I am always searching for an alternative to plain, efficient Google with its drearily linear list of results. So this week, this column takes a trip left-field to shed some light on a search engine that breaks the mould. Meet Mooter (mooter.com/moot).
Depending on whether you choose to view the digital dandy in blue or orange, waves or flames shoot from the letter 'M'; the 'T', which resembles some kind of tubular bird, is equipped with a single eye that rolls and winks at the visitor. Beneath the search box sprawls what must be the world's most diffident slogan: 'Please be kind to our Beta server - we're building a better Mooter.' Hardly encouraging, but a refreshing change to the usual tech world hype.
The modest challenger fuses technology with psychology, 'turning abstract concepts into tangible, workable and useful algorithms', as the mother of Mooter, 35-year-old Sydney-based psychologist Liesl Capper puts it.
Her baby's name, she reveals, is meant to imply a question whose answer is open to debate and may not be definitive. 'This is because two people asking the same question may have totally different 'ideal' answers,' Ms Capper said. 'Even the same person, typing in the same keyword in two different days may want different answers at those different times.'
To cope with these nuances, Mooter algorithms gather a vast swathe of results and pick the most relevant. Mooter then 'pre-reads' the results, deduces the underlying themes, and builds a map of them. 'This is not done by just counting up keywords, but by complex analysis. Mooter takes the themes our algorithms have come up with and humanises them to make sure they are not nonsense.'
Mooter next presents the user with 'a starburst' of the most important themes. Thus, if you key in the words I Robot, among other categories Mooter comes up with 'movie', 'book' and 'music'. You then click on 'movie' for information about the impending Will Smith flick, for example. This removes the need to think up a superbly honed search term and means you need not wade through heaps of rubbish, Ms Capper said.
She recounts how, in one test, 'a high-level financial man' was helping his teenage daughter with a project on marijuana, which was meant to give her a balanced understanding of the weed.