Search Cloudlet is a Firefox extension from the International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute (INTSPEI) that gives users a cloud of tags to help modify and focus searches on Google and Yahoo. Once installed it will show up on top of search results and provides a simple way to tweak the original query by offering up keywords pulled from the results.
Words that appear more often in the results appear as bigger, bolder tags that you can click on to re-start the query with that word tacked on. The creators recommend dialing up the number of default search results to 100, which may make your searches slightly slower but result in a much more accurate tag cloud. This can be done from the user preferences in both Google and Yahoo.
In addition to standard Google and Yahoo searches the extension works on Google News both for keywords and locations. It also works for Google Blog search in a really neat way by adding tags for each author that you can click on to filter which posts come up.
Search Cloudlet is an experimental add-on and does not yet work on the latest beta of Firefox 3.1.
Google and Yahoo search results get smart tag clusters that let you narrow down results with Firefox extension Search Cloudlet.
(Credit: INTSPEI)
Sproose is a relatively young search engine that now allows its users to control search results via voting. Each search result gets its own vote count and the option to click "I like it," which brings the result up to the top of the heap. The obvious comparison here is Digg.
Sproose searches through videos, using Blinkx, although these results cannot be re-ordered or voted on. Users can also opt-in to have their votes recorded on their profiles for others to see and vote on. All results get their own comment area, where users can talk--although I doubt many will want to write about a search result.
One of the more interesting inclusions in Sproose is its tag cloud, where users can browse for sites via tags. This is kind of an interesting form of Web discovery service, although it's lacking a clear way to add tags to sites yourself.
The obvious concern with sites like these is gaming results. Sproose deters some of this by removing votes from unregistered users after a limited time and requiring registration, although savvy spammers can usually find a way to circumvent whatever verification processes exist. Sproose's results are only as good as its users, and if security fails, so does the site.
See also: aftervote
Search results can be voted and commented on by users. The results with the highest vote counts go on top.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
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