The first metasearch engine to be powered by the efficient fuel of RSS technology, Gada.be, went live on Monday.
Gada.be strips away the multiple layers necessary to search, which is particularly painful for those attempting to visit a Web site over a mobile device.
Instead of plugging in a URL for a search engine, then visiting each page in search results, visitors can merely type in their search term as a subdomain with "gada.be" at the end.
What results is a savable, transportable URL whose results are constantly refreshed, as the search results are returned in RSS feeds.
The engine is the brainchild of Chris Pirillo, a multifaceted technology journalist, author and creator of the award-winning Lockergnome series of online publications. Developer Shayne Sweeney is the technical brains behind Gada.be.
Pirillo told eWEEK.com that his PlayStation portable was one example of the inspiration behind the engine.
"Dude, it's like video crack," he said. "The browser worked kind of well, but try to go to a Web site and look for something and wait for it to load. I thought, 'This is a pain in the ass.' So I thought, 'What's easy to type in?' I thought, 'gada,' then 'be, who the hell's got a .be domain? It's, like, Belgium.'"
"Gada.be" translates, on the number pad on most cell phones and PSPs, to 4232.2233.
"It's a minimum amount of keystrokes," Pirillo said. "To save more, you put the query as the subdomain. You type in without having to worry about 'Forward slash, before, after, point, what? …How's that go again?'"
Compare that with what it's like searching on a mobile device. Not fun, Pirillo said.
"If you've ever tried to visit a Web site over a mobile device, you know it's a pain in the knuckle," Pirillo wrote in the site's "about" section.
"Normally, when you want to find something online, you have to choose a Web site (wait for the page to load) enter the query (wait for the second page to load) then see results from that provider," he wrote. With "Gada.be," you insert the query as the subdomain.
"Then, there's having to visit several sites just to get the results you want. Often, this isn't feasible when you're on the go.
"Even when you're sitting with a laptop or chained to a desktop, it's still a time-consuming process. We all love the individual search services, so why not bring 'em together?"
Read the full story on eweek.com: It's Gada.Be the First Metasearch Engine Powered by RSS
Author: Lisa Vaas
Previous article: 14 November 2006
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