September 5, 2001

5:11 PM

Mappa Mundiis a magazine about information visualization and navigation with a focus on the web. What similar sites are out there? A second related question is when why are tools for finding stuff on the web so primitive? More inside.
posted by rdr (8 comments total)

ooh, mappa mundi's being updated again? i thought it'd been closed.
posted by moz at 5:14 PM on September 5, 2001

It seems to me that the process of finding stuff on the web could be a lot less labor intensive. I'd love something that had google as a back end and a front end that could handle moderately complex queries and have hooks for attaching user defined predicates. In the meantime I've used Alexa, Google, and Altavista, none of which are what I want.


Alexa might have become an interesting browser companion if it had broader coverage and if the company making it hadn't ignored users' privacy concerns. Being IE only for a time was the last straw. Google's searches are fast and broad but there aren't enough search options exposed to make if very useful for complex queries. Altavista exposes a lot more options but still not enough for my taste and it's searches don't have broad enough coverage. Is there something else out there? Will there be something else out there?
posted by rdr at 5:28 PM on September 5, 2001

I use and enjoy WebFerret.
posted by bjgeiger at 5:34 PM on September 5, 2001

This link made me think of this recent mefi link to a neat translation of Smartmoney's Map of the Market.
posted by fpatrick at 6:58 PM on September 5, 2001

What a wonderful link -- I spent a good hour out there.
posted by {savg*pncl} at 8:12 PM on September 5, 2001

FYI, that ferret thing only works with Microsoft products.
posted by sudama at 8:17 PM on September 5, 2001

Mappa.Mundi, alas, is still pretty much dead (since June '00). But the Map of the Month feature gets updated irregularly. Apparently, the folks at media.org are keeping the archives online and "evolving" the publication, but whether that means anything like regular content remains to be seen.

In reviewing reference tools, don't let onelook or xrefer escape your notice.
posted by dhartung at 11:10 PM on September 5, 2001

Wahoo! I found out that google can be convinced to give me xml output by giving it something like: "http://www.google.com/xml?q=[search terms]". I'm pretty sure I can put a UI and data massager around this and get what I want.
posted by rdr at 5:29 AM on September 21, 2001