Chan's Personal Blog

The last couple months, I've been working on a product at Yahoo! called Search Pad which has finally launched today. It's a tool for people who do research using a search engine.

The product was designed to meet a need that we observed in the labs when we watched people do searches. We found that people would go to a search engine, visit a site, jot down some notes on some paper, visit another site, jot down some more, and repeat. Yahoo! Search Pad is a built in notepad in Yahoo! Search; thus, replacing that paper. It records the sites you visit, it allows you to jot down notes, and it even lets you share your notes with your friends.

The tool is also smart enough to figure out whether you're doing research. If it thinks you are, it'll start recording the sites you visit. It's also intelligent enough to detect if you've started doing research on another topic, and start recording a new session for you.

Enough talk, how do you trigger Search Pad? Check out: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=ninjas+vs+pirates. On the right hand side of the screen is a dock that reads "Search Pad". Click on that, and Search Pad will open up.



This is an example of how I used Search Pad. So, one of my co-workers is in town this week, and I needed to pick a restaurant to go to. I was hankering for a good Philly Cheesesteak. So, I went to Yahoo! Search and ran a couple queries like "Philly Cheesesteak Santa Clara", "Philly Cheesesteak San Jose", etc. I checked out some of the restaurant's websites, and Search Pad recorded all of these sites that I visited. I copied down some important info from those websites, like hours of operation, and their reviews. I threw out some of the restaurants that I didn't think were very good. I'm left with a shortlist of good Philly Cheesesteak joints. I then share the document with my friends, so they can help pick the restaurant we want to go to.

You can check out my research on Philly Cheesesteaks here.

To all my friends who are school teachers. If your students start a lot of their research using search engines, then I would highly recommend this Search Pad tool for them. It's a really useful way to organize information while doing research on search engines.

You can read the official Search Pad announcement over at the Yahoo! Search Blog.

Anyways, it's nice that this is finally out there, and I can resume regular sleeping hours again. Please voice any comments and feedback that you may have.