There’s nothing more frustrating than a fruitless Web search — or one that returns results that distract you from your original goal. Search giant Google knows this all too well and realizes that there’s a chance you might switch to another search engine if you get tired of poor results.

This week I tested two free tools that attempt to make your Web searches more relevant by learning from users’ reactions to search results: Google’s SearchWiki and Surf Canyon Inc.’s namesake tool for Web browsers. These two don’t necessarily compete against each other; in fact, they can be used in tandem. But after initially entering a search query, SearchWiki requires additional work on the part of the user that many people may not want to do. Surf Canyon works automatically as you go, sorting results according to real-time user behavior.

Mossberg Solution – New Tools Aim to Improve Web Searches – WSJ.com.

How Jazz Helped Hasten the Civil-Rights Movement – WSJ.com.

By NAT HENTOFF

On Jan. 19, Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Rockefeller Foundation, also focusing on the next day’s presidential inauguration, will present at Kennedy Center “A Celebration of America.” Headlining the cast are Sandra Day O’Connor and Wynton Marsalis. As Jazz at Lincoln Center declares, Dr. King called jazz “America’s triumphant music,” and the presence of Mr. Marsalis is to “illustrate that American democracy and America’s music share the same tenets and embody the same potential for change, hope and renewal.”

This focus on jazz as well as President-elect Barack Obama (who, I’m told, has John Coltrane on his iPod) should help make Americans, including our historians, aware of the largely untold story of the key role of jazz in helping to shape and quicken the arrival of the civil-rights movement.

THE awkward conversations usually start with something like, “You look like Tiger Woods.”

Or, “Your last name is Rice — are you related to Jerry? Condoleezza?”

In bolder moments, maybe after a few drinks at a cocktail party, a white acquaintance might say to George Rice, 45, who is biracial: “You don’t seem that black. I have no worries with you.”

The New Face of Race Relations – NYTimes.com.

As the recession rapidly sucks the momentum out of Web 2.0’s heyday, with it may go one of the era’s most defining terms: the job title “social media expert.”

For the past few years, people who identify with that title–as well as social media consultants, social media strategists, and social media marketers, depending on what they want to call it–have been unavoidable in the Web 2.0 social scene. You’d meet them at the endless litany of industry cocktail parties, at Tech Meetup events on both coasts, and at the likes of the Web 2.0 Expo. A search for “social media expert” on business networking site LinkedIn yields 175 results. “Social media consultant” yields nearly 400, and “social media strategist” about 300. Read More on CNET