Kartoo

As I'd used Kartoo in the past to search for pictures, I delayed writing this up.

Doing a new search I was reminded about what I found with using it last time - for all its clever visual interlinking and detailed topic lists, Kartoo doesn't beat Google images for finding a picture of what you're looking for.

That said, as a general search tool for researching a subject the user knows little about, Kartoo could be of help, as it usefully narrows to the most useful sites fairly quickly, though these tend to be much the same - the Wikipedia, All Music Guide, Answers.com, National Geographic site, etc. - rather than very specific sites on the subject.

I'm not convinced the displays are for everyone either - some users are likely to find the look of the screens not to their taste and difficult to decipher.

Sometimes Kartoo comes to a dead end for no apparent reason, when I expect there are resources still to be found by a less fussy search tool. That's a problem with Metasearching in general though.