Is Spock the Logical Choice for People Search? - Getting Started
(Page 2 of 4 )
Believe it or not, the login screen was a little confusing for a second. Clicking on the link for my invitation, I came to this page, which, as with all the images in this article, I've cropped and reduced to fit:
Quickly, where do I log in? I thought it was the first set of text boxes until I saw the second set. By the way, I didn't get a login with my email. I am a member of LinkedIn, but I didn't want to use it for this trial. Fortunately, there's a link on this page (not shown here) that will let me skip the option of using a particular social networking service. So we come to this page next:
That part is easy; I put my name in and hit the check box telling it that I'm at least 13 years old. At first it didn't accept this, and I had to tell it again. Remember, this is a private beta after all. Once it does take my information it gives me a username, I put in a password, and we're off. I would be curious to see, once it gets out of private beta, how Spock will confirm that its users are at least 13 years old. There are a number of ways to do this; each of these has its own pluses and minuses (sadly I don't think the Vulcan mind meld is one of them).
Now that I'm logged in, I want to start searching. Here's my start page, with tips on some of the things I can do while I'm using Spock. Ignore what's in the search box for the moment; I put it there because I was so eager to get started. The box comes up blank when you start.
Spock's actual home page, by the way, looks more like this (I'll explain the "favorite" listed in the second part of this two-part review):
What you don't see in this picture, because I cropped it, are links in the upper right hand corner to Terri Wells (my name), Favorites, History, Settings, and Logout. I'll be coming back to those. Before I do, though, we're going to learn about all of the features listed on the start page. The Spock blog contains a series of entries that were posted on May 9 that do a great job of explaining everything, but there's nothing like trying it out yourself to get the hang of it.
Next: Searching With Spock >>
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