03 Aug 2004 | [email protected] said...

I'm totally against the thumbnails. The only increase the loading time. When I'm searching, I'm searching for content, not useless tiny pictures of websites. Fortunately the "off" option is ready at hand.

I do like the Quickview frame, but I have a minor complaint. I use a mouse without a scrollwheel, so I have to move my cursor to the scrollbar, scroll to find the content, and if I decide it's useless I'd have to go back to the close quickview option. I'd prefer a shortcut key.

The entire site feels a bit sluggish, Google feels snappy compared to any other website I've visited, including Icerocket. Probably there's too much markup or they're getting hit hard now that they've made it to the blogosphere.

03 Aug 2004 | mark said...

Damn, didn't mean to put my e-mail address as my name, the browser (Firefox) autocompleted it for me. Let's see how long e-mail harvesters take to collect it *sigh*

03 Aug 2004 | mindful_learner said...

I have to disagree with Mark about the thumbnails. Often, a quick glance at the visual design of a site gives you clues to its quality/creditibility and how information rich it is. Sure, I can understand for some the slower download may be annoying but on broadband there's not much of a problem. And, as Mark says, you can always turn them off.

I also like the quickview and some of the other information such as the rankings of the page on other search engines. I suspect this won't be a google-busting site, but as you say at least it is bringing some fresh thinking.

03 Aug 2004 | Mario said...

This is not a new feature. Other search engines, Vivisimo ( http://vivisimo.com/ ) amongst others, have had that option for a long time as far as I know.

03 Aug 2004 | Mathew said...

Oh great! Now I have to fit everything into the top 200px "above the fold" :)

03 Aug 2004 | Josh Blount said...

very interesting. I work with sprint LD customer service, and our knowledge base is web-based php/mysql combo called solr, it has something very similar, in that you can check a document inside of the search window, within a newly opened iframe.

very interesting.

03 Aug 2004 | Garrett Dimon said...

The thumbnails aren't meant to be pretty, they are there so that you can see whether or not the site is a professional site, or just a bunch of keyword spam. I strongly believe that it would be very helpful in finding good results.

Similarly, say if you have a certain technology web site you trust and it's second in the results, but you have used it in the past, it might help you decided to skip that first result.

As for the quick-expander frame, I think it might be nice, it's simple enough to where it doesn't get in the way, but there if you want it, so I don't see any problems with it.

03 Aug 2004 | Mark said...

I agree with Mindful Learner and think the thumbnails are a great addition to the search listings to give the user an idea about the credibility of the site.

I also like the idea of the 'Quick View' but unfortunately it crashes Safari.

Shame on you Icerocket.

03 Aug 2004 | Don Schenck said...

Cool idea. I like the fact that I can click "Quick View" and "Close Quick View" without moving my mouse. Small detai that means a lot.

03 Aug 2004 | Randy Peterman said...

The thing I like about http://vivisimo.com is that they also pre-sort the results in a frame on the left (ugh, it's a frame, but what can I say - 37 signals didn't help with the design?) so you can see sub-categories that the results fit.

03 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

I thought this was what one-click tabbed browsing in FireFox was invented for?

03 Aug 2004 | but that's just me said...

I personally love this. I'm not a designer, so I don't have any opinions as far as that goes. But as a web writer, I do a ton of online research and the thumbnails and quick view make that aspect of my job a lot easier. I wasn't as happy with the results as I am with Google, though. I searched for a topic that I look up frequently and the most relevant results were not at the top, but somewhere in the middle. I don't know why that was, but in general, I think Ice Rocket will be a pretty helpful tool for me. I didn't notice that the loading time increased, by the way. The time it took to get my results seemed comparable to Google. Thanks for the enlightenment, JF!

03 Aug 2004 | tiffany said...

I found this first on Daypop. I mean just when you thought "What could another search engine do better than Google?" up pops IceRocket. There have been plenty of times where I have searched for something a second time and had to dig around to remember which site I had visited before. Those thumbnails certainly make the process easier.

Now, the ultimate search engine, IMO, would take IceRocket's thumbnails, Google's search algorithm, and a9.com's "recent searches" feature (although there is a creepy aspect to Amazon's use of shared cookies for Amazon.com and a9.com).

03 Aug 2004 | cpalmieri said...

Gadgetry aside, the results aren't promising.

A self-search on my own name on Google ranks my current site #1.

The same search on IceRocket lists my student site from college, which has been offline for 4 years.

03 Aug 2004 | Jon Gales said...

Just so everyone's on the same page, IceRocket does not have its own web spider. It's a meta search engine... It uses the results from other search engines (about everyone but Google). Like HotBot.

I don't know how Mark Cuban plans to out do Google when his results data is only as good as the search engines people stopped using (Teoma, Altavista, Alltheweb, Lycos and WiseNut... We still use Yahoo and MSN to some degree).

03 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

I wish Icerocket would declare a background color.

03 Aug 2004 | RP said...

icerocket.com has owed me $1000 for quite a few weeks.

03 Aug 2004 | Charles said...

Maybe Icerocket is doing something really amazing in there but I just don't see it...courtesy of some ppc outfit called bannerboxes.com I just launched my own search engine, complete with optional thumbnails and inline page preview, in about 5 mins:

http://www.surfarama.com/search

nevermind mind the subtle advertising (not) ;)

03 Aug 2004 | monkeyinabox said...

The thumbnails are kind of useless at that size. I can usually tell by Google results, what's useless garbage. The quickview is pretty neat and it sure is a good way to keep you from leaving the site.

04 Aug 2004 | Factory Joe said...

Marlo beat me to it, but Vivisimo has had the in-browser preview for at least four years... I should know; I designed Vivimo's identity and a good deal of its interface! :)

04 Aug 2004 | Narain said...

The quick view feature is a feature provided by vivisimo (http://vivisimo.com), a search cluttering engine long time back. Just an info to add to what you have said.

12 Aug 2004 | Mo'the Investor said...

hmm...nice start, thumnails are a good innovation, since computers are getting faster, speed wont really be a factor a year or two from now, the google immage is pretty good results are alirgt, might need a more efficient sysytem, But the only thing thats holding this site back i think is its name...good idea but it just takes an extra seccond longer to type then google or yahoo, try somehitng with two consistent letters, and a search engine of over 5 letters becomes an essay to an average user, mabey an abreviation. all in all, 6.5/10 using google as a 10 reference.

20 Aug 2004 | mitch said...

i believe google has a thumbnail feature at www.ggler.com