I used to read management journals in my spare time. A lot of management authors, professors said that “Size does matter.” This statement can either be commonplace or controversial, depending on which industry they’re referring to, and which company as well. In the search engine sector, there is a newly launched ATUNN and it is working on its way to this “Size does Matter” path.

On the front page of ATUNN, you’ll find a variety of services such as mail, music, movies, news & newspaper, games, social networks, IM, language tools, and applications. Click on any of these will load a page of the external URL links to different startups that offered that particular service. It is a bit look like meta search engine, but indeed it is not.

ATUNN want to act as a search engine that covers a lot of stuff. In its straight-forward slogan, “All That U Need Now!” it tried to maximize its value through building a lot of external URL links in its back-end programming. However, maximizing a new search engine’s value through variety of external Web pages is often seen as inefficient, lack of focus, and even anti niche. But credits given to them on its sleek design and fast loading.

Much has already been said about the online family tree applications on the Web, that allows you to build your real-life family network into a genealogy in order to preserve your family history. I recently came across Hellotree! A Canadian startup that focused on family network as its main growth driver. Upon you sign-up for the site, you can start to email your family members to join this Hellotree! and begin to grow your own family network.

When you do this, you’ll notice that your own family network is growing from your near relatives with whom you share with a common ancestor. In other words, it is like a family-type of social network, and a diagram offered by Hellotree! will underline the existing of one’s family genetic link. On the site, users are allowed to build their profiles, share family photos, and choose the privacy level of their profiles if they want to.

However, while few startups in this field such as this Hellotree!, MyHeritage and Geni are already focusing on the evolution of this family social network, they all have yet to achieve differentiate strategy and thus risk missing a significant differentiation advantage.

True Knowledge is a search engine that I want to give it a try and its rise has captured a lot of people attention too. The domain name it chosen, subtly billed as a “true knowledge search engine,” was to provide a true knowledge to all its users’ search queries. I recently got a private beta account, and after playing around it for some time, I find it useful when I want to find a specific answer to what I want to know, instead of all the search results that were triggered simply because of some keywords I typed into a search engine’s search bar.

There are few things that users can do with this natural search-based True Knowledge. Firstly, is to find an answer to a question you type into its search bar. Secondly, to view profiles, and the last important one, is to provide new user-generated knowledge by adding some content to its knowledge database. Tue Knowledge has a wonderful Answer Engine that functioning heavily in providing users with terrific answers to some complex questions, and you can also get a grasp of some very good yet complex questions appeared on its front page, such as “Who was president of the US when Barack Obama was a teenager?” “How long was Tony Blair the prime minister of the UK?” and many more. Don’t get me wrong, all complex questions are not exactly related to political issues. You can find some interesting complex questions such as “How many litres in 5 pints?” From the answers this True Knowledge gathered, users can further either to endorse or contradict any fact that the answers provided.

True Knowledge is not just about keyword search. You won’t find any similarity of the search engines you came across on the Web, which included all the keywords or “similar keywords” that triggering the particular search results. Users are encouraged to use plain English, and results are in the forms of “answers,” and good explanation of the answers are expected. This is why they named it as True Knowledge. However, if you typed some questions that True Knowledge can’t provide an answer at the moment, standard results such as external Web pages will be appeared and they also will notify you with a simple statement, i.e. Your request cannot currently be understood (See Picture 2 below).

In overall, I like the founding concepts of True Knowledge, because users will get what they want in their “not only search queries,” and they’ll also know the results appeared are not the Web pages some Adwords sponsors are currently bidding their keywords on.

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To know further about True Knowledge, there is a video clip that I embedded in the below:

Twitter is now a core tool of user communication, and every new startup indisputably has every right to think out of the blue to develop a mashup from it in order to improve the existing Twitter user experience. In a time of such a Twitter fad, there is a new mashup called ToAnswer and its current offering has every opportunity to explode a new market for them.

On the landing page of ToAnswer, it said this new mashup is a Web app that trying to work as something more or less like a Yahoo! Answers meets Twitter. As a Twitter user, you simply log on to your account, and use the following format, i.e. @ToAsk, and you can instantly pose a question to the Twitterverse. A typical example that ToAnswer given is: @ToAsk Are there any good pizza joints in downtown Los Angeles? Wait for few seconds, your question will be posted in the Twitterverse, and if someone, a Twitter user saw it, and would like to give you a favor, she/he can help you with an answer in the following format, i.e. @ToAnswer [question id]. Note that question id is the identity number of your question in the ToAnswer’s system.

From a user perspective, the decisions about using it must take into account the number of followers in one’s Twitter account. If you’re a Twitter user with a heavy loaded of followers, from few thousands onward, you post a question and instantly your followers will reply to your message, you won’t feel the need to use this ToAnswer. However, if you’ve a handful number of followers, and want to get more value out of Twitter, try this ToAnswer, you’ll realize the power of the Twitter community. Likewise, if one Twitter user desperately want an advice to her own personal problem, try to answer her question and give her a helping hand. In this way, we can make our world a better tomorrow. This is an ultimate aim of developing a Web app, I wish I’m the one who thought of this great idea and developed this application

The other day I came across a search engine namely ErrorKey that specifically for error codes and messages. It is a search service which I think it is a trend-right and should be bookmarked in the browsers for the programmers, whether she/he is a newbie, or an advanced programmer. I find it quite useful for me as well because shamelessly to say, I won’t be able to know all the error codes, or error messages when I write a certain Web software, as all the libraries are becoming more and more complex and amazingly sophisticated nowadays.

The below is a typical example I tried to test this ErrorKey, a keyword “Python” will instantly generate a succinct list of comprehensive explanation of this keyword search. Currently, it supports the error code search for the following operating systems and languages such as Oracle, Sybase, Apple, Cisco 6400, Unix Solaris, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SAP DB, Borland C, Python, HTTP, Symbian, etc. Its business model is based on Google AdSense.