Real Time Information

By bavidarbavidar (1255722242|%a, %b %e at %I:%M%p)

Real-Time Search

My Reaction

I used to think that Real-Time Searching was just a fancy name for searching and getting your results back right away. Wow was I wrong. After learning about a few of the real time search engines and using them I realized there are is a lot more that you can do with real-time searching then just regular searching. Looking at the following real time search engines, I want to look at a few of the new and cool things I learned (maybe you'll enjoy them too).

1. Addict-o-matic
2. Surchur
3. Yauba
4. FeedMil


Looking at What They Can Do!

Addict-o-matic

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What I liked

Addict-o-matic is by far my favorite out of all the different real-time search engines. When trying it out I was amazed. The user interface is just gorgeous. It's sleek and smooth. Besides the great design of this site, when you search for something, Addict-o-matic brings up results from:

  • Twitter Search
  • Bing News
  • Google Blogs
  • YouTube
  • FriendFeed
  • Digg
  • Bloglines
  • Technorati
  • Flickr

and much more!

My Thoughts

Addict-o-matic impressed me. It impressed me so much that I'm currently using it over some Google Tools. That means a lot coming from someone who relies on Google to tell him what 13*29 equals to and an not his calculator. Overall, Addict-o-matic is really a unique tool. Shows the world what you can really do when searching. The expectations are high when someone is searching.


Surchur

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What I liked

The first thing I saw when searching on Surchur was the "Real Time Board." This was such a cool Idea. The "Real Time Board" had hot topics from all different sites including:

  • Google Trends
  • Yahoo Pop
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Twitter Trends
  • CNN Popular
  • Bling xRank
  • Technorati

Before I even typed something into the search by I was already clicking these topics to learn more. When you do search, the organization of this site can amaze you. When searching "Chicago Bears" - yes, I am a die hard Bears Fan - My results were organized into these categories:

1. Blogs
2. Social Web
3. Pictures
4. News
5. Video
6. Products

This was different than Addict-o-matic as the feeds were organized by type of source rather then just by search engine.

My Thoughts

Surchur is cool. I do not think the user interface is as nice as Addict-o-matic but the organization was a nice add-on. However, it was annoying sometimes having to scroll all the way to the bottom when wanting to look at News for my search topic.

Yauba

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What I liked

Honestly, the reason I was attracted to Yauba was because of the blue and black color scheme. It looked bold and just shouted "I have what you are looking for" in a very confident way.

The searching experience was very similar to that of Surchur. Results were categorized by type of source and then it stated the source. What Yauba added that neither of the previous real-time search engines has was document and PDF's related to the topic of interest. This was good, a feature I had been looking for a while

My Thoughts

Yauba definitely adds something that the other real time search engines did not have but I do not think i would use it otherwise. The other 2 sites were just better at everything else. Yes the color scheme screams "search me" but to be honest I was not as impressed with Yauba. In summary, Yauba has a nice site, OK tools, and should be used if you are looking for documents and PDFs.


FeedMil

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What I liked

Those who read why I liked Yauba might ask why I like FeedMil since FeedMil has a really strange orange color scheme. However, what I initially like about FeedMil is the simplicity of its search engine. Just like Google succeeded because of its simplicity so will FeedMil.

FeedMil is very different from the previous real-time search engines. FeedMil does not organize its content rather it is order of relevance. What is nice about this structure is that the top results exactly pertain to what I want to read about. So, this time when i searched "Chicago bears" i immediately get the results I am looking for:

  • Rumors about T.O. Going to bears
  • Chicago Bears take on Atlanta

My Thoughts

FeedMil is a different site for different purposes. If you are looking for videos, pictures or documents, then this is not the search engine for you. However, if you are looking for the most relevant Blogs, News, and Social Web Stories that fit you topic then FeedMil is perfect. FeedMil bring one thing and that is simplicity. Simplicity worked for Google and it will work for FeedMil.


Interesting Conclusions

Well the first interesting thing I can conclude is that after search "Chicago Bears" into every single one of these sites I am fully aware of everything that is going on with the Chicago Bears and definitely believe that T.O. going to the bears was started by a rumor on twitter. However, in all seriousness I have realized that sometimes real-time search engines are valuable resources and that instead of going to 15 sites, I can get much better results when I use an aggregated search engine with real time updates. Hope this added some insight…also to those who read this, there is a reason Addict-o-matic is called Addict-o-matic. WARNING: it may consume all your time.

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