A new search engine created by Ex-Googler called Topicle has been launched today. It was Steffen Mueller’s own idea, to launch a search engine community which business operating model is similar to Wikipedia that allowed users to create or edit the content, in this case, i.e. search results. Steffen Mueller, previously held as the Product Manager at Google, and played a part in the launching of Google Maps, Google Web Search and Froogle, believed in search engine should be performed better if the results are relied on human efforts rather than computer algorithms.

Topicle begins with the Internet users, i.e. you. Of course, in this sense you can say the value of Topicle is lies not so much in advanced and unique technology, but in the critical mass of the URLs the users submitted. In illustrate this, Topicle has provided an about page to show users how they can make Topicle a better search engine. First, an user can create her own search engine by enter the search engine name such as Best Recipe Sites, and below the column user can submit the URLs that she think is most suitably. Apparently, Topicle’s technology will check the URLs in order to qualifying the URLs as well as checking the invalid URLs, resulting the spam sites may not easily be shown on the Topicle search result pages. Besides, users can edit the URLs others submitted and they are allowed to vote each of the URLs in the scale from 1 to 5. Click on the link “URLs are waiting for your rating” will enable you to do the edition either “Skip this URL” or “Report Spam.” And thus, for the long term, Topicle has the potential to collect all the best yet hidden Web link in the search engine sector.

The deepened between Topicle and users tend to fill a gap that other search engines available on the Web by allowing users to keep control of the search results. Apparently, users are the clear winners, as all the URLs are handpicked by users, in spite of the back-end search engine are provided by Google Custom Search technology. However, the future success of Topicle depends on the contribution of users, will the users are more than happy to submit the URLs they like to Topicle still an unknown factor. Nevertheless, it will be really interesting to take a look at Topicle a few years from now, as more and more URLs are submitted by the users.

As of present, Topicle is the first Web product of Zoolium and is getting major publicity for the launched of this vertical search engine.

via [ReadWriteWeb]

A people search engine, Spock that launched in August this year has added many interesting features recently, from messaging service to Flash widget, and now the indexed of many professionals. Now those who use Spock to search people can find many professionals by typing “doctor,” “lawyer,” “real estate agent,” or “cardiologist,” and etc. into the search engine and Spock will return the search results to you.

Spock has generated a massive buzz in the recent months, it is much due to the reason of people search is a huge market. For us, we visited social networking sites before, and find the information on a single person, therefore we know people search has became a trend nowadays. In fact, the value of Spock and other people search engines available on the Web lies not so much in the unique search technology, but in the critical mass of users that they aggregate. It seems that Spock is on its way achieving this through the offered of people search by profession, and constantly engage their users in revealing their personal information with their own photo as well. Meanwhile, they also seeking the feedback from their users about the next features of its platform.

Spock’s current business model is Google AdSense and at this moment, there are several players penetrated into this people search industry, such as PeekYou and Yasni.

Hot on the heel comes another Microsoft’s new venture, the releases of HealthVault platform. Health information related platform currently is the new darling of the Web community, AOL has launched its own one, i.e. Revolution Health launched in April, Google Health, codenamed as Weaver is also on the way.

HealthVault is launched with the jointly effort of nationally recognized medical providers, health-management device manufacturers and patient advocacy organizations. It is aimed at helping people better manage and access their health information in an online environment, and the first priority would be to bring the health and technology industries together to create new applications, services and connected devices. In the same spirit, HealthVault allowed users to control their own health information, and rather acted as a platform provider with responsibility for technology development. This contrast to the normal practices of clinics and hospitals where medical records were channeled to the medical doctors. Meanwhile, HealthVault was also supplemented by a pool of most relevant online health content that offered by HealthVault Search, a search service tightly integrated with Windows Live. The search queries entered by its users generally will lead them to HealthVault compatible solutions.

HealthVault was established with a simple focus, i.e. to empower people to lead healthy lives. There are several alternatives for HealthVault’s growth, one good example is the availability of HealthVault software development kit (SDK). Software developers interested in developing the third-party applications can visit the developer center where they can download the SDK, view documentation and share information among each other.

Microsoft has released a better Live search engine today, as shown in the image above, with the sexy and simple interface. It is known as a move that attempts to bring the closer gap between the market share of Google and Live.com. According to Microsoft’s press release, this revamped search engine trying to make its existing users fascinating about the search experience that Microsoft did not offered in the first hand; and trying to make these group of users make more search queries on it. However, the main focus of the overhauled Live.com seems to be focused on vertical search, with the substantial research and improvement done on the areas such as entertainment, shopping, local and health. One of the great things that this search engine offered was the increase of the size of its search index by four times, to more than 20 billion in total.

Apparently, Live.com still far lagged behind Google and Yahoo!, but it seems that they’re going to become a “narrow focus search club” in order to get more advantage over the fierce competition in the U.S. market.

The London-based live event vertical search engine TickEx has launched its U.S. site yesterday. TickEx, labeled as “Google For Tickets” by a music magazine MusicWeek, was founded with the financial support of some private investors. It allows buyers and sellers to list, search for, bid on and pay for products on their official sites or through resellers such as eBay or StubHub. Moreover, users can use its search engine to browse and compare tickets they find through artist, city, venue, date, seat location and price searches. In fact, there is another factor that drives the company in launching this U.S. site. Most recently, viagogo, also a London-based online ticket company, has expanded into the U.S. market and signed the first-ever secondary ticket deal in the U.S. with NFL’s Cleveland Browns. However, the business model of viagogo seems to be vary with TickEx. TickEx is focused on vertical search but viagogo is an online ticket marketplace. The vertical search features that offered by TickEx enable users to search tickets on StubHub, a startup co-founded by the CEO of viagogo.

TickEx was founded in year 2006, launched its U.K. site, still in beta in June this year. Now its U.S. office is located in Costa Mesa, California.

The online travel search engine cFares has raised $4.5 million in a round A venture capital led by Claremont Creek Ventures, and including existing backer Garage Technology Ventures. cFares was indeed doing quite well since its inception and previously caught the eyes of the venture capitalist with the received of a $1.5 million early seed funding last year. The direction of this cFares is relatively straight forward, a vertical search engine, by charging a $50 subscription fee, members (Platinum and Gold) can access to the wholesaler discounts, normally in the range of $30 to $50 below price of the publicly available fares. However, the online travel industry is too hot in the U.S. now, so they have developed a patent-pending search technology that allowed users a 360 degree view of all the fares in the market. Meanwhile, live chat support will also be available for the cFares “Small Business Travel Program.” As I visited their search page, the search results seem to be an aggregate airlines and discount sites’ listings, to be served as a major purpose to show users that they can compare the fares in a cFares “one-stop” travel fare site. Though they have income revenue by charging the subscription fees, their major business model apparently is based on Google AdSense.

cFares is based in Redwood Shores, California and founded in year 2005. There is more information regarding to this venture capital on this site.

Technorati, a blog search engine has expanded its latest round of financing from $7.6 million, to $10.52 million, and the latest amount was $11.52 million. New shareholder included DG Incubation, operator of Technorati Japan, alongside with the existing backers Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mobius Venture Capital.

Since the first inception of Technorati in 2002, they have enjoyed tremendous success and much of the success is due to the works of blog searching. However, blog search is nothing new in today’s market, they have some direct competitors in this field and one of them is Google. How they going to survive in the marketplace as one of their key developers also left for Google. Will the acquisition of Personal Bee or continue to use the aforesaid funding in improving the technological infrastructure would make them to play a prominent role in the blog search industry?

The other day I came across a new site created by Microsoft Japan, besides Windows Live Sushi as profiled in my another post, Windows Live Sushi Launched in Japan. This new site is called My Live Story. A same concept that can be found in both of these two sites; flash interface, similar designs in terms of color and each of the object can be click and it will bring you to the personal particulars of the object. However, both sites were being designed with utterly two different layouts. As I visited My Live Story, I could found all the famous and ordinary people in Japan, with the individual background stated by Microsoft Japan. Moreover, you also can find some famous Japanese book authors, artists, musicians, architects, students, nurses, and etc on this site.

It seems to me that Microsoft Japan is creating a seamless user experience for Japanese in Japan. To get around this, Microsoft Japan has decided to use the web design technology that we never seen at Microsoft’s home pages before in other countries. But I still wonder can Microsoft Japan deliver the contents in a promptly manner in order to attract the Japanese users.