When you use Google to search for stuffs, how do you want it to be served – slow, normal or fast? I prefer it to be fast, that why when I was introduced to Heapr, I like it instantly.

Just like any other meta search engines out there, Heapr uses Google as its backend engine and display the search result to its users. What differentiate itself from the rest is that it is lightning fast, as fast as you start typing on the keyboard. Search results are displayed on the fly. As soon as you finished typing your search terms, the search result will be ready for you.

On the main screen, you don’t see a whole bunch of thing. Like Google, there is only a search bar in the center and several options in the header. There is no ads or whatsoever.

Search on keypress

With the use of AJAX, Heapr retrieves Google search result on the fly. As soon as you start typing on keypress, the search is performed immediately in the backend and the result is displayed instantly on the main page. This kind of make the “Search” button redundant since there won’t be any chance of you using it.

Retrieve results from several sites

If you think that is all Heapr can do, then you are wrong. Other than Google, Heapr also retrieves search results from Twitter, Wolfram Alpha or Wikipedia and display them alongside your Google search results. One interesting thing, on the Twitter search results, there is even a “Reply” link under each tweet where you can click to reply the tweet. Another thing, the Twitter search result is real time, so you will see your Twitter search column update every few seconds.

Specify search result file types

Like Google, you can also specify if you want to search a site, an image or any other file types. There are five options that you can choose from: Web, Images, Videos, Twitter, Lite

Web: default search options, showing Twitter, Wolfram Alpha or Wikipedia alongside Google search results
Images: Showing Google images and Flickr images in two column display
Videos: Default option is YouTube, but you can choose to search Hulu or Vimeo as well
Twitter: Perform a real time search of Twitter result. Page refreshed every second
Lite: Only Google search result. Nothing else.

Other Settings

Other settings that you can configure include Google Suggest, Fast Search, Language and Country. By default, Heapr turns off Google Suggest (a dropdown list that suggests to you various search terms), but you can easily turn it on by clicking on the link beside the GoogleSuggest option.

For those who don’t like the search result to be retrieved on the fly, you can turn off the FastSearch.

Heapr is also available in multiple languages (14 in total) and you can choose the country to retrieve the search result from.

Firefox addon

Last but not least, there is a Firefox addon that you can install to add Heapr into your search engine list. Personally, I find that this extension is useless and take up valuable resources. You can easily click the “Add to Browser” button at the top right corner of the Heapr page to achieve the same effect.

Personally, I really like the speed of Heapr and the ability to fetch results from various sites. If you have used Heapr, I am waiting to hear your experience.

When I am sitting at my desk and trying to focus on work, it is all too easy to lend my attention to something much more interesting than what I should be doing. Going to a search site or looking at the auto suggestions when typing in a bookmark tag can easily steal your attention.

I have recently been trying out a different homepage at work. 43marks isn’t as flashy as some of the homepages out there, but flashy is usually distracting. How 43marks differs from other homepages, is how much it offers in such a simple layout. 43marks combines two things people use on a daily basis: bookmarks and search engines.

Having four options to search at your fingertips without all of the typical distractions and random links associated with some sites is a breath of fresh air. Google, Yahoo, Bing and Wikipedia are probably the most commonly used search engines. All of them aggregate the “top sites” in a different way. Type in a search term and get the results from Google; to see what Yahoo,Bing or Wikipedia simply click that tab and the results shift to the other search engine’s results.

To personalize your 43marks homepage, follow these steps:

1. Click on the the “customize yours” tab in the top right corner of the main page.

2. Enter in a user name, email address and a password twice.

3. Once you are all set up, you will have a default list of bookmarks and RSS feeds.

4. To change the bookmarks and RSS feeds, click [Manage]

5. Three options are presented to you: Manage Bookmarks, Manage RSS Feeds and User Settings.

If you want to wipe the slate clean, 43marks does give an option to delete all bookmarks.

6. In the RSS Manage RSS Feeds tab, the same option to start from scratch is available.

* A pretty easy way to add a feed is to click on the RSS icon most sites have. This will pull up a page with the feed address listed. The feed URL should look something like this – http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeTechEasier

The RSS part works well, but if you want to change a feed from ESPN to Make Tech Easier, you need to delete the old one and add in the new name and address.

7. In the User Settings, you are presented a four options:

• Choose whether you want your page to be private or public so anyone can see your list of bookmarks and RSS feeds. If you choose public, just give our the URL to your page. Mine is 43marks.com/trevor_dobrygoski

• How you would like the RSS feeds displayed – Expanded or collapsed
• The maximum number of books marks to display in each category column
• How you want the bookmark or RSS link to open when clicked

With all of the distractions present to anyone who works online, 43marks is a great solution to wrangle the information you NEED to look at and none that you don’t.

What tools do you use to cut down on distractions when you work online?

About a year ago, Damien compiled a list of some lesser known niche search engines; this post is adding in a few more to that list.

Social Media Search

1. Topsy

Topsy searches Twitter for links that are relevant to your search.  Topsy ranks results based on how well they match your search terms, and the influence of the people talking about them.

2. CrowdEye

CrowdEye scans through tweets, retweets, links and more on Twitter to find your results. The outcome of your search is a graph showing the popularity of the search term for up to three days, other tags, links, tweets, and popular hashtags relating to you search. This seems like a lot of information to have in front of you all at once, but it is laid out very well and is easy to pick out what you want.

3. Collecta

Collecta weeds through Flickr, comments on blog posts, Twitter, Jaiku, Identica and articles on sites and blogs for results that match your search query. Like you may imagine, Twitter results tend to be the an overwhelming number of the results due to the volume of tweets. In the sidebar to the left, you can filter out the Twitter updates and see the photos, comments and articles.

4. Icerocket

Icerocket exclusively searches blogs, news feeds and social media sites; it is also one of the only search site that said it included Myspace.

5. Scoopler

Scoopler pulls info from Twitter along with other sources like Youtube, blogs, Flickr, twitpic etc. to give you the latest articles, pictures and video.

6. OneRiot

OneRiot analyzes the links people share on social sharing sites like Digg and Twitter then indexes the content for your viewing. The result is the freshest possible content from around the social web in near realtime.

IRS Document Search

7. IRS.gov wizard

The IRS.gov wizard sifts through roughly 4,000,000 pages on the IRS tax document site. This kind of search will save you immense amounts of time whether you know accountant-speak or not.

Search Alerts

8. Trackle

Trackle is not like most search sites, it has a multitude of preset search categories to choose from such as: travel, celebrity gossip, stocks, classified ads, health, crime and many more. When a category is selected, you can enter in up to three keywords to search. Once there are results that meet your criteria, you will be notified by SMS (text message), daily email, instant email or you can just check the site at your leisure. This is a lot like Google alerts, but easier for most purposes and searches more than just Google.

MetaSearch

9. iBoogie

The way iBoogie works is similar to other meta search engines. It queries multiple search sites to pull up a wider variety of results from the search terms you enter. Where iBoogie differs, is how it sorts the results into categories in the left sidebar. By dividing up the results like this, it helps you narrow down your search even more. Sure you can do this on most other search sites, but this saves you a step or two.

10. MetaCrawler

MetaCrawler uses “metasearch technology” to get results from the web’s major search engines. Because multiple search engines are queried, you get a greater variety of results than a single search engine typically gives. Like most, the results are a combination of sponsored and non-commercial sites. Sponsored results are always clearly identified with a “Sponsored”

11. GoodSearch

Out of all the search sites on this list, GoodSearch is the only one that will make you feel like a better person for using it. Goodsearch donates half of its revenue from your search to the schools and charities you ask them to. When you type in a word or phrase to search for, the search is performed by Yahoo!. The difference is, GoodSearch donates a portion of the money advertisers pay to have ads and sponsored links displayed. Also on the site they offer coupons to many online retailers. So if you do a lot of purchasing online, might as well help a worthy cause at the same time.

What sites do you use to get information from?

Image credit: gatewayyyy