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Showing posts with label Grokker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grokker. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Goodbye Grokker
'Tis a sad day. I just found out Grokker.com is no more. I was hoping that the fact I couldn't get to it was just a server problem, but I found out today it is gone. Ironically, I had to use Google to find out about it. Anyway, sounds like they ran out of money. Too bad. It was a great resource. Hopefully it will come back again someday.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
hakia
I keep hearing about new internet search engines. Here is another I just heard about yesterday. It is hakia.com. It searches for websites like Google, but it displays the results differently. It groups the results into different subjects. When I searched hakia for Henry VIII (my favorite evaluative search), the returns were sorted by Biography and Timeline, Image Search, Headline News, etc. In the middle of the page there is a helpful index of the different subjects under which the results are grouped. Click on the subject and it will jump to those results.
Across the top of the page are tabs, one of which is called "Credible Sites." Credible Sites are "recommended by librarians their quality and free of commercial bias." Popular websites are not necessarily credible and credible websites are not always popular. There is a list of the criteria used to decide whether or not a site is included as a Credible Site. You can read that page here. Right now hakia only has Credible Sites for Health and Environment. In the end, however, it is up to the searcher to review the site and decide if it they think the site is credible. But it is nice to have someone sift through a lot of the junk out there on the web.
Another tab is called "Galleries." This is a list of different subjects you can click on to get to an alphabetical list of topics, people, products, movies and so on depending on the subject. One word of caution: names of people are alphabetized by first name. So, under the "Famous People" list, Abraham Lincoln is under "A" not "L" as it would be indexed in most other places. Of course who you think should be on the "Famous Person" list and who the developers of hakia think should be on the list might be two very different things!
I think hakia and Grokker (see my previous post on Grokker) are great supplements to Google. I don't think Google will be replaced by these sites, but it is nice to have alternatives. Depending on what I am searching for, I might use Grokker and hakia first. If I don't find what I am looking for, or just want to make sure I don't miss anything, I would use Google as well.
Happy searching!
Across the top of the page are tabs, one of which is called "Credible Sites." Credible Sites are "recommended by librarians their quality and free of commercial bias." Popular websites are not necessarily credible and credible websites are not always popular. There is a list of the criteria used to decide whether or not a site is included as a Credible Site. You can read that page here. Right now hakia only has Credible Sites for Health and Environment. In the end, however, it is up to the searcher to review the site and decide if it they think the site is credible. But it is nice to have someone sift through a lot of the junk out there on the web.
Another tab is called "Galleries." This is a list of different subjects you can click on to get to an alphabetical list of topics, people, products, movies and so on depending on the subject. One word of caution: names of people are alphabetized by first name. So, under the "Famous People" list, Abraham Lincoln is under "A" not "L" as it would be indexed in most other places. Of course who you think should be on the "Famous Person" list and who the developers of hakia think should be on the list might be two very different things!
I think hakia and Grokker (see my previous post on Grokker) are great supplements to Google. I don't think Google will be replaced by these sites, but it is nice to have alternatives. Depending on what I am searching for, I might use Grokker and hakia first. If I don't find what I am looking for, or just want to make sure I don't miss anything, I would use Google as well.
Happy searching!
Friday, May 1, 2009
Grokker
I heard about a new (for me) search engine today. It is called Grokker. The word "grok" is from Robert A. Heinlein's book "Stranger in a Strange Land" and is Martian for "to understand profoundly or intuitively." (Merriam-Webster.com).
Grokker is search engine which retrieves, federates and clusters the your search returns. You can choose which sites you want to search: Yahoo, Wikipedia and/or Amazon. You can search all three at the same time if you want or any combination of them. After Grokker retrieves the information, it "federates" it, meaning it meshes it all together. Finally, it clusters the returns into categories.
What I really like about Grokker is the way they organize the information returned from the search. The information is actually organzied rather than a getting back a daunting list of 1.2 million hits. There is the Outline View (results from "grokking" Henry VIII), which breaks down the returns into categories. Click on the plus next to one of the categories and it will expand to show you all of the different subcategories. Map View is a visual representation of the return of hits. You can click on one of the circles and see the subcategories again. Click on Search Options and change the number of hits you will return. The default is 250, but you can request 500, 750 or 1,000. Have you ever looked at 1,000 Google returns? You can probably get most of the relevant information you need with just 250 returns. Finally, you can limit your results by using the tools on the left side of the screen.
Grokker is great in that it helps you easily redefine your search and understand your results. You can "grok" a fairly broad topic and Grokker helps you narrow your search. It saves you going through those 1.2 million hits.
Grokker is search engine which retrieves, federates and clusters the your search returns. You can choose which sites you want to search: Yahoo, Wikipedia and/or Amazon. You can search all three at the same time if you want or any combination of them. After Grokker retrieves the information, it "federates" it, meaning it meshes it all together. Finally, it clusters the returns into categories.
What I really like about Grokker is the way they organize the information returned from the search. The information is actually organzied rather than a getting back a daunting list of 1.2 million hits. There is the Outline View (results from "grokking" Henry VIII), which breaks down the returns into categories. Click on the plus next to one of the categories and it will expand to show you all of the different subcategories. Map View is a visual representation of the return of hits. You can click on one of the circles and see the subcategories again. Click on Search Options and change the number of hits you will return. The default is 250, but you can request 500, 750 or 1,000. Have you ever looked at 1,000 Google returns? You can probably get most of the relevant information you need with just 250 returns. Finally, you can limit your results by using the tools on the left side of the screen.
Grokker is great in that it helps you easily redefine your search and understand your results. You can "grok" a fairly broad topic and Grokker helps you narrow your search. It saves you going through those 1.2 million hits.
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