After posting about Linkwok on HN a few months ago, we received tons of feedback, mostly directed at clarifying its workflow and UI. So with that in mind, please welcome the new and improved Linkwok: A complete Search to Conclusion package.
Linkwok is designed to save you considerable time, effort and often money in conducting your research either as an individual or a team.
Use the FREE web app, and its accompanying Chrome extension to move efficiently through your research by seeing what others have found useful, organising individual elements on a canvas and presenting it over Powerpoint.
We are a very small team of dedicated developers trying to create something that is useful and free. We believe that we've come far, but have a long way to go Please help us with any feedback that will help us make Linkwok work better for you.
PS: We're hard at work creating a better video to help explain everything better :p
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... :)
Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. I do have a few more questions:
> 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!
You're right- we didnt focus on the ability to see maps that others have made. We reckoned that until we get a particular user base, pretending like Linkwok has a network effect would be a waste of time and resources. Right now, there is a very small hook to make this point- one of the search engines listed is Linkwok- where you can search for maps that others have made. We have metatags and other stuff built and kept ready so that the maps can be trawled by Google and other engines too. We expected that this 'ecosystem' would come into its own after we had some solid traction and focusing on that instead of creating traction might be a waste of resources today.
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
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...
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.
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.
But honestly, I think we make an important and incorrect assumption- we try to revolutionise by evolution.
Why put smartphones on your wrist or your head and call it a revolution? Why make an app that is a Tinder or a Wikipedia or a Google for something else and call it a revolution?
The real revolutions are going to be things that havent been thought of yet, in any manner. In the meanwhile, we have this hyper-accelerated evolution- lets focus on lowering the barriers for entry...
Exactly! Good point- I think people forget that...
Ever wonder why speed skaters have some of the most muscular legs around? Its simply the number of unencumbered 'squats' they continue to do over long periods of time while practising.
Sure you can lose weight quickly with HIT and HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) but we need a lot more study to confirm that they are genuinely 'better for health'. At the moment, they're just a variation...like variations :)
A Facebook/Twitter account is basically an opportunity to publish your 'digital ego'.
Its the reason apps like Instagram exist- they allow you to polish your images so that you can basically tell the world, "hey look how much fun I'm having, and you're missing out"
Facebook/Twitter/ in fact a lot of these publishing platforms exist to weed out the mundane parts of your life so that what is public is the most exciting, jealousy inducing 'Cliffs Notes'.
Essentially, thanks to them, when you die, people will be able to look at your profile or your tweets and mourn, "that person lived such an interesting life."
Whatever you opine upon reading this is your answer to your question (as I see it)...
Linkwok is designed to save you considerable time, effort and often money in conducting your research either as an individual or a team.
Use the FREE web app, and its accompanying Chrome extension to move efficiently through your research by seeing what others have found useful, organising individual elements on a canvas and presenting it over Powerpoint.
We are a very small team of dedicated developers trying to create something that is useful and free. We believe that we've come far, but have a long way to go Please help us with any feedback that will help us make Linkwok work better for you.
PS: We're hard at work creating a better video to help explain everything better :p