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Grokker Search Engine Provides Visual Search Results
KeatonMill writes "The New York Times (as always, free registration) ran this article about a new search engine, called Grokker, created by a company called Groxis. Grokker builds a map of content catagories using metadata. So far, it is used in the Amazon.com online catalog and the Northern Light search engine. Groxis is also developing a version to use to search your own computer."
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I saw some of the similar kinds of sorting of metadata with stuff from YellowBrix and LingoMotors.
I guess, given my background, I'd be interested to see how this works in the bigger arena and if they'll be doing widescale support of the PRISM and SCORM standards.
Anybody out there get to really play with this on the back end?
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Kartoo.com
Note: Flash required.
Yes we do.
This program, and several similar, allow you to serious organise content. Google is nice on a boolean search, but not for related content type searches.
I'm pretty good at doing searches with Google, but having tried some of this stuff out, it's AMAZING for doing research. A lot of companies are deriving their technology from intelligence agencies.The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Kartoo (previously mentioned here) has been doing visual search results for quite a while already; I'd even say that's the most useful application of Flash that I've ever seen.
Try Google sets, you'll be amazed.
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Looks like a neat tool for navigating data. To those who say Google is enough: do you use Google to navigate your hard drive? Do you ever follow links on a web page or do you always Google to the linked page? Even Google has multiple types of searches.
Those screenshots look a lot like the Pad demos on the web page of Ken Perlin (my former advisor). Compare, for example, the Grokker web browser with the Pad site tour (which has been online since 1998).
Legally, the question seems to be rather murky. There are some cases where it's clear that you have to obey more than one set of laws. If you're selling products to a country other than where you're located you still have to obey their laws, the same way that you'd have to if you sold their by mail or telephone order. If you're just providing information gratis, the answer seems to be more questionable. Certainly there are a lot of countries that claim that you have to obey their laws if you want to serve web pages to people there.
Practially, you may have to obey the laws of countries other than the one where your servers are located because they can make things very unpleasant for you if you don't. If you want to do business in country X, you have to listen to what they tell you, or they're likely to do nasty things like seize any assets you have in there or arrest your employees when they visit. That may not be a big problem for some countries- Google probably doesn't do much business with North Korea, and their employees probably don't visit there very often- but with places like the EU this is likely to be a problem.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Since kartoo was mentioned here I've started using it and it has rapidly moved to being an important tool.
I don't use it to find specific answers to specific questions (google still does that better), but I do use it as a tool to find related topics that I might not have found otherwise. Sometimes it works very well indeed, sometimes not so well, but when it works its great.
The other day I was just browsing a topic area of minor interest and discovered a tool to do something that I've wanted for a while (built my own, i did, so it will be interesting to compare results). Even though the tool was available back when I was looking for it, it was described in terms that were slightly different than the ones I was searching on so I got not direct hits and the more opened ones often resulted in way too many matches - enough to make effective narrowing tough.
I built something a while back that did something similar - using a graph layout tool, some ad hoc similarity measurements and a few other oddities - but it was a pain and didn't use the kind of interface to the search engines kartoo uses. Lacking effective spidering and a large enough database it was usable, but not always pleasant.
If only it were not flash! And if only there were a "open in other tab" thing so I could more easily keep search context.
grok /grok/, var. /grohk/ vt.
[common; from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with']
The emphatic form is `grok in fullness'.
1. To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. When you claim to `grok' some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For example, to say that you "know" LISP is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary - but to say you "grok" LISP is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming. Contrast zen , which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash. See also glark .
2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the void type these days."
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What can ya say? Im a Karma whore...
Besides Kartoo, the NYT article mentions Vivísimo as a search engine providing an alternative way of viewing results. Vivísimo displays the results in a more classical text-oriented list, but with a tree of hierarchical folders alongside it. These folders provide refinements of your search with additional keywords.
It's definitely worth checking.