Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Life without Google Day 5: The Kartoo experience

By | June 13, 2007, 2:14am PDT

Summary: Can you get used to a search engine that has a creepy little mascot whose eyes follow you around as you click on icons? If so maybe Kartoo is for you. Kartoo is a meta search engine (see gallery) that is interesting from a user interface perspective. The search is so-so, but the presentation is worth noting. [...]

Can you get used to kartoomascot.pnga search engine that has a creepy little mascot whose eyes follow you around as you click on icons?

If so maybe Kartoo is for you.

Kartoo is a meta search engine (see gallery) that is interesting from a user interface perspective. The search is so-so, but the presentation is worth noting. I’ve been trying it for a couple days as I explore life without Google. I rotated Kartoo with Ask and Live Search. Overall, Kartoo does inspire me to find some new interfaces. It’s just a little hard to use it repeatedly.

Kartoo uses the FlashPlayer to create visual results. Each result has an icon that has meaning–Word doc, recently updated, multiple pages and so forth. Hover over an icon and you can see the threads of your search and why the result appears.

In a nutshell, Kartoo gives you a map of search results. It takes some getting used to–as does the mascot that’s everywhere–but it does make you think about search a little differently.

Now I wouldn’t use Kartoo as my sole search. It’s just too jarring and once you navigate to an image search it plops you onto Yahoo.

However, I’d reckon that visual search is something that the search giants should think about a lot more. Eventually, we’re going to get sick of blue text links. What’s next?

While Kartoo’s interface had its issues–the next map icon to get more results was buried for instance–the search engine may be on to something. By using Flash saving searches and viewing your history felt like being inside an application. From the user perspective that approach is very different than the standard sea of links you get today.

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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search crystal
renowayne2006@... 19th Jun 2007
That was a really cool search but it took forever, 30 to 90 seconds to get the results, but it was worth the wait.
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Very nice!!!
orengabay@... 13th Jun 2007
I don't it will do the work Google is doing for me but it's refreshing and highlight things you don't see will Google.
Thanks.
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...find one that does newgroups (usenet) searches? Right now, Google is the only major one that does usenet and I live on usenet for development answers.
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Funky, but not really new
RustyShackleford 13th Jun 2007
There have been several search engines that have taken a stab at a more visual/cloud/cluster representation of the search results. I've tried a few of them, but just can't see myself using them in their current form.

You've probably already got all your engines picked out, but if you're going to venture into the world of meta search engines I highly HIGHLY recommend checking out Clusty (which doesn't use Google I think.) Their founding company (Vivisimo) has always had good search technology and I've always been a fan of clustered results like you can find on their site, Ask.com, etc. Plus, if privacy is one of the big reasons to push away some from Google, then Clusty is the anti-Google in this regard, just check out their privacy policy.
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Kartoo
x00x 13th Jun 2007
Creepy really nails it.
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try searchcrystal.com
searchcrystal 13th Jun 2007
You may be interested in using www.searchcrystal.com.
No animated character.
Also implemented in Flash.
searchCrystal is a search visualization tool that enables you to compare, remix and share results from the best web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines or RSS feeds.
You can embed searchCrystal as a Widget on your site or blog to share personalized crystals with your friends. You can also use it to find out what is popular on Wikipedia or use the Search Analytics Toolbox in your browser.
searchCrystal enables you to see the big picture, gain new insights and interact with search results in new ways.
You can explore and filter 50 - 500 web pages, images, videos, blogs in a single display that guides you toward relevant information in a structured way.
searchCrystal offers you a powerful competitive intelligence tool.
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search crystal
renowayne2006@... 19th Jun 2007
That was a really cool search but it took forever, 30 to 90 seconds to get the results, but it was worth the wait.

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