KartOO was a meta
search engine which displayed a
visual
The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (th ...
interface
Interface or interfacing may refer to:
Academic journals
* ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society
* '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics''
* '' Int ...
. It operated from 2001 to early 2010.
Interface
KartOO had an
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...
GUI
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
, as opposed to a text-based list of results. Its color scheme was to a degree reminiscent of
Apple Computer's
Aqua
Aqua is the Latin word for water. It is used in many words which relate to water, such as aquatic life. In English, it may also refer to:
Arts
* Aqua (color), a greenish-blue color
Business
* Aqua (skyscraper), an 82-story residential skysc ...
interface. Search results were presented as a "map", with blob-like masses of varying color connecting each item. On rollover of an individual result a bunch of red lines connected related
links. KartOO sometimes helped to narrow down searches with a general topic. Every "blob" clicked added another word to the search query. The map would often succeed in presenting keywords or subtopics that defined the topic one was searching on, very much like an interactive
spider diagram
In mathematics, a unitary spider diagram adds existential points to an Euler or a Venn diagram. The points indicate the existence of an attribute described by the intersection of contours in the Euler diagram. These points may be joined together ...
.
History
It was co-founded in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
by two cousins, Laurent Baleydier and Nicholas Baleydier. This project was launched in 2001. Most of their advertisement was through word of mouth.
In 2004, KartOO launched a new version called UJIKO (five nearby keys on a keyboard, similar to
QWERTY
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden t ...
). The interface looked more like a "jukebox" with the linked sites as playlists.
In January 2010 KartOO closed down, removing all content from the KartOO and UJIKO websites, but leaving a small message in French thanking its users for their support. By 2011 that message had been removed.
Ahead of its time?
In a review of the service, Juan C. Dürsteler wrote in 2002, "Perhaps visual representations will begin to predominate in information retrieval when they show things that we can not see in the ordered list. The semantic links of KartOO are an incipient step forward in this sense."
[Juan C. Dürsteler]
"KartOO is a new meta search engine that shows graphically the results it gets. Its technology extends to products oriented towards information retrieval within the corporate world."
August 16, 2002, Inf@Vis!
Also see Robin Good's Review in MasterNewMedia.org June 30, 2002, Edited here by Luigi Canali De Rossi, http://www.masternewmedia.org/2002/06/30/new_visual_metasearch_clustering_engine.htm
The Solar System-like Search Results, where hovering over the planets or satellites gave you the pertinent lines from that web page, and the Genie on the Flying Carpet that interacted with you were innovations unparalleled at the time.
References
External links
Review of KartOO and Clusty(now
Yippy), from Brigham Young's Center For Teaching & Learning.
Defunct internet search engines
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