Link O'Day: Yippy

Remember Clusty? I used to really like that tool. Well, Clusty had an identity crisis and changed its name to Yippy. I like both names but think the first was more descriptive. There are some reasons why you might find Yippy attractive:

• Like Clusty, results are "clustered" into categories. You can click on one of these and get just the sites that are related.
• Yippy promises that your searching is PRIVATE--they do not save your 
• Yippy purports to be "safe" and to not take you to objectionable sites. I am NOT a fan of filtering so this is not a big plus for me but not necessarily a minus if it gives useful results
• There are lots of fun options to play around with. 

Things I am not so sure about:

• To take advantage of all the nifty resources they promise, you need to download the app. I was OK with doing that but my download failed, leaving me frustrated.

TEST DRIVE: I tried Yippy out with a search that I knew could bring up results with at least two totally different meanings. I searched for "shoe tree." There is such a tree just a few blocks from my San Marcos, TX home. And of course there are the devices that people use to save their shoes' shapes. Sure enough the results were separated out. I DO like that feature which was the whole big idea with Clusty as far as I remember. I had fun playing around with Yippy and find it worth recommending.

BY THE WAY, shoe trees are an interesting American (and British) custom. People toss or affix old shoes to trees, usually on a highway though the one in my home town is on a residential street. I blogged about that one a couple of years ago: http://drmabell.blogspot.com/2008/01/viva-shoe-trees.html.  Not only that, I learned that the San Marcos Nature Center, which I have yet to visit, has a path of shoes leading to some trees made entirely of shoes, all which have been fished out of the San Marcos River.

Link O'Day: Find the Best

I need to play around with tool to get a better idea, but it might be an interesting resource. It describes itself this way:

"FindTheBest is an objective, socially curated comparison engine that allows you to find a topic, compare your options and decide what's best for you. Ultimately, FindTheBest allows you to make faster and more informed decisions by allowing you to easily compare all the available options, view expert ratings on products and services and read and write reviews on millions of listings.

Other sites such as NextTag also offer comparison shopping but Find the Best claims to have numerous other types of comparisons. They are grouped into categories such as Entertainment, Technology, etc. You can also do a word search and see if your desired specific subject or product is compared. I tried netbook computers because we are trying to build a case for purchasing a model that our tech department does not like. We want the inexpensive ASUS netbooks that are only about $200. I found a site giving them five star ratings and plan to send it in a memo explaining why we want this particular, well regarded, small computer. 

This site looks like fun to just plain browse. I feel sure that not every single product or topic you seek will be offered, but if it is covered you might find the information helpful, as I did for my search. So I am giving it thumbs up and recommending it as an alternative to a straight Google-type search.