Kartoo Search Engine Presents Results as a Map

cdupree writes "I've just run across a search engine called Kartoo---anyone else know it? Apparently it's been up since April 25. It presents its results in a graphical fashion, sort of like a map, allowing you to refine your query interactively. Admittedly, the "working" picture is a bit dorky, but the site is not dripping with ads (except for itself), and it's interesting to see the connections it finds when you enter, for example, "slashdot." My initial take on the thing is, it looks pretty, it presents the standard information in a new and different manner, but I haven't used it enough to get much in-depth knowledge of how best to use it. Has anyone had experience with this method of presenting search results? Is there background available on the folks who produced it beyond the trivial amount on the web site?" This sounds like a plug, but the few searches I tried with this engine to my surprise turned up interesting, relevant results. Update: 05/28 14:29 GMT by T : Laurent Baleydier adds: "Since last night, kartoo's requests have been multiplied by 20. At this moment, we can't respond to all those requests. We really apologize and we are doing as fast as possible in order to give you the best services."

Comments

Re:Porn?

[NanoGator]

Really? Right away I had a midget wearing cherries as earrings pop right up.

An incredibly obnoxious search engine.

[Sivar]

Searches take entirely too long (about ten seconds. May not seem like alot, but it adds up) and the main page is Flash galore. You are also redirected immediately when you enter, so you have to hit "back" *realfast* to get back to Slashdot. The idea of presenting results as a web is kinda neat, but it ends at "kinda neat." The results are confusing and look disturbingly similar to the area of the computer tables behind my three computers--everything interconnected and difficult to follow.

I commend them on creating an original and refreshingly different idea in search engines, but I doubt Google has anything to worry about.

At least they run Linux

My results

[pjdepasq]

I just used Mozilla RC2 (on Mandrake 8.1) to try a search on myself. It was the non-Flash version and I had to dismiss something like 50+ Javascript popup messages.

Needless to say, I'm already not a fan of the site. Perhaps in time it will prove to be more usable.

inevitable slashdotting....

[Anthony Boyd]

Assuming it'll be slashdotted, for the curious, what it does is something like a graphical Alexa. It shows the main thing you searched for as a sort of you-are-here dot that you can click on, and then it shows related sites and keywords in a connect-the-dots type of image. So I entered slashdot, and got slashdot.org as the main result, but with "linux" and some other keywords around it. I clicked "linux" and got a new graphic with some linux sites, OSDN, and some other related stuff.

It does seem useful, but on Windows, I'd rather just click the "Related" button in IE and get Alexa's list. Here on my Linux box, this is a good substitute for Opera and Konq to use.

it's a meta crawler, not an indexer...

[BluSkreen]

It uses and displays the results of other indexers or crawlers such as Google. It's basically a meta front end for searches.

The Flash version is a bit slow, even on huge pipes and a faster client.

Relevant Results?

[geoffsmith]

This sounds like a plug, but the few searches I tried with this engine to my surprise turned up interesting, relevant results.

Maybe that's because it gets its results from Google? Try a search for "nanotechnology" in Kartoo and Google, you will find the results are exactly the same.

Now Kartoo admits they are a "meta search engine", so the real question here is: is this map thing actually useful? And is it worth the 12 seconds it took to make that map? In my small amount of experimentation, I would say its nifty, but not terribly useful, and its slower than molasses.

Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon

Re:Relevant Results?

[NanoGator]

I'm not sure they intended this to replace Google. I think this is meant to be a different tool, not a replacement tool. I think it's more useful as a "How proliferated is this info on the web?" request rather than a "What exactly is a zif-socket?" request.

For example, I searched for my nickname and found the results kind of interesting. Not really anything to write home about, but I got to go down a lot of different paths. The map was the same time every time I entered my nick, so if I were to come back to it tomorrow, I'd remember which area of the map I was on and try a different one.

If you're looking for a few fan sites on the Transformers, for example, I can see the visual metaphor being quite useful compared to Google's "we'll list them in order." technique.

Not sure if that makes a whole lot of sense or not, but I'm starting to get the idea how a visual cue like this could be quite constructive in hunting down hard-to-find info.

Re:Flash?

[NanoGator]

"Just what everyone needs: a flash-based UI for a search engine."

Did it ever occur to you that Flash isn't the cause of your annoyance, it's the people who make the flash movies? Attack of the Clones sucked, but don't blame Digital Film for it.

Re:Pretty Neat

[sparcv9]

I really hope that somebody'll develop a file browser for Windows kind of like this. I think I'd work a hell of a lot faster if my hard drive looked like a star-map instead of climbing a tree.

Someone already has developed a star-map file browser -- for UNIX. Check out XCruise. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have been updated since sometime in 2000, but it runs flawlessly for me.