else. It's funny how the spyware protection companies have to use software that behaves similar to spyware to detect and protect us from it.

I came across an old search engine that seems to have been missed during the past few years bu thas some pretty awesome technology, Speechbot, HP Lab's version of a multimedia search engine. The cool part is that it parses the audio portion of multimedia files and renders audio into text. The bad part is they're only indexing publicly accessible audio files from sites such as NPR, and American Radio Works. So unless you are a real National Public Radio buff and can't get enough of Click -n- Clack (the Car Talk guys) then you're out of luck.

Pros

• Allows the actual content of a multimedia file to be indexed as if it were text and searchable. This is a vast improvement over relying on the author & title info stored in most multimedia files or even worse the file name and text that is near the file itself for deriving the meaning of the multimedia file.
• Far superior to AltaVista's multimedia search functionality and Lycos' MP3 search feature.
• Not only can you search for the files but you can view the transcripts and play the file after you've found the one you were looking for.
• Links to original multimedia files are kept in tact.
• Very Quick!

Cons

• Lack of depth to what's currently indexed (probably due to copyright laws)
• Unless you're an NPR nut or a Dr. Laura follower, you're probably not going to find anything entertaining.

Multimedia Search Humor
Searches for "50 cent" or "in da club" don't return anything meaningful.

Further Reading
Read the research paper that explains the technology used in Speechbot for youself.