We are honoured to be listed among Australia's best web 2.0 applications this week. Ross Dawson produced a list for the prestigious Business Review Weekly showing our most internationally successful, innovative sites. Two of our sites, FactBites and NationMaster, made the grade. Geoff Evason put together a list ranking according to Quantcast traffic data alone. The list seems to have disappeared though, so I've reproduced it myself: 1. 1134 retailmenot.com 2. 6423 bugmenot.com 3. 18686 nationmaster.com 4. 41362 uvouch.com 5. 48887 minti.com 6. 53051 redbubble.com 7. 74603 atlassian.com 8. 76818 mebeam.com 9. 87651 spyk.com 10. 129624 swapace.com 11. 148185 blocklayer.com 12. 165573 fwditon.com 13. 195584 inthemix.com.au 14. 199477 globalsurfari.com 15. 203200 pikistrips.com 16. 222399 rememberthemilk.com 17. 280084 rocketreader.com 18. 332987 factbites.com 19. 426879 mig33.com 20. 522232 blogarate.com THe middle column is rank according to Feb08 Quantcast data. This puts us in 3rd and 18th places. No matter how you cut it, Rapid Intelligence is one of Australia's top independent publishers.

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We've just put live a significant revision of our technology on Factbites. Now there's more and higher quality results. We hope you notice the difference! Also, we have a new feature on the way which will be pretty obvious once it hits the site. Stay tuned. Thanks for all the words of support. It keeps us motivated more than anything else.

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I forgot to mention. Factbites launched an In The News feature to the front page of the site. This links to hot topics that are being discussed in the news that day. Rapid Intelligence, keepin' it fresh.

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Our FactBites site is enjoying growing traffic, and I've just read a great review on the blog of Matthew Hurst, Director of Research at Intelliseek:

The results that Factbites generates are still extracts from web pages, but they are of far higher quality than the summaries that main stream web search engines provide. By focusing the technology on passages that make statements about the topic being searched for, the user experiences a far richer response. It should be noted that this type of interface has the potential to change the way in which searches are performed as the search engine is now doing more of the heavy lifting and is not trying to guess the intention of the user.

The site also has an In The News feature now, linking to the recent topics.

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I've just updated a new index for our site FactBites. It now fields 2 million keywords. More features to come.

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StateMaster, a free online resource for comparing US states, has been released today. We have translated our winning formula of statistical comparisons, graphs, maps and flags to the 50 states of America, giving our users another level of data at their fingertips. With over 2,500 stats on StateMaster, you can find information on anything from binge drinkers to race related hate crimes. Detailed state profiles, as well as thousands of maps and flags, are also included in the database, making us a one-stop resource for information about US states. Visit StateMaster Now! Keep in mind that our Volunteer Editor program will also be implemented for StateMaster, bringing together a community of folks interested in data and general information on US states. Let us know if you are interested!

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What do you get if you cross a search engine with an encyclopedia? The answer arrived on the net today - Factbites (www.Factbites.com), a new approach to search. Under the slogan "where results make sense", Factbites provides searchers with full sentences about their search topic, rather than the sentence fragments most search engines offer.

Rather than focusing on link-based technology like Google, Factbites delves into the tone and subject matter of the given topic. The engine "reads" the content of each page and determines how meaningful the text is. It seeks out authoritative and informative content, preferring encyclopedia-style fact-based descriptions to the chatty, spammy and inconsequential.

The end result is a clean summary you can almost read from beginning to end. Not only is this an effective filter against spam and clutter, it's also a time saver, because it gives users a clear picture of what each destination site is about. For encyclopedia-style content, the site makes some large claims. The website challenges users to compare Factbites results to Google results at Factbites vs. Google. When searching for quick information on the sort of things you'd usually go to an encyclopedia for, the results are surprisingly clear - Factbites wins hands down. Don't take our word for it, check the site yourself - Factbites!

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