The Rochester Regional Library Council (RRLC) hosts a weekly Monday night professional development event. This week I went to a presentation on alternate web searches and found a few I really liked. Some are old, but worth a look!
-http://www.findthebest.com/ - This website isn't a search engine per se, it is a 'comparison engine'. According to their About page, they were inspired by Kayak like comparison sites. What makes this website 'wicked' (channeling my Maine-iac heritage) is that they use primarily government data and information compiled by hired researchers.
-http://www.qwiki.com/ - Multimedia informational storytelling. You really have to try this one out. Type in your query and the results present as an on demand multimedia presentation with a soothing female voice narrating the informational story. Try looking up your hometown and listen to its history.
-http://www.wolframalpha.com/ - Computational Knowledge Engine. Sounds fancy, right? It is! It is almost like there are tiny librarians hiding in the internets supplying the results. What is really amazing is that wolfram mimics reference interviews. If you type in 'rock' the system will ask you what kind of rock you meant:
'Assuming "rock" is a surname | Use as a financial entity or a word or a given name or earth science instead'
Reference 101, right?
Then there is the results. As you can see, the results are very visual and easy to digest.
Can't wait to see what these sites bring when they move from Alpha to Beta to the 'real thing'
