My 10 Favorite Search Engines for 2009 – Part II

December 31st, 2009 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Top 100 | 2 Comments »

kloutName: Klout

URL: http://klout.com

Why I like it: Love Twitter or hate it, you can’t escape it.  One characteristic that I do find valuable is knowing who the most influential Twitterers are, and so Klout searches that for you. My score is a 28.68 in the Casual quadrant whereas buddy Phil Bradley is a 35.49 in the Personal quadrant. What’s your Klout score?

2009-12-31_2126Name:Maggwire

URL: http://www.maggwire.com

Why I like it: We’ll look at newspapers in a moment, but with all of the press that they get, sometimes the “digitalization” of magazines is overlooked.  Maggwire indexes over 600 magazines in a slick, well designed site that lets you smoothly search through thousands of current articles.

2009-12-31_2129Name: Pillbox

URL: http://pillbox.nlm.nih.gov

Why I like it: Here’s a search engine that will save lives.  If someone arrives unconscious at the hospital ER with a bottle of pills with no label, the staff can look up the pill(s) by shape, size, imprinting, scoring, color, etc. and then proceed to search for the right drug.  This is truly our tax dollars at work. 

2009-12-31_2132Name: Ray-o-gram

URL: http://www.rayogram.com/news

Why I like it: Ideally, a search engine should conform to your wishes, and not make you conform to some awkward UI.  My dream news search engine would deliver the front page of every major newspaper free to my door every morning, with a link to the website if I want to perform a search.  That’s exactly what Rayogram news does, and it’s one search engine that everyone should open every morning.

taggalaxyName: Tag Galaxy

URL: http://taggalaxy.de

Why I like it: Tag Galaxy is a German search engine for Flickr photos developed by a graduate student for a school project.  No VC funding!  Be sure to click, drag, and double-click everything until you learn how to explore the galaxy.  This visualization is the most other worldly creative that I have ever seen, and I’ve seen hundreds. If you can, try it on the largest screen that you can find in a dark room.

To see the other 5, click here.

To see the entire 100, click here.

Happy New Year,

Charles Knight, editor
TheNextWeb.com/Search
www.AltSearchEngines.com

My 10 Favorite Search Engines for 2009 – Part I

December 31st, 2009 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Top 100, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

aquaName: Aqua

URL: http://aqua.livejournal.ru

Why I like it: Aqua streams – literally – in real time the entries published in LiveJournal. The size of the links is in inverse proportion to the length of the entry, i.e. the shorter the entry, the larger the font and the quicker the speed of the text. But they could do even more by adding color schemes or flashing text when preset keywords are found. And of course it could be another news source, or better yet a selection of news sources. Great potential.

2009-12-31_2205Name: Aromicon

URL: http://www.aromicon.com

Why I like it: Any wine search engine can filter by region, rating, or price, but wine is a sensory delight.  With Aromicon, you can search by flavors or aromas such as fruity, floral or hints of chocolate. You can also rank them by the intensity of a particular note such as cherries. What next – scratch and sniff screens?

cammapusaName:CamMap

URL: http://www.cammap.net

Why I like it: Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being watched? Well in today’s world you probably are.  With CamMap you can go to your city and locate those traffic webcams and then look through them in real time.  The possibilities as weather or traffic monitors are there, as well as pure vehicular voyeurism. Non-US cities are coming soon.

chacha_logoName:ChaCha

URL: http://www.chacha.com

Why I like it: First of all, you don’t want to go to the ChaCha website.  You call ChaCha at 1-800-2Cha-Cha and ask them a question on their VM.  In a minute you will get a text confirming your question, and then a second text with the answer.  You can ask ChaCha’s human guides any question at any time on any phone for any reason, for free. Try it and then save the number.

coloraloName: Coloralo

URL: http://coloralo.com

Why I like it: A delightful search engine for parents of small children.  Picture this, your child gives you a word, and Coloralo returns black & white sketches that you then print out for them to color. You could easily do a different picture each day, or print out a dozen copies for a classroom.

To see the other 5, click here.

To see the entire 100, click here.

FanSnap named to “100 Search Engines” List

November 23rd, 2009 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in News, Top 100 | No Comments »

fansnap-logo-lrgFanSnap, the live event ticket search engine for fans, today announced that it was named to AltSearchEngines’ “100 Search Engines in 100 Minutes” at the Web 2.0 Expo New York 2009.

Charles Knight, editor of AltSearchEngines.com and creator of the “Top 100 Alternative Search Engines” list, called these one hundred web sites, “the most creative and innovative search engines in the world.” The AltSearchEngines blog launched with a base of 1,000 search engines and now, 4,000 posts later, has published more than 2,000 unique search engines.

“The Fan Snap team is proud to be named to the 100 Search Engines List,” said Mike Janes, CEO and co-founder of FanSnap. “While Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Bing jockey for position as well as enter new frontiers, there is also outstanding innovation occurring in vertical search across many industries. To be named along with specialized search engines we admire such as Roost, Indeed.com, Zillow, and others is a thrill.”

FanSnap, which launched in March 2009, currently displays detailed, ticket-level results from dozens of ticketing providers, with listings totaling over eleven million sports, theater and concert tickets and thirty thousand events.

The FanSnap ticket search engine has several industry-first features, the most prominent being its patent-pending dynamic FanSnap Maps(SM), which help fans to:

– Determine at-a-glance the ticket price range by section using colored “heat map” markers
– Zoom into the interactive ticket maps of venues, and see the ticket offers from numerous providers placed in clearly labeled rows
– View at-a-glance the Best Value tickets — the lowest price tickets available in key areas of the venue, easily identified as blue stars on the FanSnap Maps
– Share events and even actual ticket listings via Facebook, Twitter, or mail

In October, FanSnap was named to the “PC World 100: Best Products of 2009.” In August, FanSnap was also named winner of the “Most Innovative New Search Engine” category of the Search Engine Watch (SEW) Awards 2009 at the prestigious Search Engine Strategies Conference.

100 Alternative Search Engines in 100 Minutes

November 19th, 2009 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Top 100 | 3 Comments »

canvasWell, we did it. Last night at the Web2.0 Expo we reviewed 100 of my favorite alternative search engines in 100 minutes!

If you couldn’t attend the talk, here is where you can get a copy of the updated list:

Linkli.st

2009-11-19_0848

The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners

November 14th, 2009 by Guest Author
Posted in Guest Authors, Top 100 | 2 Comments »

larryIt’s time for the annual update of my “The Best…” search engines list.

You might also be interested in these lists:

The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2008

The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2007

Not “The Best…,” But “A List” Of Search Engines For Social Media

Guest author Larry Ferlazzo

Obviously, from the title of the list you can determine that the prime criteria I use is the search engine’s accessibility to English Language Learners. I believe this kind of accessibility also makes these applications very useful for students of all ages and language proficiencies.

Many of the sites in the top half of the list also appeared in last year’s ranking, and they all have made improvements over the past year. Several new web tools have joined for the first time.

Here are my choices for The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2009:

Logo_eyePlorer_Claim_BETA_EN_bNumber eight is EyePlorer. It’s a new visual search engine that formerly focused only Wikipedia content, but is now a search engine for the entire Web. You enter a query and then see categories in a round visual display. By clicking on the categories you see excerpts from webpages, which you can “drag-and-drop” onto a clipboard. There is, however, a lot more to it that that. It’s pretty neat, and accessible to English Language Learners — once, I think, it’s explained. It can look a little complicated at first.

studysearch-logo-380Number seven is Study Search, an Australian search engine specifically designed for students. Here’s how it describes itself:

“studysearch.com.au is a customised Google search engine developed for Australian Primary and Secondary school students.

studysearch.com.au uses the power of Google’s search engine combined with a growing database of educational websites. When a search is done Google checks our database and gives those sites priority in the search results. The student is still doing a full Google search but the results are tuned to display sites that are more relevant.”

It has sections for both primary and secondary school students. It doesn’t have visual screenshots, but I have to say I was impressed with the accessibility of the sites that came up in my searches.

2009-11-14_1130Number six is the Carrot search engine. It returns search results divided into themes. For example, I typed in “Roman Gladiator” and, in addition to getting a list of typical results from a search engine, I saw a listed of thematic categories.

These included “Ancient Rome,” “Movie Gladiator,” and “Collectible Swords.” These themes, I think, will be helpful to English Language Learners as they try to get through all the “clutter” of search engine results.

logo_enNumber five is Quintura. It provides search results in a visual “cloud.” I’d characterize it as similar to the present version of Kartoo, the well-known search engine, but much less confusing.

boolify_logoNumber four is is Boolify, a search engine designed for elementary and middle school students that is accessible to English Language Learners. I think there are others that are more accessible, but this is a good one to help teach basic search strategies.

homepage-logoNumber three is Viewzi, a visual search engine. In other words, it shows search results in images instead of just text. This feature is obviously beneficial to English Language Learners. But Viewzi does much more than this — in fact, there are so many choices of how you want your search results displayed that it could be confusing to students, and there’s certainly not enough space to explain it all here. It’s worth a look, though, and definitely deserves a spot on this list.

melzoo-logo-on-whiteNumber two is Mel Zoo. After you type in your query at Mel Zoo, you see what appears to be — more or less — the typical kind of text results you’d find in other search engines. The key advantage the engine has — for both ELL’s and others — is that as you move the cursor down the text listing on the left side, the website itself is shown on the right side. This capability makes it very accessible to English Language Learners.

2009-11-14_1129The Number one – rated search engine for English Language Learners is Middlespot. It’s sort of a combination Search Engine and a little bit of a social bookmarking application. After you enter your search term and click “enter,” your search results appear both as images and short text blurbs. Obviously, showing these screenshots benefit English Language Learners, and several other search engines I’ve listed here and on my website under Search Engines have this feature. The unique tool offered by Middlespot is called a “workpad.” You can drag-and-drop the webpages you want onto your workpad, give it a title, and then Middlespot will give your workpad its own url that you can post on a blog or online journal, embed, or email to someone else — all without registration.

I’ve written in The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students about how useful an application like this can be in generating higher-order thinking among students. You might want to check out those ideas, and check out Middlespot.

Feedback, as always, is welcome.

You might also want to check-out the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.