5 ms·

Show HN: Linkwok – Picking up where search engines left off

22 points by Superbloop 12y ago

cr3ative 12y ago
Please don't over-ride my scroll mechanism and force me to use keys to mystery-navigate - there's no indication that there are panels to scroll to, other than mashing the keyboard and trying. 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.
- peterwiese 12y ago
  google maps does the same!? i think it's totally valid here! you're navigating a map!
- emehrkay 12y ago
  For the first minute I thought that the product was the way you scrolled the content website.
  - scorpwarp23 12y ago
    Sorry to hear that! And we didn't mean to override the scroll. We just wanted to draw all the focus on what Linkwok is and get users to the app faster. In any case we have put in a temporary fix without the whole grid layout until we do an overhaul. Thanks for the feedback!
wodenokoto 12y ago
I watched the video and clicked get started, looked at the screen and left. I still don't know what I should do or why.
- ninjakeyboard 12y ago
  there is a samurai on the site. that's why.
willu 12y ago
My recommendation would be to make your video more instructional in nature rather than "edgy". Go through some real examples. I watched the video and ran a couple of searches and had no idea what the value was or what I was supposed to be using your product for. Sharing search results? Annotating them? Why? I searched for "best falafel" and got a popup telling me I had 3 search maps (what are those?) about things like cheap cars and startups in India.
bshimmin 12y ago
As the other commenters have said, this was incomprehensible to me (I didn't watch the video, unlike the others, but you should be prepared for people not watching introductory videos - I for one hardly ever do). 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.
- scorpwarp23 12y ago
  Please refer my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8283554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8283554 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.
peterwiese 12y ago
this is amazing, really!!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
wiradikusuma 12y ago
I watched the video, still dont understand. Clicked Get Started, and greeted with Internal Error :(
borplk 12y ago
Just wow. Did you have a competition on how you could tell as little as possible with a video? because that video just won that competition.
Mithaldu 12y ago
The site's completely broken in Opera 12.
drdoooom 12y ago
i'm not too sure what service it's suppose to provide.
ninjakeyboard 12y ago
I went there and immediately received a very nice looking 500 error
- jere 12y ago
  Very nice looking indeed.
  - scorpwarp23 12y ago
    We'd love if you gave the app another go now. Would love some feedback. Thanks.
- notduncansmith 12y ago
  So did I. Try clicking on Dashboard in the top right, that worked for me. Edit: False start, it doesn't do anything unless you make an account. Lame.
  - scorpwarp23 12y ago
    We're sorry you were greeted with this error. We have found the fault and are clearing it. You can use Linkwok without logging in but you do need to log in to store what you create on it.
  - rajanand02 12y ago
    Hey. So were you able to move past this or did it appear again. We're running some tests and it appears that some users behind proxies or firewalls cannot connect correctly to either the ddp client or the server itself and as a result there's a data inconsistency that results in the 500 error. If you're still facing this issue could you help us out by capturing your console logs and emailing it to us on admin@cybit.in ? Part of the reason for the error was that the oplog instance was down but part of it seems to stem from proxies or vpns that we're not able to replicate. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
wzy 12y ago
Like everybody else... I made a search, got results, didn't know what to do, then left. I guess I can't figure out where(what?) google or bing is leaving off when I search for something
Superbloop 12y ago
To (most) of the comments regarding not knowing what to do, Linkwok is all about DRAGGING AND DROPPING search results, annotations, files from your computer and more to the canvas on the right side. It has a few similarities to mindmaps, but where those force you to concentrate on creating, with Linkwok, you get to concentrate on organising.
- iamshs 12y ago
  Any link to one of the canvas?
  - scorpwarp23 12y ago
    Two 'searchmaps' about Linux: 1: https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=QSgnSYDj2rZ5sdxWf https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=QSgnSYDj2rZ5sdxWf 2: https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=eBLZYv5m66y3jTe9k https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=eBLZYv5m66y3jTe9k 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.
slunk 12y ago
Although I agree with others that the video leaves a bit to be desired, I thought I understood the point well enough and was looking forward to trying it out... Then I attempted to do just that and was instantly greeted with "INTERNAL ERROR AN INTERNAL ERROR WAS ENCOUNTERED." :/
- scorpwarp23 12y ago
  Sorry about that. Do give it another whirl now please.This was an error with our db service provider. Apologies again.
notduncansmith 12y ago
Okay, I think I've figured it out. This app is a mind-mapping tool, where nodes usually represent web content (but can be text, files, charts, or tables). It also has a somewhat convenient search interface built in which mirrors results from a few popular search engines. 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.
- Superbloop 12y ago
  Hey notduncansmith, thanks for the candid (and detailed) reply. 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 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... :)
bluewolf 12y ago
This looks like a new kind of research tool, which is great. I love this kind of stuff. Just show step-by-step how to use it and provide several examples.
iamshs 12y ago
I somehow managed to navigate your atrociously laid out grid navigation. I read the blog titled "The Maze of many things", and seems like you pitched it to some VCs and were criticized. You resolved to make your pitch stronger, and after 4 months you still haven't managed to do it, because I did not get what is the benefit, and how I can achieve the said benefit. Please rework your processes.
gone35 12y ago
Use your arrows. 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.
- iamshs 12y ago
  Some more things they can work on:- Even if you navigate right on PC, you get stuck upon navigating down, only way out is to navigate up again. And then you reach the blog, which breaks the arrow key navigation again, and you have to use mouse scroll. UX like this should have been caught on early.
  - scorpwarp23 12y ago
    Thanks for the feedback guys. We put in a temporary fix without the whole grid nav. We thought it was pretty cool. But good UI is always an iterative process and we're working to improve this.
animex 12y ago
Startup down.
scorpwarp23 12y ago
Hi Guys. I'm with Team Linkwok. We regret the issue that you guys faced. It was because of our MongoDB service provider. Our oplog instance was offline. We have subsequently added a fix for this. The internal server error should not appear anymore. Thanks for your patience. As for the feedback you'll have given us, many thanks, we shall take your points into consideration.
- scorpwarp23 12y ago
  Many of you with the app running might face a reload as the page hot-code reloads so that you have the latest version of the App.
st8ic 12y ago
incomprehensible. Video failed to explain what the thing actually does. Really struggling to see the value.
jclos 12y ago
I don't know how much success you will have as a general search tool but I can tell you that with some tweaks here and there it would be an amazing tool for people to help with mapping a literature review, by searching google scholar/ACM/SpringerLink/IEEE/etc., drag&dropping results (which are papers or web pages) and adding some "glue" (edges between papers, "clusters of documents", timelines based on some metadata...).

22 points by Superbloop 12y ago

Please don't over-ride my scroll mechanism and force me to use keys to mystery-navigate - there's no indication that there are panels to scroll to, other than mashing the keyboard and trying. 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.

peterwiese 12y ago
google maps does the same!? i think it's totally valid here! you're navigating a map!
emehrkay 12y ago
For the first minute I thought that the product was the way you scrolled the content website.
- scorpwarp23 12y ago
  Sorry to hear that! And we didn't mean to override the scroll. We just wanted to draw all the focus on what Linkwok is and get users to the app faster. In any case we have put in a temporary fix without the whole grid layout until we do an overhaul. Thanks for the feedback!

wodenokoto 12y ago

I watched the video and clicked get started, looked at the screen and left. I still don't know what I should do or why.

ninjakeyboard 12y ago
there is a samurai on the site. that's why.

willu 12y ago

My recommendation would be to make your video more instructional in nature rather than "edgy". Go through some real examples. I watched the video and ran a couple of searches and had no idea what the value was or what I was supposed to be using your product for. Sharing search results? Annotating them? Why? I searched for "best falafel" and got a popup telling me I had 3 search maps (what are those?) about things like cheap cars and startups in India.

bshimmin 12y ago

As the other commenters have said, this was incomprehensible to me (I didn't watch the video, unlike the others, but you should be prepared for people not watching introductory videos - I for one hardly ever do). 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.

scorpwarp23 12y ago
Please refer my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8283554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8283554 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.

peterwiese 12y ago

this is amazing, really!!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

wiradikusuma 12y ago

I watched the video, still dont understand. Clicked Get Started, and greeted with Internal Error :(

borplk 12y ago

Just wow. Did you have a competition on how you could tell as little as possible with a video? because that video just won that competition.

Mithaldu 12y ago

The site's completely broken in Opera 12.

drdoooom 12y ago

i'm not too sure what service it's suppose to provide.

ninjakeyboard 12y ago

I went there and immediately received a very nice looking 500 error

jere 12y ago
Very nice looking indeed.
- scorpwarp23 12y ago
  We'd love if you gave the app another go now. Would love some feedback. Thanks.
notduncansmith 12y ago
So did I. Try clicking on Dashboard in the top right, that worked for me. Edit: False start, it doesn't do anything unless you make an account. Lame.
- scorpwarp23 12y ago
  We're sorry you were greeted with this error. We have found the fault and are clearing it. You can use Linkwok without logging in but you do need to log in to store what you create on it.
- rajanand02 12y ago
  Hey. So were you able to move past this or did it appear again. We're running some tests and it appears that some users behind proxies or firewalls cannot connect correctly to either the ddp client or the server itself and as a result there's a data inconsistency that results in the 500 error. If you're still facing this issue could you help us out by capturing your console logs and emailing it to us on admin@cybit.in ? Part of the reason for the error was that the oplog instance was down but part of it seems to stem from proxies or vpns that we're not able to replicate. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

wzy 12y ago

Like everybody else... I made a search, got results, didn't know what to do, then left. I guess I can't figure out where(what?) google or bing is leaving off when I search for something

Superbloop 12y ago

To (most) of the comments regarding not knowing what to do, Linkwok is all about DRAGGING AND DROPPING search results, annotations, files from your computer and more to the canvas on the right side. It has a few similarities to mindmaps, but where those force you to concentrate on creating, with Linkwok, you get to concentrate on organising.

iamshs 12y ago
Any link to one of the canvas?
- scorpwarp23 12y ago
  Two 'searchmaps' about Linux: 1: https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=QSgnSYDj2rZ5sdxWf https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=QSgnSYDj2rZ5sdxWf 2: https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=eBLZYv5m66y3jTe9k https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=eBLZYv5m66y3jTe9k 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.

slunk 12y ago

Although I agree with others that the video leaves a bit to be desired, I thought I understood the point well enough and was looking forward to trying it out... Then I attempted to do just that and was instantly greeted with "INTERNAL ERROR AN INTERNAL ERROR WAS ENCOUNTERED." :/

scorpwarp23 12y ago
Sorry about that. Do give it another whirl now please.This was an error with our db service provider. Apologies again.

notduncansmith 12y ago

Okay, I think I've figured it out. This app is a mind-mapping tool, where nodes usually represent web content (but can be text, files, charts, or tables). It also has a somewhat convenient search interface built in which mirrors results from a few popular search engines. 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.

Superbloop 12y ago
Hey notduncansmith, thanks for the candid (and detailed) reply. 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 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... :)

bluewolf 12y ago

This looks like a new kind of research tool, which is great. I love this kind of stuff. Just show step-by-step how to use it and provide several examples.

iamshs 12y ago

I somehow managed to navigate your atrociously laid out grid navigation. I read the blog titled "The Maze of many things", and seems like you pitched it to some VCs and were criticized. You resolved to make your pitch stronger, and after 4 months you still haven't managed to do it, because I did not get what is the benefit, and how I can achieve the said benefit. Please rework your processes.

gone35 12y ago

Use your arrows. 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.

iamshs 12y ago
Some more things they can work on:- Even if you navigate right on PC, you get stuck upon navigating down, only way out is to navigate up again. And then you reach the blog, which breaks the arrow key navigation again, and you have to use mouse scroll. UX like this should have been caught on early.
- scorpwarp23 12y ago
  Thanks for the feedback guys. We put in a temporary fix without the whole grid nav. We thought it was pretty cool. But good UI is always an iterative process and we're working to improve this.

animex 12y ago

Startup down.

scorpwarp23 12y ago

Hi Guys. I'm with Team Linkwok. We regret the issue that you guys faced. It was because of our MongoDB service provider. Our oplog instance was offline. We have subsequently added a fix for this. The internal server error should not appear anymore. Thanks for your patience. As for the feedback you'll have given us, many thanks, we shall take your points into consideration.

scorpwarp23 12y ago
Many of you with the app running might face a reload as the page hot-code reloads so that you have the latest version of the App.

st8ic 12y ago

incomprehensible. Video failed to explain what the thing actually does. Really struggling to see the value.

jclos 12y ago

I don't know how much success you will have as a general search tool but I can tell you that with some tweaks here and there it would be an amazing tool for people to help with mapping a literature review, by searching google scholar/ACM/SpringerLink/IEEE/etc., drag&dropping results (which are papers or web pages) and adding some "glue" (edges between papers, "clusters of documents", timelines based on some metadata...).