scandoo

Walt Mossberg's Take...

On Thursday (22nd June), Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal looked at our service. It makes for interesting reading. He seems to have appreciated the way we look for offensive content as well as security threats. At the same time he's given us some great feedback that we're grateful to receive, we'll be tightening up the security aspects of Scandoo beta, with the addition of scanning for sponsored links in the near future, and keep your eyes peeled for more new search engine support. Our new toolbar (it's so so close to being ready) will also go some way.

We're sure the next time he reviews Scandoo, when it's out of beta and completed, he'll love us more.

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060622.html

Sneak Peek - Regionalisation

Here's a treat for our Blog readers... we thought we'd give you a sneak peek into something that we've been beavering away on, and is on the verge of being included in our Scandoo beta.   

Regional Support: We've had lots of requests for Scandoo to support regionalised sites such as Google.co.uk instead of Google.com.   Eventually, we'll have the world covered, but we have to start somewhere! You can try the UK edition of Google with Scandoo here, and the UK edition of MSN with Scandoo here. Just enter any search term in to the box that appears, and let us know what you think!

Scandoo's development really is driven by user feedback.  I know we repeat this a fair bit. We launched as a beta service because we thought it was the best way to get insight into how to further improve it and get help in ironing out the bugs.

Web Security Trends

Today, Scandoo’s parent company ScanSafe published its Global Threat Report. It is a monthly analysis of the 5 billion web requests ScanSafe protects for its international corporate customer base. 

Interestingly for Scandoo users, they saw 71% of users unknowingly attempting to install Adware and Spyware ridden browser helper objects (generally things like toolbars). Interestingly enough Screensaver related spyware dropped from the Top 10 Spyware. It seems that the media attention that area arrived at, and the availability of services like ours, is both stopping people from trying to download these nasty programs, and encouraging Screensaver spyware mongers to clean up their act.  Although we think they’ll just move to another medium, but since we scan each request, we’ll be able to keep up with them.

Other interesting bits of information were that Spy ware/Ad ware protection blocks had increased by 9% on the previous month and of the total blocked, 5.7% were 'drive by install' attempts (installs which aren't transparent to the user that they are installing an application). 

 

Scandoo "Make Over" Time!

Sadly, Trinny and Susannah haven't been to Scandoo HQ. I've still got the same bad dress sense. :(

We’ve just released a make over of our site, it’s minor, but should give more information. If we’re not explaining something, let us know, we’ll do our best to get it on the site. We've also added the ability to add comments to re-define requests.

Contrary to the numerous ‘beta’ products out there, Scandoo really is a beta. That mean the core works, but is being worked on and added to every day. It’s pretty accurate right now, but we are still ironing out a few bugs, refining how we operate and so on…  We know there are areas we can improve on, and are working to our increase functionality, categorisation and ease of use.

However, we can’t spot everything or get everything right. There’s a very very big world wide web out there. While our own mechanisms for site classification based on analysis work well, your re-defines really make a difference. It’s easy to redefine a site, just click on the link in the pop-up!

Toolbars & Search Plugins

We’ve had a great response in the last week of Scandoo, and we’re getting a lot of mails like this:

“This is great. It would be even better if there was a toolbar- sitting there, so you can type in anytime as you are browsing.”

Everyone seems to be screaming for a toolbar, so we’ve got our development team on the case. Let us know what features you’d like to see in it.

In the interim, you can download our ‘search plugins’ from here. They work with the integrated search facility in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7.0. Also if you are trying out the Google Toolbar 4 beta you can add us as a button, so you get the benefits of the Google Toolbar, but also an option to use Scandoo for protection of your results.

What we're hearing...

it seems like we're doing some thing right...

“I love your search engine site. It's such a great idea to have a simple filtering system as you have. I work in a primary school and have only just this week discovered your site. I'm definitely going to be using this in my school during ICT lessons as a way for the children to safely access suitable websites.  Thanks for creating such a great teaching resource (without knowing it no doubt!).”

Well, we honestly started this project based on what we heard from our friends and families.  Although it's probably the children of our technical team we really need to thank :)

"Will ratings change over time?"

Yes, we continually analyse and review how we classify pages, since we scan them on every attempt, but sometimes we get it wrong, which is where we depend on our users to help us get it right by clicking on the redefine link in the bubble.

“I love the ...  site classification by type when you hover over the page was particularly useful for navigating the mire of Google!”

Tell me about it...

“What a great service you offer for free! It's just amazing! Thank you for that!”

(blushes)

“You have a wonderful idea here.  So much easier than using Site Advisor, especially for the less experienced computer users that just want to surf the web.”

ScanSafe's (Scandoo's parent company) success came due to its simplicity of use and deployment, corporations just make one configuration change and all their internet traffic is scanned for viruses and controlled for content.  All the complexity is the ScanSafe managed service.  The same principle applies to Scandoo, although there's no config change, just a different website address to visit.

"I've tried out your Scandoo service and find it refreshing and very useful. My only remark is that it doesn't filter the sponsored search results too. Will you add that feature?"

Yes, we're working to develop this, such is the nature of being in beta. We know they can represent web risks, and are looking to have this working in the near future.

"The "redefining a site" page should perhaps have a textbox to incorporate any other information that may help you guys decide on whether or not to reclassify it within the particular section that someone is submitting."

Great idea, we'll do it.