"THE ERA OF GOOGLE"
For most people, information on the web means 'GOOGLE'. But for serious research or searching for opinions or finding answers to some questions, Googling may not always produce the best results. Although the knowledge of Google commands, the internal working of the search engine will certainly improve the probability of 'getting lucky'!!
However, even these may not be enough to give you an adequate information about the subject. You may have to browse through many web pages to obtain a proper understanding of the subject.
LOOKING BEYOND 'SEARCH ENGINES'
This inadequacy in search engines is not relevant when you are looking for facts with keywords. But once you start asking questions or opinions, the regular search services fail.Thus, there is a need for a service which gives you a substitute for an advice from a real expert.
Thus a search service is needed which uses the net infrastructure to seek an answer from an experts mind instead of seeking the facts from the already existing database of WebPages created by unknown experts.
Here are some of the experiments worth mention in this direction:
- LEXXE – Its a search engine which uses a technology called ‘Natural Language Processing’ to return results for queries typed in regular English. E.g. The question ‘How old is the earth?’ will give the correct answer along with a number of result links and many cluster of links. But the question ‘What is the age of Barak Obama?’ may give a surprising result !!
- QUERYCAT – This service returns, not links , but an array of FAQ’s about the topic. Although the search is not very good as it does not use the collection of WebPages but rather its own database of FAQ’s. But the Querycat-Health is a good enough service which may return result to act as a substitute to a real doctors advice!!
- DocMazy - DocMazy is a ‘document search engine’, so it only searches for only PDFs, Docs, Excel, and Txt files. It quickly finds these files, which are normally stuck deep within search engines. This thing is especially useful for people looking for quick research sources.It even allows you to preview these documents in your browser itself using AJAX.
- SCRIBD – Started in 2007, Scribd is a ‘Social Publishing’ site. It enables millions of users to share , discover and read original writings and documents.it comes with an iPaper reader which converts print files such as PDF,DOC,DOCX,TXT etc into web documents and hence makes it easier to share docs.
- WATTPAD – It is the worlds largest ‘e-book sharing’ community. Started in 2006 with a tagline of “Read what you like, Share what you write”, wattpad has become a hotspot for people who want to share or read e-books.
Other than these, many other services have been launched which spark some exciting hope for the future of search engines. E.g.
- WolframAlpha
- Citeulike
- Yahoo’s SearchPad
- Ardvark
…………..etc
The secret is a tiny metal strip along the edge of the scale which can detect the length for which the pencil swiped on it and shows the measurment on a LCD display discreetly hidden on the top of the scale. Better yet, the ruler can apparently store measurments and add 'em up as you go along, eliminating the need for any pesky remembering or math.
But, this is still just a concept and there are no plans yet to commercialize this product. Till then... keep measuring the time!!!