Middlespot: Getting More Out of Search - Analysis and Middlespot's Future
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As you would expect for a free online service, Middlespot is ad-supported. And as you would expect for a service that librarians have discovered and said nice things about, the ads are not intrusive. When I ran my searches, Middlespot was running Google text ads.
It's obvious that they want to branch out, however, as they include a link for advertisers at the top right of their about page. Because Middlespot is in such a competitive space, it offers some pretty sweet terms. Advertisers get exclusivity; they're the only paid sponsorship that appears on a particular page to users. You get your descriptive text and hyperlink to your product and service at the beginning of a search. You also get your own screen shot graphic inserted in the screen shot gallery, and your descriptive text and hyperlink inserted after every 25 results displayed.
The ads may help their business model, but Middlespot is really focused on helping their users. So if you go right to their web site after this article is published, you may find a few new features that I haven't mentioned because they weren't live when I wrote my review. Brownlee gave me some highlights:
- Suggestions of other websites you might find interesting, based on what you've accumulated in a workpad. Think of the recommendation engines you'll find at Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and similar services, and you're on the right track. Brownlee hinted that it seemed to work well once you have about five or six captured results in your workpad. In the course of editing this article, I received an email from him indicating that this new feature had in fact gone live, so don't be surprised if you see it.
- The ability to upload a file up to 100 MB in size into your workpad to go along with your collected results. This will be any type of file (MP3, video, Word document, PDF document) that you think is relevant. This means you can have your homework, novel, dissertation, what have you, in the same place as your research material.
- A pull-down tool that lets you see your search history for the last 20 sessions. If you do research that lasts more than one session and sometimes change your mind about sites worth saving, this could be a real time saver.
- Increased workpad collaboration, so that you can choose to allow specific people to add, edit, and delete entries as well. Currently, you can allow others only to view your workpads. This ability could be very handy for those who are collaborating on research projects.
- Improvements to the embed format to make it look better for those who choose to use it on their blog or website.
Middlespot has managed to combine a number of features I've seen before in a way that feels new. There are tons of visual search engines out there, including ones that have an interface that lets you see the screen shots. There are also social bookmarking sites that let you group the URLs you want to save under particular categories, and even share the group with others (Searchles comes to mind). The ability to save it on your own computer is something I haven't seen before, however. The potential community aspect of a workpad that can be gained from embedding it in a blog or website reminds me a little bit of Google's Custom Search Engines. I didn't see a specific “search within workpad” ability, but I imagine Middlespot will be adding that soon.
My two biggest criticisms for Middlespot are that they need to tackle the speed issue and, at least at the time of writing, they need to clean up the spelling and grammar issues (they go beyond the American/Canadian English differences). For the moment, that can be forgiven, but it may interfere with their getting a wider audience. That would be a real shame. I can see some real potential for Middlespot as a tool for online researchers of various levels. I'm looking forward to seeing how these three Canadians expand and develop Middlespot's capabilities next.
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