Information Architects Japan has come up with their second version of Web site trends. It is a really cool “map” of the current Internet environment.
The 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective.
They have several versions that can be viewed, but the best one is their clickable online […]
I have launched a new blog about landscaping and gardening, one of my favorite past times. I have been gardening for years, and hope to use this blog to pass on my experience, advice and interesting stories and articles about landscape and gardening.
Go to Mateosquared’s Landscaping Tips and Ideas to learn more.
I have grown tired of writing about search engines, mainly because they are all about the same with little excitement or differentiation. With that said, I will be taking a break and looking for other things to write about. See you soon…
Sidekiq is another search engine aggregator that I came across this evening. They have collected almost every single possible category, and put it within a frame. It isn’t really a technically advanced site, but it is a good idea. To be honest, I have never seen this many possible search options on one site. They offer 28 different search categories. It is crazy.
I tried a search for the new presidential candidate, Ron Paul. The site automatically defaults to Google search, so I received the typical “relevant” Google results. I wanted more, so I clicked Blogs and Newsgroups and got 12 different blog search engines to expand my search. Then I wanted to see some video on Ron Paul, and had 19 search engines just for video search. It is great. It is like Ron Paul overload, a beautiful thing. This could be overload for any topic, but if you are able to manage your search habit, it will be OK and nobody will get hurt.
Its not pretty, but it is functional. I like it.
Here is a great use of the Web… The World Sunlight Map. At any given time, you will be able to see where it is dark and light all over the world. Kind of puts everything in perspective when you get a view like this.
Quintura has brought tag clouds to the search engine space. At first glance Quintura looks like an other 2nd tier engine, trying to sneak up on Google, but as I used the site it seemed to have a useful purpose. Quintura uses tag clouds to help visitors define what they are looking for. Once a visitor enters a query, Quintura will show typical search results on the right-hand side of the browser, but they then show a related tag cloud on the left. The tag cloud is used to help people refine their search by identifying and clicking on keywords that they may not have necessarily thought of. What I like about the cloud is that when trying to refine my search, all I had to do was mouse-over a keyword, and the results on the right side of the page would change. This made refining much easier. Searchers will also get more keywords, based on the keyword that is activated within the tag cloud. They can also remove keywords from the cloud if the words are not relevant. Overall the results were above average, and the tag made searching a lot faster.
In a world of Ajax and the Social Web, I expected Quintura to have a lot of useless social features such as a profile page, and other random things that distract people from searching. Fortunately, Quintura focused on the search, and not the extras. It is a nice change. With that said, people can still save their results the old-fashioned way to their favorites, and also send them to a friend via their default e-mail client. Crazy but it works.
Stumble it!
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