[WEB4LIB] Mooter search engine

[bardsley at u.washington.edu]

While we're on the subject of search engines, here's another to be looked at:

http://www.kartoo.com/

You have to do a search to see how it works. It has been in development for several years and adds much more visual metadata to search hits than any search engine I've seen. I don't use it because it feels cumbersome and slow. Some people might really like it though. Among other things, you can do a broad search then slice and dice categories from it to refine it.

Mark Bardsley


On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, Terry Nikkel wrote:

> The current discussion of Google Scholar is stimulating and seems to be
> making a lot of us think hard about our roles in the evolving world of
> search engines.  I have come across another search engine that I had not
> heard of before, called Mooter, and that I think may interest search engine
> fans.  Mooter is under development in Australia, and is headed by Liesl
> Capper, who is a psychologist.  A couple of simple searches show that
> Mooter has some great features, particularly clustering of related
> results.  http://www.mooter.com
>
> The following is a quote from the Mooter 'About' page:
> In the past, search engine development focused on making as much
> information available to users as possible. It was up to the user to sort
> through hundreds or possibly millions of search results to find what they
> were looking for.
>
> Mooter, by contrast, employs unprecedented "artificial algorithms" based on
> psychological modelling to process and understand the information users seek.
>
> "Today's engines typically throw up hundreds of results and ask users to
> sort through them or rephrase the search criteria," Ms Capper, CEO of
> Mooter, says.
>
> "We use complex algorithms to short-circuit the search process."
>
> "Users shouldn't have to work hard to find what they want. Mooter sets out
> to solve the problems of most search engines by understanding the
> psychology of how users interact with information."
>
> Terry Nikkel
>
> Terry Nikkel
> Head, Library Systems
> Dalhousie University Libraries
>
> Phone: 902-494-6686
> Fax: 902-494-2062
> Cell: 902-449-8706
>
>
>