The question is, as always, does the world really need another search gadget?
At first, I thought the answer was no. I’m perfectly happy with my Firefox searchbar. Then I got introduced to KwiClick, which has been described as “Firefox’s dedicated searchbar on steroids.” And it really is just that.
KwiClick works by attempting to make your search experience quicker, and allowing you to watch the videos you’re searching for, read the pages you’re looking for, and access the content you need on-the-fly, from the same place you searched. In other words, it’s a multi-page experience.
The idea is great, but does the application actually deliver on its promises? Well, here’s my experience…
The Anatomy of KwiClick
KwiClick is non-intrusive. Two tiny buttons, one next to the address bar, and another on the status bar, provide you with the access to the KwiClick interface. The interface is basically a hovering box nested on the lower corner of the browser.
KwiClick's hovering box is always accessible, yet non-intrusive
Webby, just like everywhere else on the net, got into the “top of the decade” craze and released their own list of the top ten most influential Internet moments of the last decade stretching from 2000-2009. They covered Craig’s list expansion outside San Francisco in year 2000, Wikipedia and Facebook’s launch as well as Obama’s campaign. Go ahead, give it a read.
Webby Top of the Decade
Now, that is a great list but for something as life changing as the internet, especially in the last decade where it became an integral part of everyone’s life, we at the Thoughtpick blog felt there are some items that fell through the cracks. The following is our own version of what we think got left out by Webby’s list:
1. The rise of Blogging
Everyone has a story to tell, and there has never been an easier way to share yours. Blogging allowed everyone to circumvent the public and reach their audience directly and for free. They went even beyond that when they became a reliable and valuable source of information and news.
Google has consistently tried to battle privacy concerns regarding their tools and services. Users naturally are always skeptical about how the information that Google stores about them is being used. We, at Thoughtpick, raised the issue of privacy concerns that users have and most recently tackled this issue in the article discussing Google’s acquisition of Gizmo5.
To counteract this seasonal hailstorm of concerns, this time, Google has introduced the Google Dashboard. The Dashboard will include all the information they have about your Google accounts and offer one central location for you to manage the settings of all your Google services and accounts.
So does the dashboard deliver?
I was actually really looking forward to the Dashboard and interested in the features they will include in it: What kind of dirty little secrets does Google know about me? So when it was open for use, I excitedly went to google.com/dashboard and entered my account information to log into it and discover the much outed and unprecedented privacy central that Google is giving to me.
The Google Leviathan has been on the move lately, engulfing several smaller fish on the internet. The latest “victim” being Gizmo5 a VoIP service a la Skype.
Google Voice, your next phone company
Google Voice
Gizmo5 coupled with Google Voice has the prospect of being a very seductive concoction. Users will sign up to Google Voice and get a phone number that will forward all their calls to all their other numbers. It will also provide them with free conference calling and free voice mail to email services among many others. The service will also offer them ultra-cheap outgoing calls. If Google adds support for SMS and MMS, it will allow the customer to completely circumvent the mobile operators per minute tariff and, in general, it might do to mobile operators what the mobile did to the land line.
Now Google seems to have delinquently tried to steer the regulators away from branding Google Voice as a replacement for landlines, since you will still need a phone number to direct all those calls to. So does that mean Google will be the next AT&T?
Isn’t it always frustrating how dumb GPS navigation systems tend to be? How disconnected and pedantic they can be when you are trying to find a place? Well the all mighty Google is once again promising the moon, and it seems like they might just be able to deliver.
Google Maps Navigation (Beta), is an internet-connected GPS navigation system that provides turn-by-turn voice guidance, voice and simple English search and up-to-date traffic information a long with many other features. The catch is that it will only be available on Android 2.0 but its completely free. So TomTom, I think this is checkmate! Or not?
I think I would buy the phone if only to use it as a GPS device.
What do you think? Would you consider buying an Android 2.0?
An interesting white paper published at OneRiot’s blog claims that 40% of users’ search queries across major search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask are best satisfied by real-time search results. That is, indeed, quite an impressive number that shows the huge potential market for real-time search engines. It also – somehow – explains the huge buzz around Twitter and the continuous talk about the potential threat it poses to other traditional search engines, especially Google.
Real-time search engines fail to gain market share
Aside from Twitter, other – recently emerged – real-time search engines are finding a hard time proving their business model and gaining market share, in spite of the potential huge market. We, here at Thoughtpick, have been monitoring this market since our coverage of 9 real-time search engines a few months ago. Unfortunately, according to compete stats, there has been no major gains in the last 3 months, on the contrary, most services showed a decline in numbers of visitors. In fact, OneRiot which is the most successful in this category, with 150k more visitors than its second competitor Twingly, shows a drop of 100k visitors in the last 3 months.
Oneriot, Twingly, Collecta, Socialmention and Scoopler traffic
After almost 2 years of rumors about this deal, Yahoo! made a big move last week when it purchased the Arabic portal Maktoob for an estimated $85 million. This is certainly one of the biggest moves in the Middle East’s tech field, and with it Yahoo! has cemented their policy of focusing on emerging markets, and cashing in on the growth of those markets. After establishing presence in Southeast Asia, India and Latin America, Yahoo! now has a foot hold in one of the biggest untapped markets in the world.
The Arab speaking world is composed of about 320 million speakers, of which about 41 million are Internet users. In addition to that, the region has an impressive adoption rate of over a 1,000%. Previously, both Google and MSN took shy steps by establishing a presence in the UAE and Egypt and creating partnerships with local ISP’s and attempting to educate the market about online advertising, but Yahoo! blew their efforts out of the sand.
The Arab market is ripe for picking and, with this move, Yahoo! has taken the lead in that race and will remain there if they are able to cater to the market’s needs. The reality is that only 1% of Internet content is in Arabic, so there is a void and even hunger for Arabic content on the web. Yahoo! hopes to capitalize on this by their purchase of Maktoob, and extending their current portal by making it relevant to Arabic audience.
Web 2.0 was all about getting people to connect with one another and establishing a presence for them on the web. Now that you have gotten the chance to get to know each other through the web, it’s time for our computers to socialize. The aim of the next iteration of the web, Web 3.0, is that computers will be able to understand the content and the information they contain. Rather than the data just being a document, it will be put within context helping the computer to relate pieces of information and present them to you accordingly. Therefore, you will no longer have to sift through a pile of search results, some of which are irrelevant, to get the information you want.
While most of the semantic technology is still pretty much underdevelopment and improvement, we at the Thoughpick blog came up with a list to whet your appetite on, in no particular order.
For all the denizens…
Bing’s reference search – Bing has a lot of hidden gems, one of those is its use of semantic technology. For Wikipedia results, you can click on the “enhanced view” and browse the Wikipedia article with a nifty vertical menu from within Bing.
Also some searches will provide you the option to “reference” search, which appears on the left pane. By selecting it, you will be able to access relevant Wikipedia articles, image results and more. Try it out, some of the searches that trigger this are Facebook and squirrel monkey.
Bing Search
Wolfram Alpha – This is an interesting search engine. It recognizes your queries and will bring you relevant information regarding it. For instance, if you put “new york” you will get information about New York city’s population, weather, and location with a couple of other options at the top for disambiguation. [read full article >>]
Omgili’s new mashup, Google@Omgili, seems interesting. In their own words, off the Omgili blog: “the most noticeable feature is the ability to find forum discussions about the results Google returns. This way you can find more people that are interested in the same topics as you, and also provide more in-depth discussions about the topic you are researching“.
But, will it bring about change or is it just another Web 2.0 tool that will waste our time? What advice could we offer Google@Omgili to enhance its users’ overall experience?
Google Omgili in action!
We will start by offer you a list of pros and cons, which is by all means not inclusive, and we urge you to join the discussion and let us know your opinion and if you think Google@Omgili is worth while. [read full article >>]
![Oneriot.com, Twingly, Collecta, Socialmention and Scoopler traffic [compete.com]](http://blog.thoughtpick.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/oneriot.com+twingly.com+collecta.com+socialmention.com+scoopler.com_uv_460.png)
