Web Engines

One of my desires is to develop this site into a useful resource for others and an easily accessible resource for myself. A key aspect of achieving this desire is the ‘LINKS’ page. On this page I list links to some of my favourite websites, web engines, wikis, and online learning resources.

Today, I would like to highlight the ‘Web Engines’ section. I recently decided to create this section after discovering QuadLook and Wolfram Alpha: two unique web engines offering beneficial information services to users.

QuadLook is a useful search engine for searching and viewing results from multiple sources on a single page. Information from different sources is displayed in windows that can be maximized with a ‘+’ symbol in the top right corner. QuadLook aggregates results from credible sources like Google, Bing, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Wikipedia, and news publishers to provide a holistic representation of relevant information in a single location. The major search categories QuadLook offers include web sites, YouTube, blogs, Wikipedia, Twitter, and news.

Wolfram Alpha is an engine for computing answers and providing knowledge. Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine, not a search engine. Search engines index web pages, seek out textual (and sometimes visual) clues and matches, and provide users with a list of links and other information. This is in contrast to Wolfram Alpha that uses information curated by human experts to compute a specific answer and analysis for every query. Wolfram Alpha has users input queries into a minimalist text box. Once submitted Wolfram Alpha may prompt users to confirm assumptions or input more information for clarification. Wolfram Alpha provides users with additional information they may find useful, including related queries, definitions, notes, and source information. Users are provided with a personalized experience that features favorite queries for quick access, query history, and the ability to set preferences such as result width and font size. The major categories of knowledge you can query Wolfram Alpha about include:

• Mathematics
  
• Words & Linguistics
  
• Units & Measures
  
• Statistics & Data Analysis
  
• People & History
  
• Dates & Times
  
• Chemistry
  
• Culture & Media
  
• Money & Finance
  
• Physics
  
• Art & Design
  
• Socioeconomic Data
  
• Astronomy
  
• Music
  
• Health & Medicine
  
• Engineering
  
• Places & Geography
  
• Food & Nutrition
  
• Education
  
• Materials
  
• Earth Sciences
  
• Shopping
  
• Organizations
  
• Life Sciences
  
• Weather & Meteorology
  
• Technology World
  
• Sports & Games
  
• Computational Sciences
  
• Transportation
  
• Web & Computer Systems
  
• Surprises
  

Although not available for free, Wolfram Alpha offers a pro version that provides users with many additional features, including step-by-step solutions to problems, the ability to input over 60 different types of files for automatic analysis and computation, an extended keyboard for more user friendly input of mathematical symbols and special characters, and the ability to upload, analyze, and process images.

In addition to QuadLook and Wolfram Alpha, I have included links to Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Google.

Bing is a web search engine by Microsoft. The major search categories Bing offers include web, images, videos, maps, news, and translator. Bing provides users with search suggestions when typing and after a search if it thinks users misspelled any words. Users can obtain instant answers to specific types of questions, including sports, finance, unit conversions, definitions, mathematical calculations, and more. Advance computations comprise part of the instant answers Bing offers. Wolfram Alpha powers these computations. Bing changes the background image for its search engine daily.

DuckDuckGo is a web search engine that emphasizes protecting user privacy and provides users with results not personalized based on search history or location. All users with the same search inputs receive the same search results. The major search categories DuckDuckGo offers include web, meanings, images, videos, about, news, and definition. DuckDuckGo compiles results from a multitude of sources, including Yahoo, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, and Bing.

Google is the world’s most popular search engine. The major search categories Google offers include web, images, news, maps, videos, books, flights, and apps. Google provides users with search suggestions when typing and after a search if it thinks users have misspelled any terms. Google allows users to input search syntax and trigger words for increased search functionality. For example, adding a ‘-’ symbol before a term is equivalent to the ‘NOT’ Boolean operator. Another example is using Google search for currency conversion by typing a currency value (e.g. 100) followed by a currency code (e.g. “CAD” for Canadian dollars) and the word “in” followed by a different currency code to compute the equivalent monetary value. Yet another example is “filetype:” followed by a type of file (e.g. “pdf”) to only return search results of a specific type of file.

One of my favorite things about all the web engines mentioned is that every one features a minimalist user interface focused around a clean and tidy text box. A simple uncluttered interface is one of my chief desires when deciding on web engines to use.

If you have not heard of any of these web engines before I highly recommend you check them out. You might just discover a new tool that quickly becomes indispensable in your everyday life.

Now that you’ve heard what I’ve got to say I want to know what you’ve got to say. What do you think of the search engines mentioned? Do you know of any other useful search engines you’d like to highlight? Do you have any interesting information to share about search engines?