The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, August

August 1st, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Top 100 | 5 Comments »

Well, it has been that time of the month, another long, arduous day when the Top 100 list is taken out of the closet and reviewed, over and over, until it once again reflects my conception of the Best of the Best in alternative search engines.

As always, I will include here the Top 100 that readers have chosen from our Search Race, and the web-based AltsR.Us.

But the hardest part of all, of course, is selecting one that has some special appeal, the Search Engine of the Month that will join the other monthly winners for the ultimate Search Engine of the Year 2008 award in December.

So, in the immortal words of the Pop group ABBA, “The Winner Takes it All.”   Seeqpod

Here’s the back story on Seeqpod:

Kasian Franks, Raf Podowski, and Shekhar Lodha founded SeeqPod in 2005. Since then, the team has evolved SeeqPod from a technological breakthrough among genomic biologists to the consumer ‘Playable Search’ site it is today.

In order to sort the data, the scientists created a mathematical algorithm to link their deeply buried, disconnected bits of electronic information. The algorithm was coded to make smart associations and connections, not unlike the way the human mind mimics intelligent, useful connections in everyday life. Immediately, the team suspected that their new algorithm could be used to search and discover specialized, hard-to-find content online. SeeqPod, the first search and discover engine focused exclusively on precise, relevant playable results, was realized. Today, that algorithm instructs our intelligent electronic ‘robots’ that work alongside powerful crawlers, automatically submitting links of playable content to us. The result is a large, rich index of links that grows daily.

SeeqPod was built with the social networking mobile generation in mind, and we provide users with an array of easy to use tools to playlist, share, embed, and purchase results, as well as iPhone and iPod Touch compatibility. Our company reflects a passion for the human desire to search and discover, and the belief that soon, everything on the Web will need to be playable. Now, in early 2008, SeeqPod.com helps millions of unique visitors each month.

You can watch those visitors on Seeqpod’s visually engaging World Map here:

Follow these links for the entire Top 100 List for August, 2008:

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, August 2008 (.pdf)

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, August 2008 (.xls)

For The Top 100 Search Engines in The Search Race, go here:

For the Top 100 ranked search engines according to AltsR.Us:

Skip the morning paper and try Jamesoo instead.

August 1st, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in News | 1 Comment »

Jamesoo is a new generation of search engine. Jamesoo transforms a user query into a dynamic visual page like a newspaper. It thus combines the force of information in great volume available in 12 languages and 248 countries on the freshest data of the Web. All articles comes from RSS feeds published very freshly. The quality of the results of Jamesoo is based on three key elements. First of all, information resulting from RSS is of nature fresher and more relevant than the Web pages in general. Then, Jamesoo has a unique algorithm which makes it possible to classify the sources by relevance. Jamesoo is based on the sources (flow RSS) rather than on the same pages they, because as in the “true life” the transmitter of a message is as important as the message itself.

Why Jamesoo? Because 80% of the useful, fresh information are in RSS feeds today.  Rather than to let itself exceed by millions of sites recopied without added value key initial information, Jamesoo lays the stress not in the relevance of the results on the page itself but on the source which emits the information.

Of course like the powerful engines, Jamesoo limits its results to the articles which contain all your research topics; it gives more recent results.  Jamesoo provides you by default the results which are closest to your culture: language and country.  If you wish to go elsewhere, no problem, it is easy enough to change the parameters of research by choosing either a country, or a language to go towards a more precise context of research.

The Semantic Web is transforming the Web. RSS is one of those big steps. It is at the good level between the non-structured information conveyed by the browsers and published by all sites HTML of today and the information systems bound for the machines like the semantic Web or the CMS. RSS is format extensible, which makes it possible at communities to build their clean system of representation to extend the model of information. RSS is the bond which can link tomorrow the Web and the working station. Jamesoo proposes tools (Web & Desktop) to facilitate the life of the user between these two worlds for the principal functions which are the GET (to collect of the data, to preserve them…), the READ (to read information, to include/understand…), WRITE (to write, publish…) and the SEARCH (to seek information, a file or an answer…).