Summary: Blekko is novel, interesting, and even useful, but only the geek elite are ready for it. Besides, Google knows what we mean anyway.
How many people do you know who type URLs into their search bar or a search engine (if it’s their default home page) instead of typing it into their address bar? The answer is probably “too many.” So many, in fact, that it just isn’t worth correcting them anymore. So now imagine telling these same people that they can not only conduct sophisticated searches in that search engine text box, but they can use a system of slashes to refine their searches on the fly. Yeah. Good luck with that one.
This, however, is the basis for Blekko, a new search engine that entered public beta today. Here’s a video explaining how it works:
Blekko actually has great features and has managed to make search not only social but customizable. The built-in sort and prioritization syntax from their “slashtags” crank out good search results, just as advertised. Even making the slashtags customizable and social is a cool feature.
And it’s a feature that only about 1% of Internet users, the geekorati, will get and use. Because let’s face it: Google does a pretty good job of telling you what you care about anyway. Google automatically builds a profile and even a tolerably formed search query will give the average user a decent set of results. Why would 99% of the users on the Web bother creating custom hash tags that they can share with their friends? You can even hook Blekko into your Facebook and Twitter accounts, but can you really imagine sharing with your Aunt Tilly that you just created a super-cool new search tag for Blekko and telling her that she should really check it out? No, I don’t think so.
This is an example, with Blekko founder, Rich Skrenta’s Sun Engineering pedigree, Silicon Valley venture capital, and Michael Arrington’s glowing review, of plenty of geeks not thinking like consumers. This is one company, however, that Google should snap up right now, take advantage of their IP, implement some of their more useful features like spam flagging and advanced syntax for power users.
Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.
Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.).
He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change.
He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have).
Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others.
Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair.
Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards.
Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap.
Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff.
Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable.
Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.
Biography
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider.
He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.
RE: Blekko: Cool for the geekorati, but no Google killer
current user27th Jun
what was wrong with Boolean values in search (+ & -)?? they do the same thing in most any search engine, and don't have the big problem of using "/"xyz whats the problem? "/" already has a convention, that's the problem...
I think you are all wrong, Google's priority is to pump as many websites as it can at you so it can make a return on advertising, which in reality are often useless and junk /spam, How many of you have searched Wordpress themes and spent 3 days like me and been sick of viewing results from the same rubbish from sites over and over from multiple query's?
With Blekko I can banish the /spam and anything I don't like forever or until I decide I want to see results from that site again.
That's a powerful concept, and no one has ever done that before this means I can view a site once, if I don't like it remove the many thousands of pages from my search that might show up under numerous query's I do.
This is about a search revolution, the ability for you the person searching to decide for yourself, and having the search algorithm filter and customize itself to you on the fly.
Google gives you no power what so ever, all you can do is hope you "get lucky" or avoid the /spam or parked websites while you do multiple searches.
Google would never ever allow you to control what you want to see and what you don't because it would loose money from /spam advertisers, content farmers, and other such junk websites that only serve to make Google and them profit over the time wasted by an end user.
Now you have a real choice, Google it, or Blekko it.
Blekko is definitely a cool new search engine. The slash tag feature is unique and gives it an edge that people will be interested in. However, I do not think it will ever reach the popularity of Google due to it?s complicated nature. I think Google?s greatest strengths is it?s simplicity; it?s so easy anyone can use it to it?s full potential. Blekko is not like that.
Coming from someone who doesn?t have a lot of time on her hands, having to learn how to use a search engine does not appeal to me when I have Google available. Of course I took the time to learn about Blekko, but I?m in the industry. I don?t think the average person will want to do that.
I?ve done some research and I think the best new search engine is Bweezy. Similar name, but very different from Blekko. Bweezy offers Google results, which I love. It also lets you open search results in the same window as the search, which eliminates the need to open a ton of tabs! I?d check it out if you?re into new search engines.
what was wrong with Boolean values in search (+ & -)?? they do the same thing in most any search engine, and don't have the big problem of using "/"xyz whats the problem? "/" already has a convention, that's the problem...
