Show HN: Linkwok – Picking up where search engines left off
linkwok.com
linkwok.com
The use-case that sounds most reasonable to me is trying to do some heavy learning on a new topic, and using this tool to organize your findings. They cite some other use cases (such as buying a new car or phone, or planning a trip) but those seem best-served by other tools. I was actually researching cars to buy this weekend, and a simple spreadsheet worked very well (columns were features I wanted/needed, rows were potential candidates). There are also many trip-planning apps that I think would serve that need far better than a general-purpose app like this.
Ultimately, it looks like a lot of time was invested into this app - that said, I can't see it being terribly useful (at least to me). It's too complex to be helpful for the 90% of tasks that can completed with a piece of paper, or a notes/spreadsheet app, and it's too general to offer a better solution than niche products for the other 10%. If I had invested in this company, I'd be encouraging them to pivot into either a) a Google Keep/Pocket competitor, or b) something much more minimal that actually enhances the search engine experience (as the title implies).
P.S. You're not impressing anyone with your grid-style website. It's not a technical feat, nor does it improve the usability of the site - quite the contrary. Even if it were somehow easier/faster to use than scrolling (hint: it's not), the cost of switching to some new navigation paradigm is far more than what new users will be willing to invest for some new app. You have about 3 seconds to get my attention, don't waste it teaching me how to get around your website. Even if users are willing to put up with it out of curiosity, it'll make the pre-app experience worse, and that determines what lens they'll view the app itself through: "Cool, let's see what this does for me" vs "What other ways has this company devised to annoy me?" This may sound harsh, but I'd like to see you guys get some kind of reward for your hard work and your current website is actively preventing that from happening.
The end goal, our vision is to become an ecosystem of knowledge canvases (a wikipedia of 'mindmaps'). 6 billion searches are made every day just on Google, out of which 90% have already been repeated within the last 24 hours. How awesome would it be if you did not need to go through the haystack to find the needle that somebody else already found?
That said, the concerns you and others have pointed out are genuine and we do need to address them.
I will be taking down this post in an hour or two to resolve the 500 error that has suddenly crept up. Thank you all for the feedback... :)
> The target is to spend more time creating a canvas that can be used to collaborate and present on than juggling several apps- tabs, Notepad, Word, Excel, Powerpoint.
The example use cases that I saw on the site didn't really convey this - also, I didn't see a "presentation mode" or anything similar in the app, maybe I missed something in the app that would support this?
Also, can you give me an exact use case that would be better fulfilled by LinkWok than any other tool (and why LinkWok is the best tool for that job)? I hope you have a concrete vision of someone solving at least one specific problem in your app - otherwise, you have bigger problems than a 500 error.
> 6 billion searches are made every day just on Google, out of which 90% have already been repeated within the last 24 hours.
Source? I tried Googling around for it, couldn't find any articles that substantiate that claim.
> How awesome would it be if you did not need to go through the haystack to find the needle that somebody else already found?
That would be great. Unfortunately, all this app appears to do is create a new haystack - one that I will probably use a search engine to discover and subsequently mine for information.
Also, from your about page:
> until now there has been no way to take advantage of the (almost absolute) fact that somebody out there has already found what you are looking for.
In fact, there has: search engines. Search engines order the results by what it detects are the best answers to questions you have. In a surprisingly large number of cases, Google can answer the question I type into the Omnibar without me even having to click on a link!
As for use cases, a common one would be planning a holiday with your significant other or friends- more time goes in communicating suggestions and feedback over email, Word files and the like- Linkwok would be an easy platform to send these back and forth. Here's an example: https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=cWzkjEghEgtqewHuP
Another example is creating an at a glance overview of something complicated, namely the mess of kingdoms in George RR MArtin's Game of Thrones series: https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=cWzkjEghEgtqewHuP
Teachers can also use Linkwok to give more information about a topic. Here's an example where a friend wanted to teach his class about the history of Linux: https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=gNEtYqPbJyacbEfmd
As for the number of searches, http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/
And you're right- search engines do a great job of giving you an answer, as long as the answer is encapsulated within one statistic (weather in NYC, Welsh corgi personality, etc) but anything that requires even a modicum of research, finding the 'right' site is increasingly more difficult...
B-but I'm on an iPad. Swiping maybe? Nope. Nothing happens. Just broken layout pieces strewn about, plus some inscrutable green bar (seemingly) loading something.
And then, just when it looks like something is about to happen... the page crashes Safari. Repeatedly.
I wish I could comment on the concept itself, but the UI keeps stubbornly getting in the way.
If you need a pop-up alert to explain to users how to use your UX, it is probably not as good as traditional UX like a nice scroll page.
Edit: False start, it doesn't do anything unless you make an account. Lame.
AN INTERNAL ERROR WAS ENCOUNTERED." :/
Does this make more sense in other cultures? I know a wok is a round-bottomed cooking pan - I don't know what that has to do with links or search though. There also seemed sporadically to be some anime characters showing up - should this have been a clue to something?
This could be something incredible, I just have no idea what.
As for the name - The idea was that it's a wok(cooking pan) for what you find on the web.
And the video - I agree entirely. Any app should be simple enough that when you get there you know what to do. Unfortunately either we need to find a new UI/UX and Interactions guy or more likely it's a process to get a completely intuitive UI and we're working towards that. I'm just glad we hadn't posted the last version on HN - I'll admit it was appalling! As one commentator on Twitter said - it's like Prezi for research so please give it another go. There's a feedback button in the app that you can use. Thanks.
It has a few similarities to mindmaps, but where those force you to concentrate on creating, with Linkwok, you get to concentrate on organising.
Check them out. The idea that we seem to be failing to convey is that in most cases of casual research online it ends up taking hours and is not completely optimized. Also content ownership online is near impossible for the lay user - For e.g. Who has the time to author a wiki - but what if you could just drag and drop what's relevant and add some notes here and there, add connections to show a flow of thought and share it with someone. I used to teach engineering undergrads and signed up to work on Linkwok only cause I saw the value - Imagine lecture notes and lesson plans as Linkwok searchmaps! Where teachers and students can interact as well.
We get that search is private so by default everything IS PRIVATE on Linkwok but then content authorship is NOT generally private. So Linkwok caters to that as well.
Consider this: 1. When users search online and you're distracted or switch to a different task, it takes them a while to get their bearings with all those tabs etc. Or when you bookmark, unless you open the page you often don't know what it was. Here, every page can be stored as a visiting card - edit the name and description to something you remember 2. Users often don't remember how they got to a particular page - what they searched for when they found it. On Linkwok every page you add gets tagged with the search query. 3. There are several use cases where people need to collaborate when doing research and Linkwok directly caters to this. 4. It brings content authorship to the lay user cause it is supposed to be simple - ideally - evidently we need to fix the UI and UX a bit. 5. People search for similar things - If someone has found and curated the information for that topic why not continue from where they left off?
Finally, to my mind there's three kinds of searches that occur - broadly. 1. Where the user searches for something, the first link is all he needs and he's done. Linkwok is not for this case. 2. Where a user needs to iterate queries until he gets what he needs - Linkwok can come in mighty handy here. 3. Where one answer is not enough -one link is not enough - And here too Linkwok comes in handy
And if Linkwok searchmaps can come in handy for 2 and 3 - won't a searchmap also become a one stop for case 1 as well? That's what we're going for.
We're strangely positioned as an App. I will admit. But we do believe that there's value and hope that we can somehow convey this.
You asked for links, I know I have said more. But I did feel the need to add all that explanation cause we're obviously failing with our communication.
I guess I can't figure out where(what?) google or bing is leaving off when I search for something