MATEOSQUARED’S iSEARCH

Pipl has taken ego surfing to the next level. I thought Google had cool results when I typed in mine or a friends name, but Pipl takes it to a whole different level. Pipl is a people only search engine that scours the “deep-web” for very specific and personal information about people.

Also known as “invisible web”, the term “deep web” refers to a vast repository of underlying content, such as documents in online databases that general-purpose web crawlers cannot reach. The deep web content is estimated at 500 times that of the surface web, yet has remained mostly untapped due to the limitations of traditional search engines.

It doesn’t just pick up random blog comments and high school accomplishments, their spiders crawl through government databases, and several other personal databases. Want to know the tax record for someone’s house? Want to see what others are saying about you on MySpace? Go to Pipl.

Some of the databases Piple spiders are:

• Securities and Exchange Commission
• ICQ
• Hoovers
• US Patent Office
• MySpace

Much like any other good search engine, they have a toolbar people can download, so they can either ego surf or search for other people any time they want.

Google now offers traffic maps for several large cities in the states. They are several months behind Yahoo! and Microsoft, but catching up quickly. It is the typical red, yellow, green lines that are seen in other traffic maps, but it doesn’t offer alternatives to the “red” areas or really any other dynamic features. Mainly it is just another notch in the successful Google Map belt.

A disclaimer: Every Web site I visit, I go with an open mind and a positive attitude. Some sites make it very hard to stay positive. I know people put a lot of work into their sites, but I think others are just slapping stuff together and hoping Google or Yahoo! will snatch them up.

Ask Vox, in my opinion is one of those sites. The site seems to be a mix between a bad meta-search engine and a really bad Yahoo! Answers. I like Yahoo! Answers, I like question and answer sites that are well moderated. I also like a unique search engine, with cool features. See some of my past posts. I don’t get Ask Vox, I don’t see what purpose it serves. Are there not already enough useless novelty search sites out there? And what is with the talking head? That technology has been around for years, and does serve a purpose with online demonstrations, but not for a site like this. It just follows the mouse around and repeats what is on the screen. Oooh… someone call Google.

Check out some the questions:

• Are you gay?
• What is your name?
• Why?
• No?

What is this Q&A for kids in junior high? How about some moderation?