I was reading about this new Search Engine, keyboardr on the NextWeb blog… and I really think, this is one that tempts me to move away from the standard Google search. There are a couple of reasons:
Content: For a start it aggregates the content from Google (standard search, images, YouTube and BlogSearch) and Wikipedia.. and lays it out in a better way than Google does. It uses the space left, from not promoting Google AdWords or AdSense to split off the Wikipedia articles, YouTube clips and Google images to the right…. and gets more in than Google’s Universal Search.
Navigation: Secondly and more importantly, as the name implies you can navigate around the whole SERP by keyboard. I, like many people, use my laptop 80% of the time… and unless I need to toggle on some large excel docs or do some powerpoint work, I don’t pull out my wireless mouse very often. Being able to navigate around the results pages via the arrow keys, is smoother and faster than with a mouse… so comes as a welcome change.
The only down side to be honest, is that when you try to view a result (by hitting enter on the result you’ve navigated to), it tries to open a new window… which gets blocked by my FireFox settings. While this is easily resolved with a slight adjustment of my preferences, it’s still a little annoying and may deter quite a few people. I’d suggest to the guys at keyboardr.com that they change it to open a new tab instead…
keyboardr.com from Julius Eckert on Vimeo
From the looks of it, there are big plans to increase the number of content sources, including Google Docs, Flickr, Friendfeed…etc. and an extension system for developers to plug in their own content. I’m hoping some other sites will start looking at this type of technology and user-interface… what are the chances of NetVibes doing something like this?
Here’s the original article I read…
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