Chatbug Karen

If you enjoy finding people and information about them, Spock is the search application for you. I love to look up an actor when I am watching a movie to see in what other things they have acted. I keep track of a friend’s brother who writes and arranges music for movies. I love to find the latest movie he has collaborated on and then let my friend know. I have been looking up former classmates. That is very interesting.

The thing I like and enjoy about Spock is that it allows me to build a network of findings relevant to me. That means I have a personalized search application! Spock keeps track of the information on each search when I choose for it to do that. My network is growing! Spock leaves no stone unturned when they perform your searches. Spock looks for information on social networks, news sites, blogs, and directories. Finding specialized content is where the almighty G search engine, said with a roll of my eyes, misses the boat. Spock finds a concise summary of all the information available on the Web about a person, such as occupation, interests and hobbies, age, marital status, location and sometimes even a picture. You get so much more when you use Spock.

Let me go over how Spock works. First, I choose a name or keyword associated with a person. Spock’s search results return a list of people with associated tags, photos, and web sites. I can spend hours utilizing all the information found. I can click on the tags for more information and I can add information of my own. The fun thing about the tags listed is that each user of Spock can vote on tags. That gives each user the ability to move things up in viewers’ searches and gives a push to relevant topics. It works much like a Digg or Stumble in that it pushes information out there for others to find. Everyone knows who tags him or her so it is best to be nice!

What I like is that some search engine that thinks it has all the power to show what is relevant is not behind my search. When I get a result through Spock, it is a community and individual result that is garnered, not a machine made result with inaccurate results. Some search engines like to mess with algorithms and actually produce results the way they want them to appear. I do not want someone choosing what comes up in one of my searches. What gives them the right to choose what I should see? Spock is a human and machine result search application that is trying to change the way we find and retain information. You should give them a try while they are stilling adding things and working out the kinks.

I think that Spock is going to be a wonderful tool. I have been searching for other scrap-booking fanatics and you would not believe all the crazy and wonderful friends I have made.