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Search Engine

AbleGrape: Niche Wine Search

by Michelle Lentz on October 30, 2008

by Michelle Lentz

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing about some cool technology sites that focus on wine. Having just come back from the first ever Wine Bloggers Conference, it’s all fresh in my mind. My first big find was AbleGrape.

AbleGrape is a niche search engine, focusing on wine. It’s the brainchild of Doug Cook. Now, at the conference, I called Doug a wine superhero, considering he’s running a wine-related startup, he won the blind tasting challenge, and he showed up Saturday night with cases of some amazing (and older vintage) wine that was either donated by a San Francisco wine bar or straight out of his own cellar. Talking to him, and others, I learned more about the search engine.

Doug was once the VP of Search Engineering at Inktomi (bought by Yahoo!) before running off to make wine his focus in life. But as he was studying for his WSET, he discovered how hard it is to find up-to-date, authoritative information about wine on the Internet. I agree – you can find a lot of great academic information in books, but the Internet is lacking, or rather, the information is hidden. It’s why I often end up at the library when I’m writing an article, and I forego the Web.

Doug set out to change all that with AbleGrape.com, which indexes over 15 million pages from over 38,000 sites that focus on wine. The search engine lauched a soft beta in January, and has been indexing and improving ever since. AbleGrape thinks like a wine geek, which is nice. If you type in cab, you don’t get taxi. You get cabernet sauvignon.

According to their site, AbleGrape has some lofty goals, including indexing every trade, consumer, and scientific publication, as well as every organization, producer and academic research. Additionally, AbleGrape indexes “the best blogs in the world of wine, in any language.” (Full disclosure – my wine blog is indexed. Hooray!) AbleGrape offers filters you can use, including different types of press, commerce, and events, as well as regions, to narrow your search results. It also digs up those hidden search results, whether from academic wine associations to Wine Enthusiast magazine.

If you want to know more about a particular wine (as opposed to where to buy it), I highly recommend checking out AbleGrape. For wine writers and bloggers out there, AbleGrape also offers a widget to add wine search to your site. I haven’t done it yet, but it’s on my to-do list for this weekend. There is also a search plug-in for your browser.

One of the key points of the Wine Bloggers Conference is that to be successful, everyone should find their niche, even within the niche of wine blogging. I think AbleGrape has done that quite well with search. Someone at the conference asked Doug, “Why don’t you take on Google?” Doug had a great answer, and one I admire. “I can’t,” he said. “I focus on doing one thing, and doing that one thing well.”

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology. You can also catch Michelle presenting on Twitter at the upcoming DevLearn ‘08 in San Jose.

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Because you need to find that one special t-shirt

by Michelle Lentz on September 2, 2008

by Michelle Lentz

I suppose I’m posting this because it made me laugh out loud.

Gary Vaynerchuk, along with his brother AJ and Digg lead architect Joe Stump, have launched Please Dress Me, which is a t-shirt search engine.

You can search for your ideal t-shirt by keyword, tag (as in tag cloud), color, and price. I searched first on food and then I also did a search for animal t-shirts. Both searches turned up quite a few tees, all of which were incredibly unusual. In fact, I’d recommend this search just for fun – some of the t-shirts are hilarious.

Early reviews seem to indicate that while the t-shirts you can find are most definitely cool, they are also few. Apparently the search engine is still, um, loading up on t-shirts. But if you want to smile at some fun logos, or you want to order a nifty new t-shirt, it’s worth checking out.

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.

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Cuil Wants to Grow Search

by Michelle Lentz on July 28, 2008

by Michelle Lentz

A couple of ex-Google folks have launched Cuil as a competitor to Google. Their goal is “to index the whole Web, to analyze deeply its pages and to organize results in a rich and helpful way that allows you to explore fully the subject of your search.”

Cuil searches a page for your keywords, then it analyzes the rest of the text on the page to give you more detailed information. On a search for my company, Write Technology, Cuil did manage to pull up some pages from my blog, but it pulled up odd pages with equally odd and unrelated images.

Cuil does have a rather nifty results display using columns and tabs, along with the pictures. It’s user friendly and easier on the eye than a long list of text. Cuil is very visual, despite initial stark home page.

Cuil is a Gaelic word meaning knowledge. The fact that it is pronounced “cool” doesn’t hurt, I’m sure. Of course, this can’t help but call to mind Teoma.com, another search engine with an Irish name. I believe Teoma was folded into Ask.

While I’m not yet sold on the content of Cuil’s results, I rather like the display format. As they index more pages and refine their algorithms, the results should improve as well. Cuil is a search engine worth some exploring.

Note: Cuil seems to have gotten a little more attention than they planned today, so they’re having a bit of trouble. I advise patience as all the hoopla dies down.

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Events, news, apps, and more – let me know at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, via Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.

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