LookSmart Search Engine

[Prentiss Riddle]

> Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 08:12:13 -0700
> From: Cliff Urr <curr at mnsinc.com>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: LookSmart Search Engine
> 
> I got this off of the hypertext Usenet group, which may
> be of great interest here (btw, it appears not yet available, but
> will be very soon):
> 
> "Has anybody heard more about the new Java-based search directory
> for the web announced last week called "LookSmart", which is
> backed by the Reader's Digest? It's editorial approach seems
> like a much more practicable approach to finding info on the Internet. ...

A search of recent Usenet news (e.g. using Alta Vista) will reveal a
number of pre-announcements of LookSmart.  Salient points:

   -- Scheduled release date is October 28.  Looks like the URL
      will be "http://www.looksmart.com" (currently password protected).

   -- LookSmart claims to use better human filtering than its
      competitors.  This sounds like good news to me -- I for one find
      creeping errors in Yahoo, so what used to be my first tool of
      choice is now second or third (now I usually try a brute-force
      keyword search like Alta Vista first).  It will be interesting to
      see whether LookSmart does better in the long run than Yahoo, and
      if so, what techniques they use to guarantee quality control.
      I'd love to hear a serious analysis of the classification and
      abstracting principles used by either or both of these tools.

   -- LookSmart is said to be Java-based.  Since Java is still
      prohibited at my institution for security reasons, let's hope
      they offer a non-Java version.  Part of their use of Java seems
      to be for the benefit of advertisers rather than end users --
      they are said to guarantee "Java-enabled creative slots and
      guaranteed time impressions".  I'm not sure what the latter
      means, but I fear it may be that the user has to watch N seconds
      of advertising before the real content of a page appears.  Ugh.

The c|net article is at:

   http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,3988,00.html

I haven't been able to find the Reuter's article.

-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle at rice.edu
-- RiceInfo Administrator, Rice University / http://is.rice.edu/~riddle
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