Collecta Blog – Real-time Streaming Search

Our free and easy-to-use widget tool brings the vibrancy of streaming customized results to any website or blog.  The widget is based on Collecta’s leading platform that brings together real-time content from a network of more than 10 million social media and established news sites.

Your streaming, real-time widget can be created in seconds. Simply go to http://widget.collecta.com and enter the desired search term(s) — whether it’s ‘Haiti’ or ‘Haiti Red Cross’, ‘taylor swift’ or ‘NBA all-star.’ Then grab the code and paste it anywhere to instantly liven up a site or blog with real-time content.

While there you can also look at some example widgets to grab for yourself or help you with your ideas. Examples there carry public postings about the Lost season premiere, about the upcoming Big Game between the Colts and the Saints, and about South by Southwest (SXSW).  Or you can check some examples of other sites that are using the Collecta widget right now.
MySpace Breaking News, BlueIon, TheTofu, Egronomixpr, Future of Money, Afraid Of Sharks

Additional instructions.

* To add Collecta to your WordPress.org (Self Hosted) blog, use our WordPress widget plugin.

* To add Collecta results to any web page using an iFrame, go to http://widget.collecta.com and follow the instructions below.

Step 1 – Pick your search terms. Test some different combinations of terms to find the ones that give the best results for you.  The same operators that work on Collecta.com will work here.  This blog post has some details on search operators.

Step 2 – Decide if you want to add any customization to your widget. We make the widget easy to size and with a transparent background so it’s easy to use on most sites, or we allow you to apply your own custom CSS.  You will need to visit this page for more info on the elements used for your CSS.

Step 3 – Click “Build Widget” and check out the preview, copy the code from the “Grab the code” box and paste it into your blog or site. Any site that supports an iFrame should support the Collecta widget. Voila, Collecta live results for your query streaming updates in real time.

Most browsers limit the maximum number of connections to the same domain from a single page. Therefore if you put too many widgets in the same web page, they will not receive real-time updates properly. This is a browser limit that varies between browsers, not a Collecta limit.

Feel free to drop us a line (to help @ collecta dot com) and let us know where you are using the Collecta widget.

We put you in the front row, so you can follow everything that happens at the Globes live — from the red carpet to the awards ceremony and parties.

Our streaming real-time search platform provides a uniquely comprehensive and instantaneous glimpse into every comment, reaction, trend, and image from across the web.

All weekend long we will focus our hot topics around the Golden Globes.  So check back at Collecta.com over the next couple of days during the lead up to the Globes, and then again during the show itself, to see what’s hot or  click on one of the topics to follow along in real time. Just start us up and let the real time results come to you.

This weekend is the first weekend of the NFL Playoffs, and while we know everyone within range of a TV will have the games on, the real-time web adds a whole now layer of awesomeness to  live sports.

Where else does real time matter more? You want to know what’s happening now, who’s winning, who’s losing, and who just made the TD of the year right now. Not have to wait and read about it tomorrow.

And since we post photos from sites like Twitpic and Flickr live in real time, as well as videos and more, you might even find some content from fans live at the games, content you wouldn’t have found anywhere else – streamed to you automatically in real time.

Check out the following searches for this weekends game and keep up with all the talk surrounding the game. Click on the game links to follow the action in Collecta.

Saturday January 9
NY Jets vs. Cincinnati Bengals – 4:30pm ET

Philadelphia Eagles vs. Dallas Cowboys - 8:00pm ET

Sunday January 10
Baltimore Ravens vs. New England Patriots – 1:00 PM ET

Green Bay Packers vs Arizona Cardinals - 4:40pm ET

And remember, you can make your own searches for your favorite players, or other events, just use the Real Time Search box at the top left of the Collecta.com page.

Collecta’s new home page showcases the best pictures, stories, updates and comments from CES and other trending topics as they unfold

San Francisco, Calif. – January 7, 2010 – Collecta, the streaming real-time search company that has been accelerating the pace of Internet search, is leveraging its network of more than 10 million sites to reveal hot stories as they develop across the web. The site’s new ‘Hot Now’ section features the most representative stories, photos, and comments for each hot topic — providing a unique multi-dimensional snapshot on the pulse of the web at any point in time. For example, with the start of CES 2010, Collecta’s ‘Hot Now’ shows the hottest stories, launches, and buzz from Las Vegas.

At a glance, Collecta visitors can discover the latest breaking events, news, and other trends on the web — from the floor of CES to a cold blast gripping the east coast or Google’s Nexus One. For each topic, Collecta includes a sampling of articles, images, Twitter updates, and comments to give people a holistic view of what’s being said and shown across the web. The content updates as new relevant information and images come in — giving the fastest, most up-to-date view of topics in real time.

Collecta’s editorial process has been designed to ensure that the hottest topics and trends are showcased, as well as the most representative and useful pieces of media for each topic.

“Previously, the Collecta home page displayed a list of the hottest keywords found in Collecta searches. Our users responded really well to that feature and often launched their own searches to discover what’s happening related to any given keyword,” said Gerry Campbell, CEO of Collecta. “We decided to liven things up by adding sample stories, comments, and photos up front for each topic. As a result, visitors don’t just see a handful of terms. They see the most useful pieces of content right away, and instantly have a multi-faceted view of what’s going on at any given moment.”

In addition, technology fans can turn to Collecta to track all the latest happenings from the floors of CES in real time. By running an extended search on CES on Collecta, people can literally watch events and news unfold. Collecta’s XMPP-based platform shoots information out the instant it has been published, so users can watch a live results stream without having to hit refresh or restart their query. Collecta encompasses a broad content network of both social media and established news sources, offering a single place to view product reviews from bloggers and journalists, Tweets and photos from exhibitors and attendees, articles, comments and more — all in real time.

About Collecta
Collecta represents a new way to experience search, in real time. Collecta is the Web’s most powerful real-time search engine, posting matching stories, blogs, photos, and comments as they happen. By aggregating content in real time, Collecta offers a new and more comprehensive view of what’s going on in the world right now. For more information, visit www.collecta.com.

We hope by now you’ve had a chance to see our real-time results in action in the Collecta client at Collecta.com. But we also understand that life is about convenience, and that a lot of people use RSS readers to keep track of their daily news, blogs and breaking stories too. Feed readers may not be real-time (yet) but we understand the convenience, so we’re here for you – the instructions below explain how to use the Collecta REST API to get results from your favorite Collecta searches, right to your feed reader.

There are really only two basic steps required:

1) Create your query using the Collecta REST API. You can test your query in any browser to make sure it is working properly.

2) Add the URL for your query to your favorite feed reader, and start receiving results.

That’s it.

The Collecta REST API is really very simple, it’s just some parameters on the URL, but since not everyone is used to working with an API, we have provided the following simple instructions to get you started in writing your own queries.

Creating search queries with the Collecta REST API.

Since the Collecta API is just a specifally formatted URL, all your queries will be in the basic format of http://api.collecta.com/search?q= followed by your query terms.

As a simple example, lately there have been some terrific snowfalls in the eastern US and in Britain. So to see what people are saying about snow I could use this query: http://api.collecta.com/search?q=snow

But lets say you wanted to only see photos, not the updates and blog comments and other stuff.  Since the query language is the same as that used on Collecta.com, you can use the category field. So the Collecta query would be: snow category:photo -  and the API link would be: http://api.collecta.com/search?q=snow category:photo

Go ahead and click the link above to see the results you would get for your query. They may not look so great in the browser, but most feed readers will display the images nicely, as you can see below.

Here is an example from Google Reader:

Another example query using categories: since it’s football season, to limit to just stories and blog posts about the NFL the Collecta query would be: NFL category:story So the API link would be http://api.collecta.com/search?q=NFL category:story

Remember – to get results for all categories, just run use the same query without specifying a category field.

Other common search operators.
Finally, a quick run through of some other common search operators, most of which should already be familiar from other search engines. Let’s start with ‘AND’ which the easiest because it is implied.  For example – http://api.collecta.com/search?q=Florida State will search for results containing both the word Florida and the word State. So you never need to type “AND” as part of your query.

Collecta also supports the ‘OR’ operator: http://api.collecta.com/search?q= cats OR dogs
This will return results with either word.  Please note he capital OR – you must capitalize OR for it to be treated as a search operator.

Collecta also supports queries by phrase.  Phrases are used when you want to get an exact match on a set of words together in a specific arrangement.  Using a phrase can be helpful when AND or OR is returning extra information and you want to narrow your query results.  Names are often good examples of this.  For example you would want to use http://api.collecta.com/search?q=”Pat White” instead of  http://api.collecta.com/search?q=Pat White This will insure that you get the exact phrase you are looking for, as in “Pat White of the Miami Dolphins” but not just results with both the words Pat and White as in “My grandpa Pat has white hair.”

And of course you can use the previously operators together for example http://api.collecta.com/search?q=”Pat White” OR “Miami Dolphins”

There are a few other limitations to the Collecta API.  One being that right now some special characters will not work or will need to be URL escaped.  An exception to the rule is the # sign, which you should just leave out altogether.  So if you are looking for items tagged with a certain hash tag, you can leave out the # and just search for the term, and Collecta will also find the hash tags for that term.