Among the Y Combinator startups we rounded up earlier today is one that finally brings some innovation to the standard Google search bar most of us have set as our homepages.
Wundrbar will remind some readers of YubNub, the so-called “social command line for the web” that we covered a long time ago. Both are smarter than the average bar and will let you prefix your search terms with commands that indicate which type of results you want to see. For example, with both services you can enter “wikipedia john rawls” to get the Wikipedia article for that philosopher.
YubNub has a really long list of commands that appeal mostly to programmers. Want to display the headers for a particular URL? Type something like “headers techcrunch.com”. In contrast, Wundrbar has a much more limited set of commands but they appeal to more general audiences.
Say you want to find and book a flight for next week. Instead of going to Kayak and filling out all of their fields, just type “fly sfo to new york next tuesday to march 30 first class”. Wundrbar will show you below the search bar what it thinks you’re looking for, and when you hit submit you will be taken to a results page from your favorite flight search site (Kayak, Orbitz, Travelocity – your choice).
Similar functionality is possible for car rentals, hotels, trains, movie rentals, movie showtimes, and online retail sites. The full list of commands can be found here. And if you don’t use any commands, you’ll simply be directed to a standard Google results page.
On top of making search easier, Wundrbar can also be used to update and retrieve information from personal accounts. Right now only Twitter and Google Calendar are supported. For Twitter, you can use the command “twitter” to update your twitter status. And you can use different commands for Google Calendar to either retrieve calendar items on Wundrbar (”calendar next tuesday”) or to set calendar items (”create event next thursday dentist appointment”). Neither work perfectly yet; I had problems submitting Twitter messages with URLs and with adding calendar events with specific times. But if Wundrbar manages to iron these kinks out and support substantially more services, it will make for a compelling homepage.
I love the simplicity of it but ask myself if I type whatever it is I’m looking for in Wundrbar and W goes into google to help me search it, then why wouldn’t I just go to google. Or what if I want to search in Yahoo how does Wundrbar automatically find searches from there? Am I missing something?
So I gave it another whirl and typed in ‘I want to buy a Mercedes Benz CLS550′ instead of getting maybe results from dealers or perhaps classified ads from Craigslist, I basically get results from what Wundrbar “thinks” I want. But I’m not thinking, I already know what I want.
@Everett, Wundrbar defaults to Google if it can’t interpret your search to one of its services. The point is that you can perform many actions from a single interface, including (but not limited to) normal Google searches. The real power is its single command access to other service. It can’t read your mind, but it’s certainly smarter than anything currently out there. I think Wundrbar is going to be BIG.
WunderBra?
People don’t like complex search. Millions of studies have confirmed that. People are conditioned to type something in (1 or 2 words max) and get what they want back. This is why Vapourset and all other “innovative” search engines will fail.
^ DaveS, not arguing with you but would like to read more about people conditioned to 1-2 word searches and where that data’s from.
@Everette.
This smacks of another solution in search of a problem that is already adequately addressed to “good enough” status in existing offerings. That little drop down field in most browsers makes the extended search functions provided by sites like “wundrbar” and “twerq” redundant. These features were never asked for by normal users, think your mother, brother or cousin who just wants to see the search returns for their query without having to put in special code to filter results. I wrote blog post concerning the pitfalls of such web solution yesterday it so happens.
http://sent2null.blogspot.com/
Direct link to article mentioned in my previous post:
http://sent2nul...l-you-need.html
Do we realy need this?
I was working on a project very similar to this for a while, but without the keywords. I found it was next to impossible to determine what a user was looking for when they typed in, say, “lord of the rings”. Are they looking for the books, the movies, games, toys, or what? And for more abstract searches such as “boston to dc”, it’s extremely hard for an algorithm to figure out if you want to fly to DC, see how many miles it is to DC, etc. So, I’m sure wundrbar wishes they could go without keywords, but from my experience it simply isn’t possible, or at least requires the effort of a giant like Google.
everytime i search something it sends me to googls results, whats up?
Who came up with the name Wundrbar?
great to know Wundrbar, It really give you lots of fine for searching. Google may learn something from it.
this is turning into Ycrunch
This solves a problem that does not exist.
I type in “I want to buy a ferarri” i get back “we cannot find gas prices for that location” Beta version needs the kinks worked out, and then give me a reason to use it over google.
Also, the constantly changing XML (or w/e it is) box below the bar keeps changing as i type, I cant stand that.
Andrew agreed, TC has lost their way.
TechCrunch = Paul Graham / Y-Combinator Spin Machine.
I built a similar site, yet without the “predition” mode. link
This would make more sense as an add-on for the Firefox address or search bar. If it would occupy this area, I could imagine using the service.
Currently they offer this functionality with the toolbar they provide for Firefox, but it would only be useful if I could have this directly in my search box.
I don’t think the general public would be interested in using this at all. Actually, I know for a fact that this will never take off. I always do.
The thing about these new startups nowadays, is that the hype stays within the valley – only geeks use these tools, and rarely do they expand beyond that.
It’s a useless cycle – tech blogs hype these services up, they get a little popularity from that initial push, they raise money because of it, which is then reported on, and they raise more money because of that…until there’s no more money to raise.
You’re left with a “company” that could have been one guy in his bedroom, but instead has 20 developers producing close to nothing over vast periods of time, with no money left, inevitably heading for the deadpool.
It’s getting boring now. Can we start reporting on actual businesses? You’d think the valley had never produced anything good, with the crap that comes out of it. (Not that this service is crap, it’s okay…but certainly not a “company”, certainly not a business, and if they treat it as such, it will fail.)
Wundrbar is a nice try, but it’s easy to miss an important point: getting information instantly (without visiting the desired website and find the info) is mostly necessary on the go with mobile devices.
This is where Paged mobile excels. To visit rememberthemilk.com for example, enter remk at pa.gd website. To visit techcrunch.com, enter tech there (tech as a shortcut needs 8 keypresses instead of 31 (!) on a mobile phone with 12 keys). The shortcut comes from the web address, so no need to remember it (more details at pa.gd website). Approximately 120 countries and 11000+ shortcuts included.
Paged mobile supports YubNub commands as well, enter .wp john rawls as an example for wikipedia search. Translate words: .tr it en forza (translating the word forza from Italian to English). Local search: gloc museum miami. Display a location: .gm london. Compare prices for tripods: .froo tripod. And many others.
Paged mobile is web based, no need to install it on the phone. For more details, please visit pa.gd website.
Imre
To quote Michael Arrington, this is:
“THA HOTNESS”
Okay he really didn’t say that. I think this idea is good for individual web sites where only a limited/defined set of data has to be searched, and perhaps the templates and logic can be uber controlled.
For large and ever-growing pieces of data (ie, the net), this would never work. Unless God did something. But he’s busy helping Bush win the hearts and minds of Iraqis.
2008
Vote John McSame
Sounds good. But somehow the twitter comments doesn’t work somehow.
umm..sorry :O! Bad phrasing!
I personally love this service – it saves me time, and I can’t wait for it on my phone.
This looks pretty cool and I’ll give it whirl. I’ve been using YubNub almost from the time it started and it rocks. I use it at least 100 times per day. ‘Course, I have no idea how they possible monetize it. Maybe that’s why I like it – *because* they aren’t trying to monetize it.
hmm. kinda slick, but it sorta seems one page view more complicated than Dave’s Quick Search Deskbar http://www.dqsd.com, which I’ve been using for about 5 or 6 years, and is easily customized.
@jojo: Ah, but that search bar didn’t get $15m in “funding”.
I’ve been actively developing a YubNub alternative for a while called Queriac. It’s getting pretty stable now and is ready for a bigger user base. It’s free, open source, and (IMO) far more flexible and socially provocative than WundrBar and YubNub..
Try it at http://queri.ac