anarchid weblog

50 unique search engines – that are not Google – Part2

Kalim — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:53:02 +0000

This post is a continuation for “50 unique search engines – that are not Google – Part1“

Twitter based Search

http://backtweets.com – Searches for and returns all tweets containing a web address you specify. What’s interesting is it even pulls web addresses hidden behind URL Shorteners. If you don’t have a specific link but know the domain name, you can enter that and it will return all links from that domain name.
backtweets
http://tweettabs.com – with Tweettabs you can use the search box to easily search twitter for tweets and it will automatically update each tab with new content when it comes in (real time).
tweettabs
http://twitpipe.com – similar to Tweettabs with the added features of location based updates and a pause button (for hot trending topics).
twitpipe
http://twitterjobfinder.com – states “Nothing but the freshest 35,044 job tweets from the last seven days”
twitterjobfinder
http://www.twitterjobsearch.com – this is a job search engine for twitter. Updates are provided as they occur. The service also enables you to create an RSS feed for your favorite job keywords.
twitterjobsearch

Search Engine Results Comparison

http://www.bingandgoogle.com – very straightforward website. Enter keywords and this website will compare the results for bing.com and google.com side by side.
bingandgoogle
http://bingle.pwnij.com – almost exactly like bingandgoogle.com with the added feature of being able to toggle seamlessly between split screen side by side results or full screen displaying either search engine.
bingle

Comparison Shopping

http://www.hotelscombined.com – what stuck out about this site for me were the multitude of hotel reviews by other travelers and its clean user friendly interface.
hotelscombined
http://www.beatmyprice.com – this website has saved me money plenty of times. You enter the item you want to purchase and the best price you found and it returns results from other shoppers who may have found a lower price. A nice take on social shopping.
beatmyprice
http://www.trulia.com – Real Estate listings, maps, comps—all in one place. Includes apartment rentals.
trulia
http://www.voyij.com – you can use voyij.com to find the best travel deals and specials from your city. Great for adventurous travelers without a set destination in mind yet.
voyij
http://www.yakaz.com – as of this writing this website claims 3,984,577 classified ads coming from 7518 websites. You search for items based on your desired location.
yakaz

Feed based search

http://www.feedmil.com – Feedmil’s goal is to help people search feeds of interest in the most efficient and easiest possible way through the use of innovative technologies and user interfaces.
feedmil

Social Media based search

http://wink.com – Wink.com is the largest online people search with more than 200 million people profiles from across the Web, including social networks and other online communities.
wink
http://www.spock.com – Spock uses a combination of search engine technologies and user edits to aggregate the world’s people information and make it searchable.
spock
http://www.zoominfo.com – as per zoominfo.com authors, “With in-depth profiles on over 45M business people and 5M companies, you can find people you know and those you need to know with our solutions.”
zoominfo

Real Time Search

http://www.scoopler.com – This website aggregates and organizes content being shared on the internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos and videos from big events, and links to the hottest memes of the day.
scoopler

Other

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php – Browse through over 150 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. Cool to see how the websites we visit have evolved.
waybackweb
http://rollyo.com – A searchroll is a collection of the sites you trust and find useful. It’s a personal search engine you create to provide relevant results from a hand selected list of reliable sites.
rollyo
http://www.urltrends.com – Enter any url link and you will receive a report of all aspects of traffic (page rank, inbound links, outgoing links, etc). As of this writing these reports are free.
urltrends
http://www.tunefind.com – Ever get a song stuck in your head that you heard in a movie or tv show but don’t know the name? This website enables you to find songs you’ve heard on television or in movies.
tunefind
http://tutsearch.net – Search over 100 hand-picked tutorial sites.
tutsearch
http://www.wolframalpha.com – aside from sounding like a “b” horror movie this looks to be a powerful search engine with a world of possibilities.
wolframalpha
http://www.golexa.com – returns numerous website analytic tool results for any site returned based on your keywords entered.
golexa
http://whatsopen.com/search/live – a mashup that shows you which stores, restaurants, bars, etc are open and until what time. The application is location based so you provide the zip code or city/state and the open establishments will show up on a map with their address.
whatsopen

So there you have it – 50 websearch alternatives that will hopefully enhance your internet experience. Thanks for reading!

About the Author:

Kalim Fleet is a professional web designer and blogger with over 6 years experience. The web is his passion as he splits his time between blog writing, software development and social media. He loves using and developing new applications for the web, mobile, and desktop.

50 unique search engines – that are not Google – Part1

Kalim — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:49:20 +0000

Google.com and its competitors are great tools for keyword based searches and they also provide great advanced search tools. These advanced search tools are what led me to look into several unique search engines that aren’t Google. I researched many websites and quite a few didn’t make the list. My criteria for listing these websites included:

Must have a clean interface with a clear indication of what the website does
The featured website should be original OR;
If not completely original should improve upon the search options I currently use

The list is split into several grouping categories as you will see below. Enjoy!

Multimedia (Music, Video)

http://www.meuzer.com – Meuzer is a free online music service that allows you to: Search and stream music -Playlist, rate, and comment on songs – Show you what your friends are listening to through the music feed -Tag songs for your friends just like you tag photos
meuzer
http://www.howcast.com – This site, powered by Truveo, presents how to videos in a fun and social way.
howcast
http://tv.blinkx.com – extends the scope of services like Hulu and even tv provider websites (which tend to focus on recent episodes) by including results from lesser known video hosting websites.
blinx
http://www.videosurf.com – according to Videosurf, “We search Hulu, CNN, Metacafe, ESPN, Comedy Central and more to find you the best videos on the web!”
videosurf
http://trailerfreaks.com – Trailer Freaks enables you to watch movie trailers in high definition (up to 1080p), by downloading them to your computer.
trailerfreaks

Document Search (pdf, doc, xls, ppt, rtf)

http://www.pdfgeni.com – allows you to search for pdf’s only. Searches the titles and also matches your search terms with the pdf contents.
pdfgeni
http://pdfdatabase.com – similar to pdfgeni.com but also allows you to do a separate search for .doc files.
pdfdatabase
http://www.docjax.com/home/index.shtml – DocJax.com is a search engine for documents, which allow you to search documents and e-book from everywhere, preview them and even download them for free. You can filter your search by doc type (pdf, doc, xls, ppt).
docjax
http://the-manuals.com – website dedicated to locating user manuals for you to download and read online.
manuals

Images

http://www.wdl.org/en/ – The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.
wordldigital
http://www.themoviedb.org – download HD resolution wallpapers of your favorite movies with this user driven “wiki-style” movie database.
themoviedb

Visual Search

http://www.searchme.com – Searchme lets you see what you’re searching for. Literal screenshots of the search results are displayed in a cover flow style interface. Additionally, videos are often playable without leaving the interface.
searchme
http://www.liveplasma.com – Liveplasma calls itself a discovery engine that enables you to look for your favorite bands, movies or directors to obtain a map that details other potential interests.
liveplasma
http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr – Idee Inc. has extracted the colours from 10 million of the most “interesting” Creative Commons images on Flickr. Using their visual similarity technology you can navigate the collection by colour.
multicolr
http://tineye.com – TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. An image can come from either a weblink or from your computer.
tineye
http://www.spezify.com – Spezify is a search tool presenting results from a large number of websites in different visual ways. They “take web search further, away from endless lists of blue text links and towards a more intuitive experience.”
spezify

General Search (Advanced Features)

http://www.bing.com – Microsoft’s newest entry into search. They are calling it a decision engine.
bing
http://www.yauba.com – Yauba seeks to transform the way people find information online, while providing maximum protection for their safety, security and privacy.
yauba
http://clusty.com – Clusty queries several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking. This “metasearch” approach helps raise the best results to the top and push search engine spam to the bottom.
clusty
http://www.alltheweb.com/advanced?advanced=1& – AllTheWeb provides you with the controls necessary to find exactly what you are looking for, including some of the most sophisticated advanced search features available.
alltheweb
http://www.ask.com – Ask.com’s innovative search technologies deliver fast and relevant information for millions of people every day.
ask
http://www.evri.com – “Evri is building a way for content to network–a way for that great article you just read to make meaningful connections with every other contextually relevant article, paper, blog, image, audio clip or video on the web.” Sounds like a lofty goal – worth a look.
evri
http://www.cluuz.com – Whereas a standard search engine shows links in a list, Cluuz instead peers into the searched web pages, extracts important terms and images, clusters them and gives them in chart format (semantic graph) and in a tag cloud where you can click on any entity to further focus your search.
cluzz
http://www.ixquick.com – Ixquick is a metasearch engine: when you search Ixquick, you are searching many popular search engines – anonymously – at the same time. Combined, these engines cover more of the Internet than any one search engine covers.
ixquick
http://www.zuula.com – this website returns results from several search engines in an intuitive tabbed interface. From zuula.com, “Zuula is very customizable and easy to use. For each search type, you can set your preferences for which search engines are included and in what order. The search engine tabs can also be rearranged right from the search results page by dragging and dropping them.”
zuula
http://yubnub.org – calls itself the “command line” of the net. This website allows you to use and create “shortcuts” to achieve your searching needs. Could be a real time saver for power searchers. Here is an excellent article that does a great job of demonstrating this powerful tool http://lifehacker.com/software/technophilia/yubnub-web-search-command-line-275460.php .
yubnub

Click here for 50 unique search engines – that are not Google – Part2!

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Use these 6 UX design techniques to make your top ten lists more readable

Kalim — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:12:47 +0000

With the amount of information the average person must interpret on a daily basis how do you entice your readers to read another top ten list? By using good usability design standards you can ensure your readers will get the most out of your post in the shortest period of time.

Shorter is better – top ten style lists can quickly get unusable once they include more items over ten. For instance, the more items over ten that are featured, the less likely people will read the items further down the list.

Give the user as much information about the list before the jump. If the use has to scroll down to find out why they should read this list they probably won’t.

Number your items. This will help your readers more quickly see where they are in the article and effectively separate each item featured.

Use HTML
tag and CSS to format your lists – read these for reference

http://mirificampress.com/permalink/the_amazing_li

http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/css-ordered-list-enhancement-tutorial/

http://codeasily.com/css/style-ordered-list

If you are going to use pictures or screenshots, optimize them so they don’t take forever to load. Consider size, quality, and image type when creating your thumbnails. Link: Online Image Optimizer- GIF, JPG, and PNG is a website designed just for that very purpose.

If your top ten lists is a list of images, offer them as a download them all option (zip file) at the end of the article. Your readers will appreciate it. If your CMS does not allow hosting .zip files there are plenty of sites who will host the file for free. I use www.filesavr.com because it is easy to upload and equally simple for your readers to download.

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Make your blog stand out from the crowd by following these simple 5 tips

Kalim — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:10:52 +0000

Web services like blogger.com and wordpress.com have given the everyday web user the ability to easily create web content that is on par with the corporate world and professional bloggers in terms of reader usability without the need for an IT budget. This has no doubt led to an explosion in the sheer number of blogs that are found online but what about the quality of the content? In this post, I will discuss ways professional bloggers can distinguish themselves from the rest of the millions of blog posts published everyday.

5 Simple tips to help make your blog stand out

1. Allow users to focus on content

One of the biggest challenges many blog writers face is how to make money from their blog. One common solution is to sell advertisements or sponsorships. Giving space to advertisers may or may not produce income but realize that taking your readers attention off your content may decrease the number of visitors you have to your blog. The idea is to find a balance between your content and the content of your advertisers. Your content should be the primary focus and advertisements should add benefit the reader by supplementing your content. The reader, after all, came to your blog to read a topic of interest – why not supplement that with more information like a book related to the topic or links to a product you just reviewed?

2. What are you known for doing?

Much has been written about the importance of branding when it comes to marketing your blog. Quite often before anything else people will read your posts based solely on your reputation for presenting different types of content. You are not reading a collegehumor.com post for the informed political commentary, for instance. However, once it has been established what type of content you provide it is important to focus on the quality of your content. This is what will differentiate your blog from the 100’s of blogs with similar content to yours.

3. What can your readers expect?

When your readers visit your blog, can they expect the same high quality content on a consistent basis?

4. Get your readers engaged

Comments as microblogs – facebook and twitter are built upon millions of users creating up to the minute updates. If people are reading your posts and visiting your blog then they will want to contribute to your blog in any way possible. They will want to share posts they liked with their friends and family. They will want to leave comments whether the comments are positive or negative. In short, they will want to participate. The key is to make is easy for them to do so. Don’t give barriers to participation. You can use the same technology that websites like facebook.com and twitter.com use to ensure your readers get heard.

5. Get star guest bloggers

Often a blog will bring in guest writers who are experts in a particular field or extremely popular. This serves several purposes. First, you can increase your blog’s reputation as a source for expert advice across the blogosphere. Second, you can change up the writing style and give your readers a fresh perspective. Third, you can promote your blog through more channels now because most expert author’s followers will visit your blog to read the author’s post.

+plus 1

6. Promoting your blog posts

Getting your blog posts seen is a topic probably best suited for another post but I here are a few quality links to help you get some perspective on how you want to go about promoting your blog posts.

That concludes this blog post and thanks for reading.

About the Author:

5 Tips for finding creative inspiration in the most unusual places

Kalim — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:34:03 +0000

1. 5 level word association game

Step one: pick any object in your line of sight

Step two: write the first five things that come to your mind about that object

Step three: focus on one of the five things you wrote about the center object. Now write the first 5 things that come to mind about that word.

Step four: repeat step 3 for the next four items

Step five: now you have 31 items (1 in Step 1, 5 in Step 2, and 25 in Step3-4) that are sure to give you some type of inspiration about what your next course of action can be. See diagram below.

Image create using bubbl.us

2. Create “new” uses for everyday items

I have always marveled at how a young child can imagine the most arcane things to be the most amazing in my eyes. This child like view of the world can be used by us adults too when we are finding ourselves in a creative rut.

The technique is simple: find some ordinary items you may find in your near vicinity and “create” 15 atypical uses for each item. After a while of doing this, you will find yourself approaching your creative project with a new and unique perspective!

3. Completely “unplug” your self

By unplug, I mean leave your normal place of creation and leave all your creation tools at that place. Do not think about all the work you have to do. In fact, try to clear your mind completely by sitting in a quiet place.

Take a while to reset your brain. After you feel you have sufficiently distanced yourself from the process, take a small notepad and pen/pencil and start jotting down ideas. Then let it go again for a period of time, only coming back to the notepad when you are ready to tackle your next creative project. You may be surprised by how creative your ideas were when you took the time to get away from your regular routine. Depending on the level of your creative stump this process may take only 1 hour or even a week or more.

Realize that creative inspiration is everywhere

Here is another example of how ordinary things can play a big role in your creative process. First, take several items in your near vicinity and write down 5 things you can appreciate about the design of the item. For most people this should be a fairly simple exercise. Now, write down 5 things you think could be improved about the design. This step is far more challenging, but if you can do this effectively you may find the creative inspiration you were looking for all along!

See Differently

Quite often creative blocks come from having access to too much information about the same things. It is often necessary to get away from your normal day-to-day routine so you can actually see differently -then you can possibly create something new and fresh because you are now new and fresh. I hope the techniques featured in this article have helped provide you with some inspiration for your endeavors.

About the Author:

960 Grid with horizontal guides (PNG)

Kalim — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:50:34 +0000

Just a quick post for you web designers out there using the 960 grid system. I added horizontal rules to supplement the 960.gs download (1020 x 1020px). Both 12 column and 16 column are included. These are .png files so it they be used as a layer in photoshop, gimp when wireframing new webdesign projects etc.

Download link:

.rar

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4 simple techniques to reduce your internet time wasting by as much as 70%

Kalim — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:54:22 +0000

We’ve all been there at one point or another. You’re moving along, knocking out your task list when you receive the message “FWD: FUNNY … YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS – LOL.” One funny video clip and two hours later you ask yourself, “Where did the time go?”

It is often very easy to lose track of time on the internet. Each website provides a wealth of information: articles you want to read but don’t need to read, articles you should read (but not necessarily now), links you should read providing even more information, comments, social bookmarking, and on it goes. It is easy to spend hours going through a website and following the links they provide. I will share with you some strategies I use that have decreased my internet surfing by at least 70%.

The “5” techniques are listed here. Read more details on each after the jump.

Bookmarking is your greatest friend
Create a schedule
Use a timer
Get help deciding what is worth reading while online

“Bookmarking is your greatest friend:
You don’t have to read every link you come across that interest you at this very moment. The internet has an unimaginable amount of interesting data and information that you couldn’t possibly address it all in one sitting. Use your bookmarks intelligently to categorize the links so you can refer back to similar items later. Social bookmarking site http://delicious.com can be used if you surf the net on computers at different locations as it gives you a website that you login to in order to access your bookmarks.

Create a schedule:
The schedule you create should not only itemize what times of the day you can surf the internet, but also what you should be doing while on the net during that allotted time. This is the time to utilize your bookmarking system. For instance, funny clips may be allotted to after hours or the weekend.

Use a timer:
This is a valuable little tool I have been using to keep tabs on how long I have been spending on the net – http://www.online-stopwatch.com/large-stopwatch/ . To use this tool you simply set a count down for, say 60 minutes and when the clock hits zero it will alert you. At that time you bookmark any pages you may still have open, then close your browser. If you are just finishing up reading a page, you can always extend the clock but I don’t recommend it – at least at first. The idea of allowing an extension is that you are making a conscious choice now to spend more time online as opposed to being oblivious to how much time is being spent.

Get help deciding what is worth reading while online:
The internet is filled with noise. Just like any other media, the aim is to get and keep your attention. Your goal should be focusing your attention so you can get the most out of your web surfing as possible. I suggest using RSS feeds for this purpose. Many websites will allow you to read their articles without actually having to visit their website by using RSS feeds they provide. You subscribe to the feeds of the websites you want to keep in touch with and you load them into your feed reader. I use Google Reader. Additionally, most feed readers also offer filtering functions which will allow you to decrease the number of articles you receive based on your criteria. This can save you more time by reducing the noise even further. Again, don’t forget to use your timer and bookmark unread items for later reading.

So there you have it. Hopefully using the above techniques will help you regain some of your precious time lost surfing the World Wide Web. Remember, just like a huge meal you can’t digest all the web has to offer in one sitting so pace yourself… and save some for later.