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Posted on June 4, 2008 by Bruce Keener

Actually, I did not find it: someone pointed the site out to me after my recent article on Mahalo.

Like Mahalo, findingDulcinea is a “human-powered” search engine. No, I am not trying to get you to stop using Google or Yahoo! or MSN, and I don’t plan to stop using them either. I simply like to help you stay informed of potentially useful technologies. Of course, I will also periodically remind you, and me, to not get so wrapped up in new technology that it controls you, instead of vice versa.

Anyway, when findingDulcinea was mentioned to me, I explored it and found that it is a sort of a combination of a search engine with fact sheets.

The following is a snapshot of the main areas of its home page (click on the image to enlarge it):

The site also has a “topics area” that has a variety of topics, and a number of articles related to each. For example, for the Technology topic, it currently covers

Blogs, College Courses Online, Computers, Digital TV, Downloading Movies, Downloading Music, Guide to Web Search, Free-use Media, GPS: Global Positioning System, Internet Marketing and Privacy, Internet Security, Nanotechnology, Plagiarism Prevention, The Search-less-find-more Guide, Social Networking, TV Shopping, Video Games, Web Technology, Wikipedia

However, many of these pages still need to be built-out. For example, if you click the “Web Technology” link, a blank entry is shown.

But, there are some more pleasant surprises, too. If you click on the Technology topic, you get some topics that are not shown in the summary list, topics which are actually pretty interesting. See the following picture for an example (click on the picture to enlarge it):

Whether you agree with the “Dulcinea Insight,” it is a nice touch and is an advantage of human-powered search engines.

While findingDulcinea has some growing to do, and probably some bugs to work out, I can remember when the same could be said of Wikipedia. Of course, I do not expect findingDulcinea, or Mahalo, to acquire a dominance in the search engine field. That battle has been won by Google, and Google remains a sufficiently forward-looking and innovative company that it will almost certainly continue to succeed better than competitors.

However, findingDulcinea may be just the thing for you, when you are looking for web guides on specific topics, particularly popular topics such as travel and education. (Just as with Mahalo, it has virtually nothing on GTD because that is simply not a popular area when compared with topics like travel, movie stars, rock stars, and so on.) And least now you have “found it,” so you can add it to your toolkit or not, as desired. Update: findingDulcinea has added a well-done Web Guide on GTD.

 

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