Blekko Launches Izik, A Tablet-Optimized Search App | Hacker News Reader

Blekko Launches Izik, A Tablet-Optimized Search App

techcrunch.com

31 pointsanswerly10 comments

You guys crack me up. This is a wonderful app. The bar has been raised. But, I do have toput on my tinfoil hat. Why?

Izic = Issac.

And,

Nuuton = Newton.

Are you guys stalking me?I'm sure you are not. And this is something entirely different from what I'm doing. But it would be neat because Ive never had a stalker. ;)

Still, let me tell you that visual search is a trend that everyone should be paying attention to. Touch devices are changing the way people browse the web. Text links are being seen as less favorable than image links. Why? I think the connection comes from the icons used to launch apps. People now sort of see link images as icons instead of just images thta link somewhere. So, in the future, you might see search becoming more about a lost of website icons with a small description under it (if any).

Congrats to Chuck, Greg, and the gang at Blekko. This is very nice. You make me want to learn Perl and apply.

Heh. We've owned izik.com for more than 2 years now, and we almost launched with that name instead of blekko.

:) How does izic play in with rockzi? I suppose you plan on merging those two in the future. It seems natural to integrate social interactions into search, because that's what I'm doing in Nuuton (though differently from your approach).

Right now:

* blekko.com is "10 blue links", desktop search, slashtags used to eliminate webspam

* rockzi.com is [/category /date], date sorted results for a category (slashtag), with an image-heavy UI, social voting, and user submissions

* izik.com is search for the tablet, image-heavy UI for ALL of the categories (slashtags) that we think may be relevant for a search.

All 3 build on the same underlying crawl and index dataset. Rockzi and izik share UI elements.

I use roughly the same architecture. What I call the back-end (the crawling system and index) are just an API. Then the front-end connects to it to fill in the blanks. Though I don't know if you guys are doing logic in the front end part, but I'm definitely am. The ranking/rating can be modified from user input. Though this is abstracted and passes through various layers of security to prevent gaming. My front end is currently Django, but I will have to move to something faster if demands call for it. The back end is all custom stuff using async libraries.

Izik (pronounced "Itsik") is also a common Israeli nickname for "Yitzhak" (the hebrew origin for the English name Isaac; literally meaning "will laugh", and you can read the bible to figure out why).

But I guess you guys were going for "I seek"? (as in "ICQ" which was short for "I seek you"?)

Anyway, congrats! Looks great!

izik (pronounced EYE-zik) from Google Play store.

the translation of laughter seems appropriate for a search app designed to be playful and fun.

Someone leaked the names of their next few peoducts: Syzrup, Chkklo, Snopl, Crkol, Pawpl

good one "staunch"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com