I have been checking into other search engines that do something better than the big three. I’ve found two:

Quintura. Has a cool new UI. Here’s a demo. (You can try it out, but it requires a download and install of a client application). I find that this is a bit frustrating to use. I like iterating through many searches that are subsets of the first search and getting back to try a new search isn’t very intuitive. But, once you get used to it this is a really cool way to search cause it shows you the other possible choices.

Kosmix. This afternoon I talked with their executive team after getting out of the Entrepreneur event. I asked them what Google does better. Most things it turns out. But they found a really important place where they are dramatically better than Google. Where? Whenever you have an open-ended search that has no “right” answers. For instance, search Google for “Diabetes” and you’ll get 10 answers alright, but they are rarely useful results. Kosmix gives a lot better grouping of answers. Update: Kosmix’ Kevin Ota tells me they’ll turn on their engine with a better UI on February 7 (and a bunch of new features when they ship it officially at the Demo conference).

Is search done? Not according to these two companies.

Or, ask Gary Price of Search Engine Watch. He just linked to TVEyes that does a new keyword search of TV News Content and other video stuff.

Are you seeing other companies do cool things in the search world?

Noam, who I met today at the Entrepreneur event just posted that I should come by the “SuperHappyDevHouse” near San Francisco, CA. Check out the Flickr feed. I might bring KrispyKreme. 🙂

Check out Maryam’s melons! Goofing around at Seattle’s market.
Michael Arrington and crowd sitting at Search Champs.
Gary Flake of MSN announcing Live Labs and giving his great talk.
Dave Luebbert with SongTrellis that I wrote about yesterday.
Walt Morrison, co-author of the very popular Kids Programming Language (this is a cool way to get kids into programming, downloaded 40,000 times since the last time I talked about it).
Crazy huge chess game at Crossroads mall.

I love shooting pictures with my camera phone cause they go instantly to Flickr. I shoot things that catch my eye or that I want to remember later. Not very arty cause the camera in my phone is slightly blurry, but I see a few people are watching the feed. Hope you enjoy.