Quick.as allows access to the search results from other sites in the one convenient location. It provides you with better information than Google (or at very least the same); and after the commands become second nature, it allows you to access to the information you want quicker and with less mental processing.

Who’s turn is it to wash the dishes?

So your are so indecisive that you can’t choose between Rock, Paper or Scissors. Well luckily for you, you can type in RPS (or Rock) in the search bar and Quick.as will decide for you!

I can’t decide if I should breakup with my girlfriend. What can I do?

Why not just flip a coin. It is a very effective technique for making these types of decision. Type in coin in the search bar to flip a coin.

Can Quick.as make life defining decisions for me?

Why yes it can! One of the Search Commands is 8ball. Ask it a yes/no question and it will give you an answer. You can send the answer to your friends and it will be the same … although the Quick.as Magic 8 ball is likely to change its mind every day or so!

Quick.as vs. Google.

Google’s well known mission is, “To organize the worlds information.” They do a pretty decent job at this, at least better than any other company. For that information to be useful, people then need to access the information. For the most part Google do a pretty decent job at this too. It implies that there are actually two components to Google’s core offering:

1. Organization of information; and
2. Easy access to information.

Organization of Information

Google is fantastic for gathering information on topics that you have not broached before. But what if you have broached the topic before? What if you are searching for information that you know will be found in a certain location? It would make sense to go directly to that location. People are becoming more familiar with the web and are, in general, a little more discerning. This is what Quick.as allows, and is a premise around which Quick.as was built.

* Who wrote “Confessions of and Economic Hitman,” and what other books has he written? – you search amazon.com
* How do I do a regular expression search in PHP (a programming language)? – you search php.net
* What is the population of Toronto? – you search Wikipedia.com

“Where Google is a search site, Quick.as is a location site.”

Quick.as allows you to put a “command” (a keyboard shortcut of sorts) in front of you search term and you will go directly to the search results of a particular site. Where Google is a “search” site, Quick.as is a “location” site.

Of course, if you do not use a “command” in front of your search term, it simply returns the Google search results. So at very least, using Quick.as to search the web is never going to require more time and mental processing than using Google.
Easy Access to Information

You could go to Google and do a search but if you know what you want is on Wikipedia (for example), that is an extra page load, requires mental processing, and most likely means time-consuming, “spastic lurching” from mouse to keyboard and back. A search on Quick.as avoids this. It gets you there quicker.

The time saving might no seem like much, but once the frequently used commands become second nature, the small productivity gain per search aggregates into a significant time saving over an extended period.

Quick.as also has “Quick Links” which are like bookmarks that appear on the page. They can be customized and have keyboard shortcuts too. This is a further productivity gain as generally the majority of sites people visit are sites they frequent regularly (e.g. social networking, web based email, news, etc.). It minimizes mental processing (you don’t have to remember the URL or select the site form your bookmarks) and time-consuming, spastic lurching from mouse to keyboard and back again applies here. This is discussed quite eloquently in an article called “Return of the Keyboard Shortcut.”

Quick.as allows you to access the search results from other sites in the one convenient location. It provides you with better information than Google (or in the worst case scenario it is the same as using Google). Further, after using it for a little while (and the commands become second nature), Quick.as will allow access to the information you want quicker and with less mental processing.

You should also check out this video.

Here are the Quick.as Search Commands Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Ollo, the simplest and most flexible classified advertising service around. You can advertise your business, your car, your house or just about anything (that’s legal) on Ollo. You can link to your own web page or site or create a page on Ollo with pictures, text and contact info. Advertising is free on Ollo (yellow boxes around the ads) or you can pay a small fee for higher ranking (orange boxes around the ads).

Search results are seven to the page rather than the usual 10. This is because tests tell us people fully read lists up to seven items but no more. There are up to seven pages of results for any given search.

Searches are available on keywords (What), on location (Where) and on price (Price).

* Not all fields are needed for any search. Leaving the location and price blank will yield a worldwide search on just keywords.

* Sometimes you may want to restrict your search to a particular country in which case just add it to the location box. You can put in a town or city too. You might want to put ‘Birmingham UK’ unless your want ‘Birmingham USA’.

* Price is a useful box when looking for things like cars or houses. You can put in a number and get all price matches within 10% of that number or enter a range like ‘3000 to 4000′.

So you have powerful searching in a unique format. That’s Ollo!