Category: Internet and web

Friday Five: search engine alternatives

As usual, something significant event occurred earlier this week about which I was oblivious. That event was a day without Google, which occurred on Tuesday, June 12. The idea, as promoted by Alt Search Engines, was to go a day without using one of the major search engines — Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, or Ask — and to use one of the many alternative search engines instead. Since I missed the occasion, I offer five alternative search engines for you take for a spin. All are listed on the Alt Search Engines site.

  • Mahalo. This site is billed as “the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.”
  • GigaBlast, an engine that’s been around since 2000.
  • Twerq. This site is one of the advertisers on Alt Search Engines, and it now boasts 70 new features and enhancements. (How many enhancements can one make to a search engine?) The site, currently in beta, officially launches on June 20, and one lucky Twerq searcher could win a cool thousand bucks on that day.
  • Scitopia, “the free federated search portal to the digital libraries of leading science and technology societies.” This one’s a keeper.
  • knuru, a search engine that focuses on the business sector. “We like to call knuru a research engine,” proclaims the site’s about page. “Using short descriptive sentences, you can find deeply relevant business information from top-tier academic and institutional sources that you might not otherwise have access to.”

Forget Facebook; grow your own social network

Now that anyone with a network connection can get into Facebook, will it lose its cachet and become the next MySpace? Colleges and universities wanting to maintain a close-knit social network may want to look beyond Facebook and take a do-it-yourself approach. That’s what Elon University has done with its Elon Town Square.

Karine Joly describes Elon’s approach in a recent post. She interviews Dan Anderson, Elon’s assistant VP and director of university relations, who explains that the schools wanted to especially enhance “alumni and parent connections with Elon.”

I’m not sure that approach would work for everyone — it would take a strong working relationship with the IT department, for one thing — but it’s nice to see it can work in some cases. Just goes to prove that one size doesn’t fit all.