Alternatives to Google, Wiki, etc.

[ffutures]

I've been thinking about the differences between parallel worlds, and one of the things that occurred to me was that if the split is far enough back there would be different online resources - different search engines with different strengths and weaknesses, and so forth. The ones that I think I might want to use in fanfic are a different search engine - there are still several around, so it isn't hard to come up with another - and a different online encyclopaedia. I don't need to describe it in any detail, but I'd like to give a different name and if possible mention different strengths and weaknesses to Wikipedia.

Were there any serious rivals to Wikipedia that worked noticeably differently? I don't think I want to go with proprietary encyclopaedias such as Encarta, I'm looking more for something that gets input from multiple sources but works differently. Any suggestions?

Comments

[willibald.livejournal.com]

The BBC run H2G2 showed promise but was surpassed by Wikipedia.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Is there any remnant of it on line anywhere?

[ggreig]

http://h2g2.com/

About: http://h2g2.com/help/

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Interesting, if a bit UK-centric.

[hotfoot-jackson.livejournal.com]

There's Dogpile, a meta search engine that scours Google and Yahoo, but it's not really it's own thing, just a meta engine.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Bit too much like Google, but thanks for the thought.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

There's Citizendium, but it may not be different enough from WWikipedia for your purposes:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Citizendium

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Not really - I was looking more for something that works a little differently. Maybe more primitive, maybe more of a graphics interface or something. I might just base it on the old Domesday Machine interface, which was weird by modern standards but could have caught on if it was supported properly and developed on line.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

The premier search engine used to be AltaVista, and they also had one of the first free computer translation engines, Babel Fish.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Remember them well. If I remember correctly you could tweak that with a lot of boolean options, which might be the sort of thing I need. Thanks!

[willibald.livejournal.com]

Of course an alternative search engine to Bing could be Bob (or possibly Hope, as in "Hope it finds what you want.")

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Riiiight.... backs away slowly.

[ggreig]

I get the original commenter's reference, but it also reminds me of Microsoft Bob, a notorious design failure - but what if it had taken off as a search/encyclopaedia interface? OK, I know, I'm getting silly now...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That looks vaguely like a cuter version of the Domesday Disc's horrible graphics interface, so maybe I can sort of merge the ideas.

[heather mccrillis (from livejournal.com)]

No Lamour option? I cry "shenanigans"!