E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Quintura – The Way People Search

Earlier on today a colleague of mine at work pointed me towards a new search engine application that he thought I should have a look into and play around with it. More than anything else because of its similarity with Kartoo, one of my favourite alternative search engines, next to Mooter, Clusty or Accoona. So I had to give it a try. And I installed Quintura. And so far I love the experience ! Indeed, Quintura is one of those applications difficult to explain how it works until you go ahead and give it a try. There is just so much to say about it and perhaps the best way to give you a little bit of an introduction is by checking the online tutorials they have created on the application itself. You can find them over here and here. Then you could also head over to the screen shots section of Quintura’s Homepage to find out some more about it.

I am sure that after having gone through all those resources you would be looking forward to giving it a try. I know, I did. And I have enjoyed so much the experience that so far it has been the only search application I have been using the whole day today. And it works like a charm. So what is it exactly? How does it work ? Why would it be worth while using it as opposed to other search engines? Well, there are plenty of reasons that you could look into but I just thought I would mention the top five reasons why I feel that Quintura is worth while taking a look at and play around with for some time:

• It is very easy to use. You just have to install the application like you would do with any other tool, then launch it and without hardly any further setting up of preferences off you go ready to search and look for the information you were interested in. Even the results displayed to you are equally easy to access and interpret. More to come on this subject further down.
• You can personalise your searches with whatever the criteria, choosing your own search engines, and there are quite a few of them, including weblogging search engines like Technorati or Google Blog Search. Then indicating whatever the scope you would want to restrict your search with and afterwards allowing you to save those search results so that you can reuse them at a later time.
• A refreshing, and quite unexpected, set of results are returned back to you time and time again. As an example, and while looking for Knowledge Management resources, it brought me as one of the results KM, CMS and Portal Links, which offers quite an interesting read for some additional resources around the world of KM. I wasn’t able to find that particular resource straight up front in some of the other popular search engines.
• It works with all popular web browsers going from Opera to Mozilla. And, yes, it also works with Flock, my default web browser. So I no longer need to depend on a particular browser to view the results. I can just use whichever one I may have set up as my default. And that is a good thing. Specially for those folks using alternative web browsers.
• And, finally, perhaps the one and only feature that has got me sold so far on the application itself. And that is the usage of mapping or maps of the results showing the different relationships of each of the different search keywords in such a way that whenever I have results returned back to me I can see their relationship with the rest of the terms and therefore can relate more to the kind of information I am searching for and that is getting displayed in front of me. As I said, this particular feature is very similar to what Kartoo does and I am glad I have been recommended Quintura because this kind of search engines are just very refreshing not only from the perspective of getting those results but also because it helps detail the different relationships between each set of terms and learn along the way where you would be able to find the necessary information without wasting too much time. Those relationships will allow you in the end to have a much more visual representation of where the correct results are and therefore would allow you to remember them better for the next time. Mind you though that you can also save the different searches your perform and revisit them at a later time.

As you will be able to notice lots of different good capabilities, functions and options to get you going. But that is not all of that. They also have got a weblog where they share some more insights about how the application works and, much more interestingly, a description of some of the most interesting features put together into the tool. So that if you are not happy with them you could try to get them improved by submitting your own comments on future enhancements.

Overall, I must say that I am very pleased with the application itself and will continue to use it over the next few months in order to be able to get the most out of it for all of the search results and get much more accurate and relevant visualisation results of what I am searching for. Thus if you haven’t tried out the tool I would strongly suggest you give it a try for a few days and see how it would work with you. I am sure you will find it a different search engine with many capabilities than whatever other engines and if on top of that we keep on getting much more relevant resources as part of those results I guess we have got a winner, right ?

Thanks much, Stefano !

Technorati Tags: Quintura, Search Engines, Clusty, Mooter, Accoona, Kartoo, Visualisation, Mapping

A Waterfall

Here we go again with the weekly section for some pictures that I have taken not long ago and which will give you an idea of how the spring is hitting over here in Gran Canaria. Last week I shared some pictures from Degollada de las Yeguas where you could see how the South of the island looks like after plenty of rain and lots of sunshine. This time around I have been sharing some pictures, already available at my Flickr account, of a waterfall in the center of the island just a couple of days after we had lots of rain from a thunderstorm. So this time around you will see how the centre of the island is all full of green all over the place and what the waterfall would look like with hardly any water. Then perhaps at a later time I will share a second round of pictures of the same waterfall but that time around with water. You will be able to see the huge difference. But let’s go with the first round of my favourite pictures of the week:

As usual, if you would want to see some more pictures around this very same subject I have shared some more in my Flickr account. And talking about Flickr, here you have got my weekly tip on another handy tool that would allow you to display your Flickr pictures as a screensaver. The tool itself is called Slickr and you can find more details about it over here. It would allow you to display pictures by user, group, Everyone and local (From a particular folder) and configure it in a couple of easy steps. Quite handy if you have got an extensive set of pictures and you would want to check them out every now and then directly in your Desktop. I can certainly recommend it.

Technorati Tags: Gran Canaria, Waterfall, Slickr, Flickr

Have You Found Your Plazer Yet?

In the past you would remember how I have been weblogging a few times already about one particular application very handy specially for the mobile workforce. The application itself is called Plazes and you can find more information about it over here. The reason why I have always thought that this application would be very beneficial for the mobile knowledge workers is because it offers people the opportunity to show other colleagues their whereabouts at all times. That location awareness is, perhaps, one of the key fundamental features that Plazes has been very popular for. I am sure you would remember how up to not long ago most teams were working together under the same location. However, nowadays, and as we move more towards a much more mobile working environment, we find out that people are distributed in different geographies, regions, timezones, you name it and still they would need to show everyone else where they are so that they can see if they would be able to collaborate further or not.

And this is where Plazes would become very handy because it just provides you with that and so much more. This application is very similar to another offering that I have also weblogged about here in the past called Meetro. They both try to address the raising need of telling your colleagues where you are while on the road so that if you happen to be close enough you may be able to get together with them much easier than going through whatever the traditional methods. However, both of my colleagues Ed Brill and Andy Piper have been sharing their experiences recently in different weblog posts about a new release from Plazes now called Plazer.

Plazer, pretty much like its predecessor, will give you now the opportunity to indicate at all times where you are by reading the MAC address of your machine the router through which you are connecting to the internet and sending it back to the Plazes server. Then from there people who may be able to check your profile will be able to find out where you are at that time. Here is my profile to give you an idea of what it looks like. You will also be able to notice how the new Plazer has got as well the integration features of other applications from the previous version, so you will be able to access people’s pictures from Flickr, connect with then through various IM clients, including Skype, send different e-mail messages from inside of the tool itself and so forth. And all of that manageable from a launchpad. Quite interesting if you would want to have all those resources available to you for all your mobile coworkers and with a very lightweight client installed in your machine.

I must say that so far I haven’t been able to use it much more other than from my home office location since I haven’t had much chance to travel in the last few months but one thing for sure is that whenever I get a chance to try it out I will certainly be doing so and that will be happening a couple of times this year where I will be travelling to mainland Spain and perhaps a couple of European countries. Thus if you would be interested in getting together just check out my profile and drop a message to say “Hi!” You never know. I might be closer than what you may think.

Technorati Tags: Plazes, Plazer, Location Awareness, Mobile Workforce