10th February 2007, 05:42 pm
Man, this one’s been in the queue for a long time… Retrevo, in gamma at http://www.retrevo.com/, provides product information. And not just shopping information, but also manufacturer information, reviews and articles, and forum and blog posts. Consumer metasearch? It’s so nice to find a search engine that actually focuses on product information without being overwhelmingly oriented towards buying.
You can do a brand search, or a noun search, or a search by brand and model number, which I found worked best. I did a search for Deskjet 5150 and got results divided into several categories. First there was product documentation (1 result), reviews and articles (19), manufacturer’s info (5), forums & blogs (11), and finally shopping (58), down at the bottom where I don’t have to give into consumerism if I don’t want to.
The results screen is split into two parts. The left has the results, while the right has the pages themselves. You can collapse the page frame if you find it annoying. The results themselves have page titles and usable-length snippets.
There’s a lot of functionality available just using the service as a guest, but if you register on the site (registration is free and requires only an e-mail address) you do get access to additional features like query history and invitations to beta test (or gamma test?) new search features.
There’s a blog about the site at http://blog.retrevo.com/ but it seems to be more about consumer and shopping trends, less on the nuts and bolts of the search engine. Blog aside, I really like this site; it’s going to come in handy next time I have trouble with a really old camera or some printer that lost its documentation long ago, I’m coming here.
10th February 2007, 04:45 pm
Plenty of search engines that find code are popping up on my radar lately. The latest one is AlltheCode, which is in alpha at http://www.allthecode.com/ . The engine notes in its FAQ that “Unlike similar source code search engines, All The Code considers the relation between code and uses this to help judge the relevance.” At the moment it only offers Java code search, and doesn’t plan a beta version until late 2007 or early 2008.
(Also noted in the FAQ: there’s currently now way to submit code, and new languages will be added to the search engine this summer.)
I did a simple search for xml parser. I got 247 results, with the caveat on the results page that I was getting only results based on a nonfuzzy search. With that warning was an invitation to do a fuzzy search. When I did I got 946 results, so there’s quite a results. Results included a URL and substantial code snippets. Clicking on the URL actually doesn’t move you offsite. Instead AlltheCode has the code on its own site, with a pointer to the original code.
The founder’s blog is available at http://blog.holdenkarau.com/ and has some updates on the search engine with plenty of geeky backstage peeking.
9th February 2007, 12:27 am
BlawgSearch ( http://blawgsearch.justia.com/ ), a search engine for just legal blogs, is now in beta. It’s added RSS feeds for searches and a “few hundred” more blogs, though there are many more in the pipe to be added. (There are currently over 1600 blogs arranged by category.)
There’s also a new search engine at http://www.Blawgs.fm , which finds only legal blog posts that have video or audio files.) There’s also a directory of almost one hundred podcasts, or blawgcasts as they’re called. In addition to the directory and the search you’ll also see a tag cloud for recent blog posts and recent search terms.
