Searching...

I am certainly a creature of habit. It doesn't matter what new search engines pop up and how great people make them out to be, I will always be a Googler. Not that I don't try them, of course, but I always end up using Google.

What I like about Lexxe is that there are no ads to distract you while looking at the list of results. It's a very clean and specific search engine. I typed in 'draw manga' as my search and 100 results were shown, compared to Google's 2,090,000 results. The Cluster on the left side of the results is interesting too. It puts results based on your search into more specific groups like "Draw Manga books', 'Draw Manga Hair', or 'Anime Style'.

I instantly took a dislike towards Hakia. Once you've submitted your search, the engine turns up the results and puts them into categories that make it hard for your eyes to handle. It puts the web results on the left side, images in the middle with news results and user generated content underneath, with sponsored links on the right side. It's just bad organization.

I don't like Quintura's link cloud that is always on the left side of the page.

Bing is my second favorite to Google. I've played around with it before. Again, it's a relatively clean search engine and I like the related searches and search history on the left side of the results.

Information at Your Fingertips

I do not have a web-capable phone. I only recently (since Christmas) have I gotten a phone that can take pictures. Though, that doesn't mean I don't want an iPhone or even an iTouch. I'm on a family plan and refuse to get my own plan for a phone. It's the one bill I don't have to pay and I'm trying to hold onto that for a while.

I think it's great that there are smart phones or devices that can access the internet pretty much anywhere. I love the idea of having information at my fingertips. Maybe it's the Web 2.0 librarian in me, but I don't think being able to see which movie an actor is in should be deemed as 'App-noxious' as the article states.

As for use in the library, the idea is good. We've used the iTouch to record Customer Interaction Statistics as a test drive. The iTouch also let us use the card catalog while in the stacks with patrons without having to run to the nearest Info Spot. Perhaps with phone capabilities of some sort, and money of course, we could get rid of our Voceras and use the iTouch as an all-in-one reference device. Some can dream, can't they?