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raelity bytes - the author of blosxom
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Fri, 06 Aug 2004
Blinkx and I missed it
Blinkx.com have a search tool that provides results from the web, newsgroups, video feeds, blogs, and your own hard disk.
The story shows the power of blogs and viral publicity:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1260983,00.html
"The blog was posted on a Friday, and by the Monday there were 5,000 links to it and people were discussing it all over the world. Since then, there have been 130,000 direct downloads, and many more through users swapping files. This week, the site - which is only launched today - has been recording 6m links or hits a day solely from word-of-mouth publicity. "
"...it uses artificial intelligence to rate stories, not page rankings."
I installed it and was alerted by Zonealarm that "pdre4.exe" wanted to access the Internet. I expected that, as they mentioned it in the help. What they did not say was that prde4 wanted to be a server (why?), that "filescan.exe" wanted access to the internet (why?) and I kept getting a crash every couple of minutes from "eudoraslave.exe". OK, it's in beta, but they should describe what these components are. Ironically, Google reports search results for "prde4" but not Blinkx!
It vaguely reminds me of the old AltaVista Discovery program that used to index HDs ... very slowly.
I tried it for my favourite topic, "spreadsheet errors", and found that the first page, while not like the Google results, was still relevant. I think the citation method of Google probably suits academic papers better.
Compare: Blinkx
with Google
I can't see how to get it to give me results from my hard disk. One notable limitation is that you have to add folders one at a time. That's silly, they should have an option to include subdirectories. I won't be giving up Wilbur from redtree.com anytime soon.
Bernie Goldbach's blog has his review where he did not see the commercial imperative for it
http://irish.typepad.com/classroom/2004/07/blinkx_review.html
John Battelle's Searchblog
http://battellemedia.com/archives/000742.php quotes a number of disappointed users.