PRODUCT REVIEW
Gogimon Machine Delivers Serendipitous Search Experience

The drawback with using most search engines is they all seem to give similar results and generally all have the same look and feel. They lack personalization and offer a mostly boring environment.

"Most people select the first few results on Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), even though Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Live give better business results for specific information. And Live is much better for technology searches. It's much more focused. We found no reason just to rely solely on Google," Menachem Reinshmidt, CEO of Gogimon.com, told TechNewsWorld.

Reinschmidt solved these problems, he believes, with a new approach to searching the Internet. His Gogimon Search Channel combines searching and browsing in its own platform. The combination of search engine and viewing vehicle gives the user a panoramic view of the search topic.

Checking the Channel

Using a dedicated search engine that runs its own software always seemed to me to have only marginal usefulness. I run the open source Firefox browser from Mozilla.org and rarely have difficulty finding what I need. A convenient search engine plug-in gives me drop-down access to a variety of specialized searching sites all within one environment.

Since I live in search engines as a function of my job as a technology journalist, I am quite handy at cross-referencing keywords to drill down quickly into specific information. Thus, I initially doubted that the Gogimon Search Channel would offer me anything innovative. Frankly, I was wrong.

A visit to the company's home page gave me one-click access to downloading the software. When the installation completed, a search channel toolbar displayed on the desktop, along with an icon in the system tray for the Gogimon Search Machine. Program preferences allow a choice of starting with the channel toolbar or the full search engine itself.

That choice does not matter much. Once I entered a keyword into the toolbar search window, the search engine page launched.

Tabbed Interface

Gogimon is peppy and easy to use. Its initial screen includes tabs for Google, Yahoo and Live in addition to a tab for Gogimon itself. Clicking on each tab shows the search results of the entered keyword that launched the program.

I ran an initial test search for "netbooks" and got a noticeably different assortment of hits on each of the four resident search pages. The Gogimon tab revealed what seemed to be a more focused hit list of what that search engine considers to be the 30 most relevant responses.

Gogimon search lists are limited to 30. But that maximum list includes the most essential choices for delving into the topic. That's what I concluded after scouring over the hundreds of results listed as the traditional search results for the other three resident search windows. The combined results of the four engines presented some duplication but mostly an exhausting time drain of reading.

So I chose only the Gogimon tab and sifted through the list of results. Each entry is preceded with a check box. This allows you to narrow the topic, something traditional search engines do not offer.

I clicked on four items I did not recognize from my previous forays into checking out netbooks. Then I clicked the Click 'N Get icon at the top of the display. That opened a new tab for each of the sources I selected.

Read My Mind

The Gogimon Search Machine has a feature that is truly mind-bending. I clicked the Mind Reader icon at the top of the display after I browsed though a few of the narrowed search results.

A separate window below the search results in each tabbed page opened with a list of suggestions for related topics. The Mind Reader feature analyzes the page contents from the existing search and offers up to 10 relevant links based on search results in all of the tabbed searches.

Using Mind Reader makes it efficient and effective to narrow a search without running new searches. It also finds related topics that I normally would not have considered in my initial search.

Other Options

Despite my initial hesitation, I liked the look and feel of the Gogimon Search Machine. Clicking on any search term opens up that Web page in yet another tabbed page.

The machine concept behind Gogimon.com is to provide easy accessibility to all Web browsing and information searches. Separate icons on the menu bar at the top of the page open or hide browsing history, favorites and search histories, even if they occurred in another Web browser installed on the hard drive.

Another cool feature is the ability to highlight a particular word or phrase in one Web page and see it wherever it occurs in all of the other search results. Also, conducting more focused searches with the results of an existing open page involves merely highlighting the term and selecting the Search Selected Text icon on the tool bar.

By the way, the tool bar options change depending on the page or segment of the ongoing search I conducted. For instance, additional icons are available for conducting filtered searches, advanced searches and adding more terms to an existing search.

Privacy Counts

The Gogimon Search Machine is innovative and fun to use. Plus, it does something that most Web-based search products do not do.

It does not track my searches and associate what I am doing with a particular identity. Instead, the search engine and the database it builds are safe and sound on my computer's hard drive.

Since installing this search software, I have lost countless hours searching topics of interest. This is partially because using the search platform is so much fun. It's also because the search results were so much more inclusive, I actually wanted to keep reading.

The Downside

The Gogimon search product is a Windows-only offering. The company plans to release a Mac version in 2010.

But there are no plans to port the platform to Linux, according to Reinshmidt. This is unfortunate because Gogimon is a unique search tool that should not be limited by operating system.

I tried installing the Gogimon Search Machine with Wine on my desktop Ubuntu Linux computer. Wine, which stands for Wine Is not an Emulator, issued error messages and aborted the installation process. Wine is a program that creates a Microsoft Windows environment within the Linux OS to run Windows programs.