Icerocket recently launched a “big buzz” search that allows you to pull keyword search results from several different sources onto one page, with the option to refresh as often as every minute. I like that. What I REALLY like, though, is the fact that you can incorporate your query into an easy-to-use URL.
The URL syntax is http://keyword.icerocket.com . If you want to use multiple keywords separate them with dashes: http://many-keywords.icerocket.com (Blake at Icerocket tells me they haven’t gotten to integrating quotes yet.) For example, say you want to keep up with what Tim Geithner is up to. You could use this URL:
http://geithner.icerocket.com.
Icerocket will return a page with results from all over the social Web about Mr. Geithner. From top to bottom on this search results page I got results from Icerocket’s blog search, Twitter, FriendFeed, Icerocket’s News Search, and Flickr. (In other searches I ran there was a group of video results between Friendfeed and News.) An option on the right side of the page allows you to set an automatic refresh rate (the default is no refresh) and there’s a nav at the bottom for multiple pages of results.
There is a tremendous amount of information on this one page. All the text-based results are tagged with how recently they occurred, and the Twitter listings include tiny little icons and extensive extracts (often the entire Tweet!) The multimedia results don’t have quite as much information, but you can at least mouseover the screen thumbnails for item titles. The video results do show how recently the video was added.
I knew this would work well for words and names but I wanted to try something which I figured would be a little more obscure, so I plugged in:
#cil2009, as you might know, is the hashtag for the Computers in Libraries 2009 conference, which is happening RIGHT THIS SECOND.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the page I got was not limited to Twitter. I also got results from Friendfeed, blogs, and even images (though a couple of the images didn’t look like they had anything to do with CIL2009.)
Using stock symbols brought more mixed results. Searching for http://bgp.icerocket.com/ brought results that had nothing to do with bookselling company Borders, but http://bgp-borders.icerocket.com/ brought incredibly focused results with a business-y tone (though no images or video.)
Actually slanting main keywords with secondary keywords could keep me busy for hours; http://shaq.icerocket.com/ is one kind of search result, while http://shaq-twitter.icerocket.com/ is COMPLETELY different. http://used-books.icerocket.com/ leads to cozy discussions about reading lists and recent purchases, while http://used-books-cpsia.icerocket.com/” leads to complaining about federal legislation.
And the thing is, even with these tweaks, you still have a good URL. It’s readable, relatively short (you could go nuts with the queries, of course, but you don’t have to) and it’s easy to pass on.
I like this. I like this a lot. Well done Icerocket.
Categories: News