May 25, 2005
Circle(s) of Information
Thanks to this tip I have been experimenting with a new research toy--er, I mean tool--called Grokker. I actually downloaded the trial of myGrokker after having been sufficiently seduced by the promises of its advanced features.
I haven't formed an opinion yet about whether or not this new search tool is effective. I have frequently been frustrated with the vast amount of information you pull up from search engines--most of it junk--as well as the inability to track, save, and export search results from one session to another. So far Grokker is being billed as a means to address some of these, and many other, frustrations. (I've previously written here about my experiences with Google Scholar.)
Will keep you posted. In the meantime, if anyone else has thoughts about this tool, drop me a comment or email.
Posted by perry032 at May 25, 2005 10:15 AM | TrackBack| Printer-friendly version
I've used Grokker for a couple years now, and my company has even licensed it to research our corporate database. I have to say that it has more than lived up to the billing of showing us the power of discovery. I find shit every day that I never found using Google by itself. Saving, emailing, editing search maps is the future. Grokker is on to something, and I'm sure there's more to this story to come.
Posted by: Ryan Holtzman at May 26, 2005 12:53 AMThanks for giving a nod to my blog and I think it's great that you like Grokker. I haven't used it much since that post (dissertation writing deadlines), but I agree with Ryan H. that Grokker is on to something.
You might want to try another visual-based search engine I posted about recently called KartOO (kartoo.com). The results come back as a graphic like with Grokker, but you also have lists of refinement categories and can ask it to re-draw the graphical map if you don't like the way it categorized things. I'm so happy not to be limited by simple line-listing search engines anymore!
Posted by: Carrie at May 27, 2005 02:22 PM