Tuesday 20 April 2010

Niche search engines

Search engine land has an article called "8 Crazy-Cool Search Engines You Should Know". They are moderately crazy/cool and may even be useful to you:

  1. Dead Cell Zones offers a searchable map mashup of user-reported dead cellular zones. It lists U.S. dead spots that have been reported by users of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and some smaller carriers. How many? The site claims to have more than 100,000 submissions from users.
  2. Things You Saw in a Movie helps you find things you, well, saw in a movie and wondered where you could pick one up yourself. Like the red stapler in Office Space, for example.
  3. Storm Events for people who love weather, info from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) lists all U.S. weather events going back to 1996, and some (like tornadoes, high winds, and hail) going back to the 1950s.
  4. Pillbox from the NIH is a search engine for identifying unknown pills; you provide the size, shape, color etc and it provides a list of possibilities and links to more info.
  5. TypoBuddy is a search engine that helps you look for misspelled auction items on eBay or misspelled items on Craigslist. No kidding.
  6. Filler Item Finder If you are buying something on Amazon that costs $24.99 and you want to spend $25 to get the free shipping this search engine will find you low-cost Amazon products to bump up your total just enough.
  7. Soda Finder offers a search engine for rare, old, and discontinued soda pop. Yum!
  8. StorageFront offers a search engine for finding self-storage locations across the U.S. You can filter results by unit size and a dozen features, such as climate control, 24-hour cameras, and more.


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