Video, Photo & RSS Snap Shots

Since I last covered Snap - the visual interactive search engine, they've added many enhancements to their preview bubble and also improved their search engine visualization. Here are a couple of the most recent Snap shots available:

Snap Web Classic - Is the traditional search engine result page (10 blue links) but with Snap Shots enabled. Now you can decide how you prefer viewing the search results. If you like preview and find them useful you could switch to Web Enhanced which is more innovative in terms of previewing results and which also supports keyboard up and down arrows etc.

RSS Shot – When a link to a site has a RSS feed, instead of a PreviewShot it will show the headlines & excerpts of the latest stories. This should increase the engagement of your readers. The RSS Shot feature isn't enabled yet for all Snap users but it should be fully released in the near future. I noticed this on some blogs and it's very useful but now there isn't a way to have a quick PreviewShot. Maybe they should add a PreviewShot tab in the bubble.

Video Shot and Photo Shot - Now supports all major video and photo sharing sites (YouTube, Metacafe, Google Video, Xanga Video, Revver, PhotoBucket, Flickr, PicasaWeb…)

A zoom feature was added-look for the little magnifier glass at the top right corner of the bubble.

Related Searches - Those will be displayed instead of the search box and should provide users with suggestions to searches that are related to the site being previewed. The "related searches" feature is not fully released and can be spotted on some blogs.

According to VP Product Jay Meydad, additional types of Snap Shots will be released soon. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: photo shot rss shot snap snap shot web 2.0 video shot

blogTV - broadcast yourself!

With a slick design and an extremely easy to remember domain name blogTV is live! blogTV is a great place to broadcast yourself just by plugging in a webcam and starting your own TV show. Some of the features included are online interaction between the broadcasters and the viewers, recording and archiving broadcasted shows. blogTV allows the viewers to bookmark, email, subscribe, embed and rate the videos. The .com joins the two previously launched sites. Canadian blogTV - a social network destination developed specifically for Canadians to showcase their talents and the Israeli blogTV powered by Tapuz, Israels leading portal. Tapuz are the creators behind the blogTV project.
So, if you want to create live reality shows or watch other people offering their reality shows go to blogTV.

Is blogTV going to become a vlogging platform by providing the members with a blogTV sub domain name and by allowing the vlogger to fully control his own vlog space? just like blogging...

Technorati Tags: blog blogtv israel tapuz web 2.0 vlog

iMedix - Health belongs to the people

I can't think of more crucial topics that require knowledge sharing than health and medicine. This is definitely a space where many people have many questions and fears. Naturally, they are seeking answers from the community.
iMedix are soon launching a medical search engine based on user generated content.

Iri Amirav tells me today about iMedix (formally Remedix). Iri Amirav and Amir Leitersdorf, founders of iMedix are both experienced entrepreneurs. Iri previously served as Marketing Director at Metacafe and Amir as CTO at Movota which was acquired by Arvato mobile and prior to that as CTO at Tapuz search engine.
He says they plan on revealing a new user experience to medical search. The search engines dynamic learning algorithm provides the user with information relevant to him/herself and this is determined by the users ranking.

Two types of results are provided:

1. Reliable health information from the top sources across the web
   
2. Information from people who share health experiences similar to the person searching

Iri explains that currently only 16-18% of users searching for medical information are satisfied with the results and that their solution will increase these results by creating a social network that enables people to share health issues.

In the future I think leveraging these strong capabilities by allowing users to recommend and rank doctors specializing in a related medical area would provide the users with an added value in the real world. This way users would benefit from the community's medical treatment experience.

iMedix is in alpha and is soon to launch. Sign up for their launch alert.

Technorati Tags: health imedix medical israel web 2.0 search engine social knowledge social network