Giovanni, from Viewzi, sent me a tweet (from Twitter), about a new view available from his Search engine. I’m still getting a kick out of the fact that Search engine developers are coming to me to tell me about new features. Obviously they want to get their product out there and have people write about them. I’m dutifully doing that right now, but only because I think what they’re offering may have educational benefits. If I thought it wasn’t useful I wouldn’t bother. Trust me.
Giovanni knows that Twitter is a great tool for optimising the coverage his search engine gets. Take a look at these tweets he posted on twitter this afternoon (evening his time).
I’m not criticising, I think he’s smart to be recognising the potential of the microblogging tool that twitter is. If I had something to sell I’d be doing it too!
Anyway, back to the new views Viewzi are offering. First up is news view. It’s been around for a few weeks now. News sources they use are USA today, The New York Times, CNN, Reuters and Yahoo. A fairly heavy US concentration so be aware of this. I did a search for Stephanie Rice, an Australian swimmer who picked up a gold medal this morning at the Beijing Olympics. Of the nine results that feature on the first of the results pages, three were specific to Stephanie and the other six had Michael Phelps as their focus. Perhaps not the best news search engine choice if you’re looking for Australian content. I did another search for Georgia Russia given the troubles emanting from this part of the world and got returns that would be useful for students investigating this situation. I like the way the results are delivered; you get the headline and the opening paragraph and can click on read more to redirect you to the source article. At the bottom of the page you get an indication of the amount of pages Viewzi has loaded delivering returns for your search query.
The newest ‘view’ they have offered is timeline view. This, I think, could be a handy view for educational purposes. Here’s the result for Georgia Russia that I did this afternoon;
You can see the concentration of results that are a response to recent happenings. Ealier results in the timeline would be interesting for students to look at to track the development of the crisis. Great for classes studying international events. I’ll be remembering this view so that I can point students to it when they are investigating issues in the news.
Viewzi is an interesting search engine. There is so much choice, perhaps a little too much. It’s a search engine you need to spend time investigating so that you can use it to its best potential.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 
Thanks Jenny,
I have been using http://www.cuil.com/info/ lately and finding it quite useful. Today I recorded my first ever podcast for a new project I am trying to start capturing student voice and the google indoctrination was astounding. I am still getting over the interview and how it went.
I used Viewzi with a year 7 class last Friday and they were very impressed with it. After showing them the different views, I had them using the video view and the 4 sites view. They like being able to view the page before opening it up fully.
We also used Cuil, and we had some fun with some of the results. Typed in “Oblong” and had no mathematical hits but the class then thought to put in “oblong shape”and they got the required information. They are getting the hang of thinking carefully about search terms/keywords. They liked the reults they go when looking for cuneiform (part of their Sumer study).For one thing, it helped them with their spelling of unfamiliar terms.
This was the same class that worked with SearchMe the previous week and we only had time for the bare basics. They went on to use it in the days between the classes, with satisfying results.(their impression as well as mine).
Finally, the various students I have shown the new search engines to are seeing beyond Google.
I will follow up with some online data collection when they have had more time using each. One comment from a year 7 student was “I guess the search engine I decide to use will depend on what I am looking for”
Sorry long reply