Google – Scholar or newer search engine

Continuations of google’s empire in the forms of SMS messaging might be nice, but this might be the killer app they need. scholar.google.com
correctly identifies scholarly papers, ranks them according to citation, and is an easy and accurate way to survey new research. With so many scholarly papers and journals available online now, it’s nice to have an easy and free way to search them and it’s citation numbers let you know who’s ideas are the most referenced in the academic arena. It’s still in beta, but I’ve found it useful for looking up papers by particular researchers.