Sunday, April 5, 2009

Does KOSMIX challenge the Google or Librarians?


The web which is so deep that no one can peep inside to find out the most desired information for oneself. And the major issue for the information seeker is to grasp the ocean of information; so many search engines and meta- search engines are providing their services but still we never fill up to our fill. At present Google dominates the mind of Internet users. Whenever any query comes in our mind, naturally our fingers start typing the website-www.google.com, and in the mean time whole ocean came in front of us, and we keep on exploring page after page but never able to satisfy the thirst of precise information. I am not here to criticize Google or any other search engines, but want to express my views or experience with KOSMIX.COM. It attracts me so much that it makes me spend my whole day to explore it, to inform about its features. Few days ago, I was searching for video lectures on my research topic which deals with learning object, tried to explore with Google web and then Google videos but did not feel satisfied with result output, but when I put learning object in search window of KOSMIX, it provided with multi- dimensional search out put, images, videos, what is happening in news about the topic, related terms and their search output, same way to further explore discussions, communities and FAQ's about the topic. More or less it provides with information from broad to specific, multidimensional and multifaceted. Here, what I had been intending from my search query few days ago, it takes me very near to my expectations.

I have got to say that it has serious potential. Fine, now let me share few of the things about KOSMIX as its uses perspective.

Search at KOSMIX is a revolutionary way to explore the web, and its strength lays in its way to present the information in classified form. It is like a hybrid library that deals with so many formats and mediums to satisfy the needs of users beyond text- only- document under one window. This must be boon for the users who wish to see different medias and sources grouped, or who are interested in a variety of different angles and interpretation of the same subject, for this approach KOSMIX can be more useful.

KOSMIX is founded by two Indians Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinaryan who graduated from IIT Madras and PhD from the Stanford University who earlier founded one of the best shopping search engines called junglee. They called KOSMIX an ‘explore engine’ instead of a search engine. It is a new search engine, which is like one stop shopping for all your web and media needs. Broadly, it categorizes information in various heads viz. Reference; Media; News & Blogs; Shopping; Web search etc. Further, it divides the information of search query in to various fields like: At a Glance; Topic Highlight; Reference; Videos; Images; Conversations; News& blogs; Related topics; People & Community; Shopping; FAQ's and so on. The official slogan of this search engine is, "The web organized for you”. Through its official notes it does not placing any challenge to Google because it is helping users to search Google in more specific manner. It provides the multimedia view to your search. KOSMIX categorization engine organizes the Internet into magazine- style topic pages, enabling people to navigate the web even if they don't know exactly what they are looking for?

From the view of librarians, which are known for their techno-savvy attitude to adopt latest technologies, it presents the picture of a catalogued web. They have always set an example to use latest tools to manage and facilitate end user. The ocean of the WWW over the Internet has been remained one of the biggest challenges for the librarians. Information literacy and federated search minimize the barrier between a piece of information on the WWW and librarians but never addressed to the satisfactory level. Librarians are still eager to answer the question of how to make precise search on the web for a particular keyword? That KOSMIX is quietly answering.

Earlier yahoo has tried with its new search engine product named ‘yahoo glue’ which is offering aggregator search to contents of You Tube, Wikipedia, Flicker and many other news sources. Furthermore online version of Encyclopedia Britannica has also been started giving output of the query in groups of different formats like result from encyclopedia, audio video, dictionaries, thesaurus, websites, and images etc on a single window. Moving a step ahead KOSMIX is not only aggregating results but also taking precision value in account while fetching the data on the screen. Undoubtedly it has put a challenge to the librarians and information managers to think ahead of whatever KOSMIX is offering.

As it display the information fully classified and categorized by its features. As catalogue and thesaurus guides the users towards related information about the topic through its see and see also entries. This provides the analytical approach towards finding information. KOSMIX is a mash up service, more like a smart portal with Google results and half dozen or more other sources of information.

It is like an Encyclopedia of single search term. As it provides background information about the topic, a user who wants to explore a new topic and intends to write an article or overview of that subject, can easily find balanced information on the every aspect without feeling the overload of information. It allows the users to select how they want to consume the information.

Another feature of this site is that you can share your search results with other persons through email.

Just try to explore the potential of this new search engine!!!

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