iSpecies

[steve Lingafelter]

Looks like this will be a very powerful site.  Unfortunately there are
lots of images and documents out there that aren't found by Google,
Yahoo, etc, despite specifically sending them information on new
websites etc. and waiting months.

For example, I have a website on Images of Holotypes of Cerambycidae of
the Smithsonian Institution [insert shameless plug here:]

www.elaphidion.com

with thousands of images, many of taxa that otherwise have absolutely
no hits on any search engine.  They are only on my site, yet they are
often overlooked by the search engines and your site.  So it seems that
it is still necessary to have a large library of bookmarks to cover all
the bases without overreliance on a "simplified" search tool that will
overlook many things.

Steve


______________________
Steven W. Lingafelter, Ph. D.
Systematic Entomology Lab, USDA
MRC-I68
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institute PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012

Phone: 202-382-1793
Email: slingafe at sel.barc.usda.gov


>>> Roderic Page <r.page at BIO.GLA.AC.UK> - 11/2/05 11:23 AM >>>
For fun I've created a site that searches three data sources - NCBI,
Yahoo images, and Google Scholar for information on a taxonomic name.
If you type in a name you get information on whether that organism has
been sequenced (and if so, how many sequences are available), the
first
five images Yahoo finds on the web, and up to 10 documents from Google
Scholar (with DOIs and links to PubMed, where available ).

If you'd like to try it go to http://ispecies.org (you'll get
forwarded
to a machine here in Glasgow).

I know there are all sorts of problems with searching on names, but
I've found it to be fun to see just how much information is out there.

Example links to try are:

http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?q=Pediculus+humanus
http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?q=Rhea+americana
http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?q=Anthonomus+grandis
http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?
q=Florinemestrius+pulcherrimus
http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?q=Agathis+australis
http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?q=Banksia+coccinea

Please be aware that the image search can sometime produce images you
might not want children or the faint hearted to see -- despite Yahoo
claiming it filters adult content. You have been warned...

Comments welcome.

Regards

Rod

Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom

Phone:    +44 141 330 4778
Fax:      +44 141 330 2792
email:    r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
web:      http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html

Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic
Biologists Website:  http://systematicbiology.org
Search for taxon names at
http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/