Groxis was founded in 2001 by a team of experienced executives and distinguished directors and advisers to address the challenges associated with the emerging trends in information management and communication.

Together they created Grokker, a web-based enterprise search management platform that leverages the power of federated content access and visualization to maximize the value of information assets for enterprises, content publishers, libraries and other research-intensive organizations. Grokker’s name is inspired by the 1961 Robert A. Heinlein science fiction classic “Stranger in a Strange Land,” in which Grok is a Martian word meaning to understand something completely.  Groxis is located in downtown San Francisco, CA.

LivePlasma is a discovery search engine

 

KoolTorch is a next generation, patented technology that provides a user friendly interface for viewing and navigating search results. Today, one search will oftentimes return pages and pages of results.  What users find is that the results listed on the screen may not be pertinent to what they are searching.  What is relevant to their search may not be on the first, second or even third page of listings.  Scrolling down long textual listings is time consuming, monotonous and eye-straining.  How often do you even go to the 4th or 5th page of search results?


KoolTorch is on the forefront of an emerging trend of making it easier for people to find and use knowledge.  KoolTorch provides an eye-pleasing format for easily and quickly viewing large numbers of search results displayed in a useful context.  Our unique visualization of search results based on categorization and clustering in a multi-level graphical format – with large numbers of results (up to 100 or more) on a single page -  helps to make sense of what a user is searching.



searchCrystallets you search and compare multiple engines in one place. It is a search visualization tool that enables you to compare, remix and share results from the best web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines, Flickr images or RSS feeds.

Reader Amit shares his thoughts with us:

Charles wrote this “circular” post, and I figured this is a good opportunity to share with you two engines from my “favorite club”,   grokker and searchCrystal.

Why do I like them? Well, I have my reasons … searchCrystal is using the screen not just to put the data on it but the location of the result makes sense, it holds some information – it might be useful ! Visualization harnessed to the benefit of the user – not just as a canvas for cool design.

The interface should be refined , searchCrystal wastes valuable screen real estate and user attention when they show me the page ranking on the top of the tool tip for each result. This is a “hot spot” the top portion of the tool tip (the tool tips gives the motion – which attracts the user eyes and the top of the box is the first thing the user sees) it should be utilized for something more important – I already know the page “ranking” by looking at the location of the icon (which I did just before putting my cursor on). searchCrystal is easy (that’s always a good thing) : Middle = good, high ranking ; On the edges = “less good”.

 More advantages – I have choices – text details , thumbnail + text or nothing, I can control the amount of information I get for each result. All the “regular” options (images , video , blogs) and the nice (but slow) mashup (when I don’t know what I’m looking for) are there.  One last thing worth mentioning – availability – searchCrystal comes as a widget which is nice. I wonder how many people use it through the widgets compared to the main web site.

So what about grokker. It starts slow, the clustering offers 2 options – the tree view and the “round table” (this is the part that I don’t like … ). you can switch between them whenever you want and get 1/3 of the screen for the “Detailed view” with an option to define how much details you want / need. Zoom in and out are intuitive and easy, less screen is wasted  and I can get “to the point” quickly.

More features that can help you search are available on the (optional) left panel – the filters. The “source filters” looks to me redundant – I made this decision when I started my search – looking for something to buy – go Amazon, looking for information – go Wikipedia. Don’t know what you’re looking for – go Yahoo. The date filter is very useful (I first saw it a year ago on Nexo, which I like) – looking for the latest tech book – filter to the last few months, looking for classics – don’t filter at all.

This is all nice and handy. but the thing that separates grokker from the pack is the fact I can feel the creators of the tool actually search the web like I do (I’m sure the fact that it’s very similar to the engine I’m implementing myself helped too). What I’m talking about ? The working list. The place where the results that I actually want to investigate later go when I keep on looking. If you used a tabbed browser, and looked for something online – you probably found yourself opening tab after tab after tab, or trying to manage somehow all the great interesting web sites you find on your journey. The feature is not done, there’s a lot to improve there – but it’s a start.

Grokker guys, if you read this (I know you are), and you want to buy me (or my ideas) to improve grokker – don’t be shy – email me.   If you want to read more about my exclusive “favorite club” let me know by leaving a comment to this post. I’m all about sharing…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.