Search Engine Reviews: Oingo, SurfWax and iWon
Results: On half of the page, there's a results list displaying a key phrase from the title of each item along with an icon for the engine that it was retrieved from. Some of the results include another icon indicating that a SiteSnap is available.
The other half of the page is a blank column, in which any SiteSnap you select will appear. SiteSnaps are basically summaries of a document, with key points and lists of important words.
The engines SurfWax accesses are Alta Vista, AllTheWeb (FAST), Excite, Google, Infoseek, Lycos and Yahoo. Only approximately 100 of the "best" sites are listed. When you select a site, it appears in a separate window - a great timesaver.
Because all the results appear on the same page, displaying just a phrase from the title is more useful than it sounds. However, for many of the items, there really is not enough information to get an idea of whether the site might be useful to your search.
Search Tips: The plus and minus signs to require or exclude words and quotation marks to indicate a phrase are available in SurfWax. In addition, you can use the Boolean AND and OR operators.
Before you begin to search, you can view similar, broader and narrower terms for your keyword by selecting Focus. For example, a similar word for the keyword invention would be innovation, a narrower word would be contrivance and a broader term would be creation. Selecting a focus word moves it to the search box. After a search you can look at focus words for the keywords you used by selecting the arrow next to the word (located above the results).
Another way to find additional terms for your search is to look at some SiteSnaps because they include a list of focus words (important words contained in a document). If you see a focus word to add, you can move it to the search box by selecting it.
Preferences: You can look at a list of SurfWax's search options by selecting Preferences. The Personalize option lets you save the search queries you've used, as well as the focus words that you select from SiteSnaps (by selecting the FW icon.). You can view these queries and focus words by selecting My Personal Searcher.
IWon - SEARCH AND GROW RICH!
If iWon (partially financed and developed by CBS) were audible, its decibel count would go off
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