The sheer volume of Web data, together with its low signal-to-noise ratio, make it difficult for text-based search engines to locate high-quality pages. Analyzing the links between Web sites has dramatically improved the Web search experience and spawned research into the Web’s link structure. This research includes graph-theoretic studies of connectivity, which have shown the Web to have strong similarities with social networks.

Self-similarity is pervasive in social networks. While researchers have observed Web self-similarity in other contexts, finding a fractal structure in a graph-theoretic setting adds further evidence to the Web’s small-world social nature. Thus, researchers seek to explain and exploit the human behavior implicit in the Web’s evolving structure.

We need more sophisticated methods for gathering, massaging and making connections among all the pieces of information that enter our lives each day -- everything from e-mail to Web pages to phone numbers and more. So when I see useful tools, I pay attention.

The rapid growth of the Internet has led to a worldwide crisis of governance.

In the early years of Internet development, the prevailing view was that government should stay out of Internet governance; market forces and self-regulation would suffice to create order and enforce standards of behavior.

But this view has proven inadequate as the Internet has become mainstream. A reliance on markets and self-policing has failed to address adequately the important interests of Internet users such as privacy protection, security, and access to diverse content. And as the number of users has grown worldwide, so have calls for protection of these important public and consumer interests.

Toby Mundy writes an interesting article on the state of book publishing in the October issue of _Prospect_.

Genomic Imprintiing: A Talk With David Haig. ... A new phenomenon in molecular biology called genomic imprinting, which is a situation in which a DNA sequence can have conditional behavior depending on whether it is maternally or paternally inherited.

In our Web-connected world, a business enterprise must have timely information in order to survive. But the applications that collect and manage the information may have been developed independently, over years, using different products and technology.

How can such information -- scattered across multiple databases and applications -- be collected and integrated for access in real time?

A converted missile silo site has been sold for $2.1 million in an online auction to a couple who are getting an Adirondack getaway home with a Jacuzzi, three-foot-thick walls and some cold war charm.

Corvis said quarterly sales declined 94 percent, to a meager $1.4 million, as the fiber-optics maker promised to cut expenses and wait out the telecommunications slump.

When things got out of hand -- I mean out of hand -- was when Phillip Michael Thomas came into the picture and bodies started flying. ... He was jacking cars and menacing pedestrians.

Grokker builds precise and detailed knowledge maps containing visual cues and relationships between the data. The map itself contains powerful metadata that vividly describes the “nature” of the data collection. The Grokker product enables map generation and the ability to collaborate, extend, edit, delete, save, and share any attribute or subset of the map. This approach allows the Grokker to negotiate any type of network, file system, or database saving time, resources, and most importantly, generates far more useful results.

ACCESS: Get a big picture view of how large collections of information fit together in a contextual setting.

ORGANIZE: All data sources can be consolidated into a visual information framework.