Rampaging Roy Slaven used to say the Web would be better once they got all the words off it.
Words in themselves make appear conspicuously informative, but as anyone regularly conducting basic web searches will know, they can easily confuse the issue. Those of us who started off in the early days of the Web with blunt search tools such as Webcrawler, then moved up to the slightly more sophisticated Metacrawler and AltaVista, were easily impressed by Google. As a regular user, I have begun to feel even Google's limitations though. Of course, sensible use of meta tags on pages has always helped.
The Semantic Web concept of languages designed for data is a good one, somewhat akin to the use of Subject Headings by cataloguers (if more advanced in its constructions). Of course, it runs the risk of turning into a bad idea if these become overly restrictive or absurdly over semantic (as many Subject Headings already are). People will, undoubtedly, also find ways to misuse whatever system, particularly if it means receiving more hits on their sites.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Voyage RSS feed
There's something just too volatile about Voyage. It's unpleasant to use - all out-of-focus, sliding about, overwriting and visual noise - hardly either engaging or enjoyable!
The most useful part is the "Manage my RSS feeds" link at the bottom, and there's plenty of friendlier RSS feeds available. Maybe this is to someone's taste, but it's certainly not to mine, and I am a visual person. It doesn't like your "Back" button either, which I always think deserves demerit points.
This Voyage made me seasick!
The most useful part is the "Manage my RSS feeds" link at the bottom, and there's plenty of friendlier RSS feeds available. Maybe this is to someone's taste, but it's certainly not to mine, and I am a visual person. It doesn't like your "Back" button either, which I always think deserves demerit points.
This Voyage made me seasick!
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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.
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.
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