To put it in one word, SideKiq is quirky. At this meta search engine, you search by category. Enter the query into the search box and click on the list of categories below for links relevant to the category and the topic. And the topics vary from the usual to the esoteric – movies, music, images, people, employment, Kids Interest, Blogs, Magazines, Books and, many more. And if you feel there’s more categories that should go in there, just drop them a line.
Its more like the engine for the power searcher. There are times when you know what you want and you know where you can find out more on it. SideKiq’s design (patent pending), is simple, sleek and AJAX based. SideKiq was founded by Anuta Udyawar & Steve Hemmady who were the original developers of Onepage Portal (now Sybase Enterprise Portal). Results are returned from major search engines and a number of other portals and directories.
It must be said that apart from the designing search algorithms that are smarter and more adept at defining the relevancy of the vast volume of data on the web, the user interface is the next frontier that needs a remake. The net is no more about people taking to machines with results needed in a serial manner. For the next phase of search technology has to cater to the needs of the seasoned searcher. And SideKiq’s approach is “quirky” enough to delegate a large part of the search categorization to the user and enter the picture when the selections are made.
