When you think web search or search engine, you normally think software. But, if you can think outside the box once in a while, you may come up with a different thought. In this case, Google thought of web search inside the box and came up with Google mini - some web search hardware.

The Google mini, according to Small Business Computing, is a garish blue and loud-as-hell server that slips into a server rack. After some jiggery pokery, the mini will index your website or intranet. Voila, thanks to Google, you have the perfect in-house search engine capability.
How perfect?

The Mini can index the content of 220 types of files, including HTML, PDF, Microsoft Office, Microsoft PowerPoint, WordPerfect, Lotus Domino, Lotus 1-2-3, compressed archives, all common e-mail formats and many more. But with convenience comes risk.

If you aren't careful at set-up time, it is likely to expose some of your company's most secret info. The Google Mini sounds a perfect vehicle for "Microsoft internal memo" results to hit the internet by mistake.

Google Mini searches at a price

About $2000 gets 50,000 pages indexed, $3k gets you 100k documents in the search parameter, and up to $9k for 300,000 pages. And then you have to pay $995 a year for support. Or rather, you have the option to pay up, but if you choose to be a cheap skate, carry on with your Google Mini without any support. Seems fair enough, if you are in that league.

Is the Google Mini for you?

Obviously this isn't for the lightweights of the internet, and to be honest, as a grade A lightweight with about 1500 articles, I am really happy with the search results that Google Co-op delivers for The Pisstakers. However, one day they will become affordable on main street and everyone may be considering one of these babies. Just make sure you have ear defenders and air con to compensate for the big hitting Google Mini whirring away 24-7 in the corner of your bedroom.

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Rollyo is a web search tool that lives in your browser. It helps you focus on results from sites you trust.





You may be interested in doing web search the Rollyo way ie search in a focussed, targeted and personalised manner? I was, and this is what I found.

Rollyo search rolls - a list of trusted sites

Rather than return 345600000 results for a topic covered by every man and his dog, Rollyo focuses on results limited to sites you trust. Easier done than said!

First step - the browser bar widget

Drag the widget at the end of this article into your browser bar.

Second step - create custom search rolls

When you come across a website that you like, click on the Rollbar widget. A window pops up.

Either create a new search roll, name it and add the site to it, or add the site to an existing search roll listed in the widget.

For heavy users, you could create 10 or 20 search rolls and populate them with sites you encounter on your travels. - for instance, create a search roll called serious search engines, and go add Google and all that jazz to it. Eventually you have a useful Search engine search roll, or a humor search roll with The Pisstakers at the top! a car search roll...

To do a web search

You can do a search at any time, of course, straight from the browser. As an example, I typed in RSS as a search word, and chose the search to take place in sites limited to Pisstakers funny search roll. Rollyo obediently searched my fave humor sites ONLY and I got results from authors who interested me - not the 3 million who don't. Great for researching topics in your clique, don't you think.

Rollyo targets search perfectly

I could have tapped into the serious search engines search roll to get general results on RSS from google and more mainstream search sites. Or if I wanted results limited to a search of cool car sites I visit often, I could have targeted a ferrari search roll... although, I wonder what RSS has to do with cars?

Bottom line, whenever you do a search, the results need only include info from the sites you trust! Cool huh!!! And it is free, and indexing is comprehensive and it all looks pretty..

If it made any sense, drag this Rollyo Rollbar link to your Bookmark Bar and see what funny stuff brings up in the web search results.

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This in-house search tool provides quick access to articles in the Blog Net News aggregator. BNN is a nationwide network tweaked for individual states.

How does Blog Net News search work?

Type a word and press the button?

Search GA Blogs

BlogNetNews.com

And what is Blog Net News again?

Bloggers write their opinion, link to other articles that they think are relevant, and then publish on the internet. The readership that are local to each writer or follow the writer's topic, are required to leave comments reflecting if they agree/disagree with the views expressed.

On the good side, BNN is a grass roots news aggregator that is reacting against the press moguls who are currently force-feeding party political and corporate lines to the prols. On the downside, it could be a platform for bar room lawyers and pool hall politicians to air their personal grievances unbridled.

To be fair, although it could be abused, Blog Net News does have one big safety net - its user base age demographic is post 14! Therefore, unlike Digg users, the readership should have the maturity to be trusted to spot a good story from a mile off, and smell a rotten one too.

It is probably justified in claiming itself a true libertarian reflection of what is best in the local blogosphere. They just need to get rid of the Editor, and they have their fully democratic nirvana.

I would be interested to know what the Google search brings up as opposed to the Net News search. After all, a broad church is the best way to arrive at a balanced outcome. No Georgian or Pennsylvanian is going to be too hard on their own state, are they?

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A simple-to-use web search engine, Blingo is based on Google. Sponsored ads pay for the prizes. Latest prize winners are displayed in colorful real-time tickers. Bling, bling, bling.

Hundreds of prizes

Blingo is using good marketing techniques to keep people coming back for more. They claim to give away thousands of prizes. It isn't a scam, because I guess they really do give away something. Just look at the banner!



Cutting through the marketing spiel, however, victory is invariably yours in the form of a dirty great big expensive (cue the drum roll, unfurl the red carpet) - cinema ticket. A pass to a movie, smashing.

Others have received an iTunes certificate and...

Blingo Blog

The blog is a good source of info on the Blingo paid-to-search web phenomenon. For instance, the "your name needs" meme was quite a successful way of proving that you can get proper results out of a Blingo search.

We input Ed needs and the answer was: Ed needs a Hummer! Well, I can say I would be too embarrassed to drive one of those monstrosities, but at least it is an idea of what to ask for Christmas. And as for the Ed, he has a long wait till Hummer day.

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Younanimous is a composite of Google, MSN and Yahoo! web search results. The results are then prioritised for usefulness based on each user's use of the search results.

Update


No sooner did we write up some info on the new meta search engine, Younanimous, than the developers unanimously decide that you need to know it henceforth as Aftervote. In this case, I dunno, calling a spade a spade sort of explains better what the search engine does, but Younanimous is so cool and so evocative. We blogged about naming Aftervote.

Updated update
Aftervote was bought out by some mogul and is now called Scour. It is slow to load, pays to search, and seems crap compared to what I reviewed below. So read on to see what seems to have been ruined!.

What does Aftervote / Younanimous do again?

It could be billed as: major web search engine aggregator meets Digg. I think it is easier to explain rather than summarize Aftervote.

When you search a word or phrase, Aftervote will return a couple of pages of results - admittedly a little slower than if you hit on Google direct, but still pretty nifty. With the results page up, the social side of Younanimous Aftervote kicks in.



If you click on result 1 but it isn't what you want, you would backspace to the original page of search results. Aftervote makes a note of that.

If you follow through with search result number 2, or 5 or whatever, in the list, Aftervote remembers that. As a social search engine with a brain, it then applies your search dynamic to the results of the next person searching the same keyword you just did.

In this way, it is constantly modifying the returned results to be as useful and valid as possible (assuming users aren't mental and seek crap results for their queries!)

I must say I am quite impressed, especially as it does seem to produce a different result, (a more valid result?) as you re-search a term. A shame the logo is the wishy washiest yellow of all time, but to be fair, it is in Beta, so maybe it will get beefed up along with the search engine code.

A potted history in no particular order!

Thought Mechanics bring you information on Younanimous straight from the horse's mouth.

I am really excited to be talking about the release of this. Younanimous is a totally new search engine I have helped to develop. It has so many features and actually doesnt suck like most spin off engines. To read all of it, check the About Page. Some quick highlights:
Searches google, msn and yahoo
Mixes robot rankings with social rankings.
Has alexa, Pagerank and stumbleupon plugins
Much more..

Other links

Beertjes blog tells his side of the story in Dutch
Frantic Industries gives Younanimous the benefit of the doubt
The Techno Geek Boy has explained how Aftervote works too in an article AfterVote (a.k.a. Younanimous), The Hardest Working Engine in the Search Business



Maz, the developer behind Younanimous /Aftervote gets some good advice and suggestions from forum members. (Poor old Opera get a roasting though.)

Yes, opera and safari fix is next, although its my true belief that there is more blind people than there is opera users (joking

)

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This is a web search engine from Technorati, the social bookmarking giant. They modestly call it a searchlet, but it taps into a huge database.

Technorati were beta testing this powerful web search tool, a little search box acting as a window on a huge database of social networked data. Try it out and see where it takes you. Funny quotes or Pisstakers!!

This blog All blogs

Social bookmarking gives valued results

When people read about a topic or specific post that they like, they tell their friends at Technorati. Bloggers also link to posts and link to Technorati. Yadda yadda. Like a snowball in winter, as more people pick up on a topic, the more people roll with it and bookmark it and recommend it to internauters in ever greater numbers. The more votes a topic gets, the higher up the rankings it goes. (Like a snowball in hell, crap content gets burned too!)

Now the Technorati searchlet, by definition, produces search results that reflect the most read and valued content on the internet - as judged by readers. This approach is entirely different from traditional searching with Google, Yahoo etc who churn out search results based on what their robots have crunched through algorithmically, with sponsorship monies, and who knows what other random mathematical options factored in.

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Kevin spoon fed Federline has joined the paid to search game. Just like Meatloaf and countless other stars of the stage and scream, the dancing buffoon is tapping into the Prodégé experience.

Any marketer will tell you that it is easy to milk fans if you have famous people involved in any half decent / half baked promotion,! The Prodege business model milks the street cred of a star! They use their name and a few crap pieces of memorabilia to tempt the star's fanbase (and the fans' families) into swapping from Google to a paid web search bar endorsed by the star.

It doesn't matter than K-Fed, for instance, has no interest in the Prodege product, and that he still Googles Britney, bald and beautiful and that his prizes are hand-me-downs from his former has-been/returning pop star spouse. As long as his name is on the Prodege search bar and he adds an old tee-shirt and a scratchy old CD out the cupboard to a handful of sweepstake tickets for a birthday party, everyone is happy.

Prodege earn the money to run the show by selling sponsored ads at the top of the search results. So in Kev's case, they attract ads from any company selling tat for 13 year old, slightly chubby, fashion-conscious single mothers.

Win with Kevin web search engine. Is there any sentiment more sickly sweet?

Others' opinions

It is always good to hear different views, if only to give you a perspective on the correctness of your opinion!

Prodege, on their site, claims, "PRODÉGÉ is the first socially-conscious search engine." Huh?

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