WebBrain Offers New Interface to Open Directory

You know, 100 years from now when historians are analyzing all this Internet horse hockey, the Open Directory at dmoz.org will have a special place. And it won't be because it's comprised of volunteers. It won't be because it got so pervasive. It'll be because it was made freely available to anyone who wanted to host it, giving companies who wanted to develop new search interfaces a wonderful testing ground.

The latest new search engine to use the Open Directory is the beta of WebBrain at http://www.webbrain.com/html/default_win.html. (Enable Java before you go over there.) The site uses a page split horizontally. Above the page is a Java applet that presents a visual representation of the directory.

The representation -- it's like so 25th century, fer shur. Seriously, click on a category, and instantly a new configuration of categories will pop up, with your selected category in the middle. Items above the middle are the parent categories of your selection. Items to the right are "sibling" categories -- other subcategories of the parent. Items to the left are related to your selection. Items below are subcategories of your selection. There are occasionally also column bars at the bottom and top of a selection -- click on those and the list will scroll up and down. In the bottom half of the screen the sites in the category you've selected will appear.

I am not visually oriented, but I AM easily amused, so I spent several minutes just zooming the directory around. But then I started working with the search box, which you'll find in a yellow bar that bisects the page. Results for this are mixed. For example, do a search for giraffe. You'll get category results on the bottom before the applet up top does its thing, and drops you in the category balloon animals. Balloon animals. Well, okay. Zoology as a search term gives you a much better result. Stick to general search terms that will drop you in appropriate categories.

Good for a beta, definitely imaginative. Add the category-relevance technology of Oingo, and the on-the-fly page summaries of SurfWax, and you'd have something droolworthy. But in the meantime it's worth a look.

Posted to Search Engines-DMOZ