[pn] kartoo

[Mark Warschauer]

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Every once in a while I come across something so cool that I have to 
share it right away.  There's a fascinating new search engine called 
kartoo (http://kartoo.com).  Check it out.  (You can start by typing 
in my name and hitting OK.)

I haven't figured out how useful it is, but it sure looks neat!  I'd 
be interested in hearing from people who explore its potential.

Here's a message that Steve Jones sent out about it on the AIR-L 
list.  I have no idea where he got the text in this message.

cheers,
Mark


To: air-l <air-l@aoir.org>
From: Steve Jones <sjones@uic.edu>
Subject: [Air-l] Interesting new search engine
List-Subscribe: <http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l>
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 08:03:30 -0500

Kartoo

On April 25, Kartoo SA launched a new generation meta-search engine 
called Kartoo. It provides an innovative, visual way to retrieve 
information from the web. The Kartoo technology has been under 
development for two years and http://www.kartoo.com/ is it's first 
'proof of concept' application.

Laurent Baleydier, the designer of Kartoo, set himself the goal of 
developing a powerful meta-search engine that would help internet 
users precisely tune their information searching through a very 
intuitive interface, with no need for them to master the Boolean 
processing units. Kartoo resides online, requiring no prior software 
downloading. It provides a multilingual interface (English, French, 
and soon Spanish and Portuguese). Web sites are classified according 
to a proprietary algorithm that emphasizes the most relevant sites 
and the software automatically selects the most pertinent search 
engines.

Web sites identified by a search are placed on a map; the sites are 
represented by balls, with their size in proportion to how relevant 
they are. The balls are connected together by dynamic semantic links 
(e.g. the semantic link between daewoo.com and renault.fr is "car 
manufacturer"). Clicking on the link allows to add or subtract the 
theme to your initial request, and Kartoo translates the syntax 
depending on which search engines are activated.

Advanced search functions (URL, near, domain, images) are also 
available. Kartoo allows you to choose the graphic environment in 
which selected sites appear. The visual graphic results display can 
also be modified: background colour, representation of semantic 
links, and moving from a cartographic mode to a "standard" mode with 
a list of brief descriptions. Maps can be stored locally and 
forwarded.

Few software products are marketed solely as a public search engine, 
and Kartoo is no exception. They offer several products for 
commercial market: intranet, portal, thematic (software research, 
finance, medical), and digital TV. Its major application to CI 
searching is its capability to identify and elegantly display complex 
relationships between topics and company sites.
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