The Wink user-enhanced search engine, in private beta for the last few months, launches Thursday morning to the world.
Wink has evolved substantially since my October 12, 2005 review.
Wink is, at its core, a combination of traditional search with feature-rich social bookmarking. Bookmarked/tagged results appear above normal search.
Search results can be bookmarked, tagged and rated from Wink. The same functionality is available via a bookmarklet that works with Firefox, Safari and IE. As a twist, users can also block “bad” pages. Lots of functional Ajax is built into the interface.
Users can easily browse tag results (either their own, or all users).
There are three key additional features.
First, Wink has added two way synchronization with del.icio.us bookmarks. And they’ve added a “Keep Sync’d” feature that, as the name implies, maintains a constant one or two-way syncronization with del.icio.us. No word on whether they will add in other social bookmarking services over time or not.
Second, Wink allows the creation of “collections”, which is a tag group (tags of tags). Collections are controlled by one user but can be shared with anyone.
Third, and this feature really appeals to me, Wink has added a “Wink Answers” tab to search results. The text is a wiki – meaning anyone can edit it. For queries that have complicated results, a number of options appear. A lot of data has been pre-populated, and I believe this will be a popular feature. Like Wikipedia, it begs for user interaction, but with a lower intimidation factor.
Wink is also finalizing a nice blog widget that includes additional links (that point only to bookmarks created by the blogger). See here for an example. I have not had the opportunity to test this myself yet, but it looks interesting.
Congratulations to Founder Michael Tanne and the entire Wink team.
… and Songbird sorely disappoints by not releasing the promised preview release on time and effectively pushing it weeks into the future and even next year.
I think adding social engineering to search is a promising ideal. Reminds me of American Idol where the audience takes the initiave to pick a star. I’m personally impressed with the American Idol stars picked by the audience in comparision to the crappy pop stars picked by A&R and music label executives.
I see two challenges. One is so-called ‘click fraud’ where partisan entities will promote their irrelevant web sites over one that is highly relevant through creative social engineering. The other challenge is the lack of barrier to larger competitors. The bigger sites can implement these same features and scale much more rapidly than Wink because they have millions of existing users.
Which brings me to the point of writing this – what is the aim of these new search engines? Are they just looking to be bought out or cash & burn (get funding, run through it and close shop)? Or are they serious in competing against some very heavyweights that have the mainstream media in their lower front pocket?
I just want to be honest – I’m simply not impressed with any of these newer search engines if they do not demonstrate that they can offer a better solution than the status quo.
PS: I take issue with companies calling themselves a search engine but have an “Ads by Goooooogle” section taking up the right portion of the screen. Talk about a business model :0
I’m thinking their services is much like Oodle.com, grabbing lots of content from Craigslist – seem like they are grabbing majority of the content from del.icio.us. Its convenient for sure, but not sure if its following Oodle’s path to any litigation. A co-worker of mine showed me this website BROWSR.com, its pretty useful.
Wireless World: Premature predictions?
Predictions that the maker of BlackBerry wireless e-mail technology was about to collapse due to protracted and bitter patent litigation were premature, experts are now telling United Press International’s Wireless World.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week rejected patent claims by NTP, the developer that has been suing Research in Motion, the owner of BlackBerry. The surprise move comes after lengthy litigation, which RIM was losing, and which led many to say that RIM might be shuttered, and even caused the U.S. government to develop contingency plans in the event that the wireless service went dark. By Gene Koprowski
im looking for a bluetooth product which is just a screen and keyboard like in a laptop but connectinbf to harddrive by bluetooth. It would be a really light laptop no wires no attached harddrive usin my hard drive. anyone sell this??? i mean i already got a pc desktop . i want a laptop too in my house strictly for mobility with no wires attached. Do i need to buy a laptop with drive ?? is this a product idea?
interaction, but with a lower intimidation factor.
Wink is also finalizing a nice blog widget that includes additional links