Searchles, We Hardly Knew You! - Oh My Searchles
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Searchles' home page has changed to emphasize the most active groups and the most active users a lot more. They still show the most recent links on the home page and still display a keyword cloud in the right column. And I was delighted to see that their help has improved, with separate FAQs that explain how to make bookmarks and how they work, how the bookmarklet works, and a lot more. In particular, there's a list of user questions, a really detailed explanation of how groups work, how to use their widget (great for bloggers) and "Searchles TV," a way for users to put all their favorite videos in one place.
The biggest change I noticed was in my personal Searchles home page. Let me show you what I mean. Here's what the page looked like when I did my first review:
Very simple, with a few features visible and easily accessible in the upper right corner. Part of the reason it looked so bare is because I hadn't done much with it at that point. I later added an avatar, a saying, a bunch of links (which showed up in that empty middle area under "terri's posts"), and friends and groups, which appeared on the lower left in those two rectangles. But look at it now:
Okay, the blue rectangle at the top is rather like a control panel. It lets you manage your profile, create and manage groups, create and manage channels for Searchles TV, find friends, and check through posts. There are a lot of new abilities here; group managers can remove spam postings from their groups, invite people to join, ban them, and more. And some groups are invitation only now. I really have to praise Searchles for continuing to give their users the fine-grained control that impressed me eight months ago.
If I went into detail about the stuff in the blue rectangle, I wouldn't have enough room in this article to talk about some of the most exciting details. So let me just mention Searchles TV - in fact, let me link to Searchles' information page about it. Basically, you can set up a "channel" on Searchles for all of your favorite videos; just enter the link and you and others can view the videos without leaving Searchles in whatever order they wish. Searchles supports video from YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Grouper, and blip.tv, and plans to add more. If you like to visit a lot of video sites, Searchles TV can be a great time saver.
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