Helioid Reviewed on TechWeb.com.cn and Winmani

August 10th, 2011
On August 4th of last week TechWeb.com.cn released a review of Helioid in Chinese (English translation). Here’s a quote from the translation:
What is unique about it? Compared with conventional search engines, Helioid places search results on the left column with filtering options, users can choose which filter option, or simply show only some of the options. Provides fast and efficient search results. Support for Chinese search.


A day earlier, on August 3rd Winmani also released a review of Helioid in Tamil (English translation). The translation quality is poor, so we’ve chosen what sounds like a complementary koan:
Search results are quickly and wisely.

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Helioid Reviewed on MakeUseOf

July 6th, 2011

Review site for cool new web services, MakeUseOf, has published a review of our very own Helioid!
From the article, “Helioid is a new entrant in the Google-dominated search engine space that wants to help you refine your search results by checking the categories it comes up with when you search for a query.”

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Europe Travel Guide for Android

June 5th, 2011

The Helioid team and collaborators have released a Europe Travel Guide for Android.
Europe Travel Guide

We’ve packed over 3600 European destinations in a tiny offline guide. It’s filled with great content from wikitravel and is the perfect guide for backpackers.

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Why the Big Search Engines are Not Exporatory Search Engines

May 16th, 2011

A few weeks ago we discussed a monograph by M. Wilson, et al., which elucidated the failings the modern search engines when it comes to exploratory search. Wilson and associates concisely characterize exploratory search as revolving around needs that are “open-ended, persistent, and multifaceted, and information-seeking processes that are opportunistic, iterative, and multitactical.” Back in [...]

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Current Search Interfaces are Inadequate for Exploratory Search

April 5th, 2011

The monograph From Keyword Search to Exploration: Designing Future Search Interfaces for the Web by M. Wilson et al. lucidly reviews the current state of search interfaces that move beyond the traditional list of results. We’ve included some choice quotations below.

On why we need better search interfaces and systems:
Even more recently, though, researchers have identified just how inadequate the familiar keyword search paradigms, provided by environments such as Google and Bing (Microsoft’s search engine), might be for users who need to do more than just find a website that answers a factual question. (p.9)

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It’s a Glog!

March 30th, 2011

The Helioid Team has launched a new tool to share and comment upon Google searches that fall short of satisfactory, and to take a look at other Googlers’ struggles.
We affectionately call it the Glog.

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Helioid Team Launches First Snaggle Demo

March 22nd, 2011

Update: we’ve added icons distinguishing each category.

Snaggle is a bartering site, through which users can buy, sell, or trade items online. Users will be able to create lists of things they want and things they have, and Snaggle will recommend related items that the user is likely to be interested in. Clearly the exploration of the online trading community facilitated by Snaggle opens up a whole new world of possible ways for users to get the stuff they want.

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Helioid Preview Now Open

March 4th, 2011

This version of Helioid is a meta-search engine offering category based personalization. Below is a partial screen shot of the outputs.

By interaction with the categories on the left you can choose the results to be shown on the right. Please let us know if you have any suggestions, comments, criticisms, complaints, anything. Try out the Helioid preview now.

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