++ Spell check. Great Barrier Reeef asks did you mean...
++ Sort results by relevance (default), date, title, URL
+ Clusters on the left side of the page offer refinment suggestions by type, site, or topic. Example. Reminds us of what might find when using Vivisimo on USASearch.gov where you can cluster by topic, agencies, and sources.
++ All pages are cached.
++ Some news results allow you to view results on a map from Google, Live.com, or Yahoo. Example.
You can also find more results based on distance from the story. For example, 25km. We noticed that in some cases a link saying "show in map" is visible on a results page but clicking it returns, "no geospatial information found for this document." What we did find was also very general. A story about the Sydney, Kingsford Smith International Airport, marks Sydney on the map but not the actual airport. Still, cool idea and something we are likely to see more of from all of the major players. Similar to what Northern Light was doing seven years ago and MetaCarta is also doing today. Btw, in some cases a link to the map can be found embedded in the actual text news story. Example.
Technology
Funnelback is a 2006 spin-off from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Dr. David Hawking* is Chief Scientist. Funnelback also used on Australian Government primary site and Australia Stock Exchange web site. Complete client list. Funnelback used to be known as Panoptic.
* Btw, on a search note, Dr. Hawking's publication page is home to large amounts of interesting reading about search.
For example: Does Topic Metadata Help with Web Search?
26 pages; PDF.
by David Hawking and Justin Zobel (Published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology; )
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
