Swicki, a cross between a search engine and wikipedia, has been developing apace. As well as a source of encyclopedic information, Swicki is also a directory, directing you to useful web sites, making it a good alternative to my favorite people at Technorati.

Quick, what's a Swicki again?

This example of the Pisstakers Swicki search tag cloud is to be found on my Search page, no less. The terms you see displayed reflect what visitors to this site want to find out about, not what I want to push down visitors' throats.

How democratic, you may say. I say, democracy is good, but is not a pre-requisite for efficiency, and Swicki is a perfect anarchical mix of "ease of use" for searchers and "productive laziness" on my part.

Ease of use - From the tag cloud, either click on an existing search term, or input your own search term and get a Google style results page. The "S" in Swicki is not exactly ground-breaking, but the Wicki part ain't half bad! If the search results are a little hazy, and you know a thing or two about the topic, go right ahead and alter or add to the text accompanying the Swicki search result.



Productive laziness
I am not lazy, but I like things that work smart with minimal input from me. Swicki is one of those zero-input from-me dynamic content providers that also has everything necessary for me to tailor search results to the Pisstakers. From a control panel, I can see a list of recent search terms and I can block the irrelevant ones, so I don't get caught up in subjects I haven't written about. I can also add info to the Wiki style results to kick start a meaningful source of info for topics covered in The Pisstakers.

A Technorati killer?

Many people, myself included, get hung up on rankings and overlook the main function of Technorati, which is to organise and promote all those blogs out there. Swicki does the same job, making sense of the morass of sites vying for our attention, but it does it in quite a simple, democratic and powerful way.



This is the list of Recent and Top Swickis by search numbers, plus Videos. And below this list is a simple layout of blogs by topic.

The Top Swicki guys have some credibility, if you put any value in Technorati A-lister, TechCrunch, but the whole search and wiki scene is less controllable by the few. This is because Swicki's system allows surfers (not just bloggers) to select AND contribute to what they think is worth while on the internet. A long way from the blogger-manipulated rankings on Technorati.

Without the manic emphasis on rankings, I think Swicki is a cool environment compared to Technorati. Not so busy either, with about 100,000 blogs to plough through. Worth a thought, at least.

Now I will crawl under a rock and watch my Technorati "usefulness to society" rank continue to fall.