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The ReSearch Engine

C Ramesh

WITH the Internet getting bigger and more unwieldy every minute, the need for an accurate information provider has never been more acutely felt. There are more than 100 million users accessing over five million active sites with over 800 million pages of information. The Net's greatest strength, the immense volume of information, is also the root of one of its weaknesses: Extracting specific information is often extremely frustrating and time-consuming.

While a few search engines such as Google and Dogpile

stick to the basic function of searching, Karnak (www.karnak.com) aims at solving the needs of people who need ongoing information, but do not have large amounts of time to devote to research. In that sense, it is more of a research engine.

Users need to sign up to be able to use Karnak's tools to extract relevant information from the Net. Unlike search engines, which throw up the results within seconds, Karnak takes about 20 minutes to process your query and start mining for sites. The results are mailed to your e-mail address, and are also stored in a `shelf' in the site, which can be accessed by logging in.

The search process continues, as Karnak refines the search and posts new results, automatically updating the `shelf' and sending e-mail alerts of new findings every week. Once you are done with using the results, you can clear the `shelf' and begin a new search.

The site's restriction is that free users are allowed only one shelf for research at a time. Anyone who wants to research more topics and make use of Karnak's other features -- such as summaries of new findings -- has to upgrade to a membership. Membership options cost anywhere between $9.99 and $49.99.

The site claims that it also checks for dead and stale links before providing your results, by compiling information from multiple sources, weeding out the useless, using hundreds of Web sites to cross-reference topics, verifying sites, pages, and requested information, and sorting out non-pertinent links.

Stitchin' up the Web

QUICKBROWSE (www.quickbrowse.com) is one of those ideas which makes you think: ``Now, why didn't I think of that?'' And it all began with a man who wanted to spend less time surfing the Web and more surfing on the beach!

A relatively simple idea, but one with tremendous utility value, it offers users the option of stitching up their favourite sites for regular viewing.

Sounds hazy? Maybe Marc Fest, the freelance journalist who thought up this idea on the beach, can explain. ``Metabrowsing is a new word coined by pundits and analysts to describe what Quickbrowse does, i.e., combining information from multiple Web sites inside a single, continuously scrollable page.''

You need to sign up and once your account is created, a text box appears where you type in the URLs of the sites you regularly visit. Give a title for the collection of pages in the pull-down menu. Click on the QUICKBROWSE button, and all your favourite sites appear in one scrollable page.

What is more, the `Schedule Email' facility even e-mails any particular collection of sites to your mail address on a given day, or every day, at any appointed time.

Fest says that he wanted such a tool to view the 20-odd news sites he regularly visited during his days as journalist. ``When to my surprise I didn't find a tool that did exactly this, I created it myself.''

The site now also offers qbButton -- which adds Quickbrowse functionality to any Web site -- and qbCollections, which features subject headings with pre-selected collections of theme-oriented Web pages to be viewed in Quickbrowse format.

``Well, I guess, one interesting thing about Quickbrowse is that originally I did not mean it to be a business. I created it to make my own daily workload more efficient -- so that I could spend more time on the beach,'' says Fest. Time to hit the beach?

Surf without searching

ETOUR (www.etour.com) lives up to its motto of ``surfing without searching'' by handpicking the ``Web's best sites'', as it claims, according to the user's interests.

You just need to choose an area of interest (such as Travel or Movies) and after the first site is displayed, keep clicking on the orange `Next Site' button for more of the same, until you have had your fill.

The site has built up a seemingly bottomless database of sites in various categories, and most of the sites it shows are highly unlikely to show up in the top 10, or even 50, of any search engine.

Users can also sign up as members, and get to check out their `Site of the Day' and the sites that are rated by other members.