We searched for great new apps, with two can’t-miss results.
My little girl immediately fell in love with a really cute app called Crazy Hamster, in which you guide an adorable hamster along trap-filled terrain, seeking out food and goodies to help them survive the winter. The concept is simple, but the obstacles are challenging enough to keep you entertained for hours. Both kids and adults will love this fur-filled adventure.
I’ve been using internet search since there was an internet to search: Gopher, WebCrawler, AltaVista, and then Google won me over. Being a results-oriented person, my goal was always more, better, and faster results.
The new NOOK App Izik from Blekko is described as, “the first search engine that is optimized for the tablet. With Izik, the practicality of the web unfolds at your fingertips in a fun and playful manner. Still, I wondered, “Why would I need a different search engine for my NOOK?”
Yet I was intrigued, and it turns out that Izik on your NOOK really does give you an enjoyable and fresh way to search. To start, results are laid out in a newspaper-like format. For example, when I searched for “Fiscal Cliff,” the results were divided up into “Top Results,” “Images,” “Latest,” “Money,” “News,” “Congress,” & “Colleges.” Then when I searched for “Lindsay Lohan” (purely for the purposes of demonstration), the categories included “Quick Answer,” “Top Results,” “Images,” “Latest News,” “Gossip” & “Social.”
I was glad to see there wasn’t a Gossip category for the Fiscal Cliff, and Lindsay is not generating much talk in Congress. The guys at Blekko say they have spent a lot of time working out how to categorize results and they are doing a great job; it certainly helps you find the right type of result—offering an innovative way to search that can save you time.
Swiping horizontally allows you to move between the results, which are laid out as articles; pinch-zooming (start from a pinch and then move the two fingers apart) expands the article a little; and tapping takes you off to the full article. In the expanded view you can also share the article via Facebook or Twitter.
I’m a convert and I’m sure you will be, too. And since Izik is free, it’s easy to give it a try.
Tell Me: Did you ever have a pet hamster? What was its name?
