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Show HN: Peekier – A new way to search the web

peekier.com

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Re: Show HN: Peekier – A new way to search the web

#21

Post by fivesigma »

lioeters wrote: post #17

Thank you for sharing this, it's a great first impression. - Clean design - Fast search results with previews - Layout options - User privacy On the second visit, I noticed the "tags" feature: it's possible to narrow down the search results by suggested key words. Very nice user experience. One idea: perhaps there can be a description of how to set Peekier as the default search engine (for example: https://duckduckgo…

Thanks. There could be a description on how to set the default search engine as it is a different process on each browser.

Re: Show HN: Peekier – A new way to search the web

#23

Post by tomw1808 »

Interesting concept. I am keeping a stack of a few million screenshots from the newscombinator, but I am not using it. Actually I thought about deleting them recently because I found the concept of having full-screen screenshots pretty bad. But now that I see it, I like it.

One question tough: How large is your index? I haven't seen any information on that, or did I miss anything?

Re: Show HN: Peekier – A new way to search the web

#25

Post by hellcow »

fivesigma wrote: post #20
vtange wrote: post #19

Is there a way of turning off the screenshot previews? I don't particularly need it all the time and I'd imagine it stresses the engine a bit more than spitting things out in text-based, list format.

I'm afraid not. It's the major differentiator, otherwise it'd be the same as everything else out there.

Are you testing the value or user demand for that feature? I agree with the GP. Screenshots reduce information density, increase bandwidth (load time), and for me take even longer to visually parse than a text result. That is, they interfere with what I consider to be the most important things I need from a search engine. Having screenshots populate over time as they load moves my eyes around the page and acts as a distraction--at least for me.

Google tested a similar "view a screenshot of the search result" feature a while back. You'd hover over a result and it'd show the screenshot in a column to the right. For whatever it's worth, they axed it, although I don't know the reasons why.

Re: Show HN: Peekier – A new way to search the web

#29

Post by eevilspock »

fivesigma wrote: post #7
drKarl wrote: post #6

Another question I have is... who's behind peekier? And how is it funded (servers are expensive, development costs, etc), how does it make money (Google makes money precisely because it doesn't offer those privacy features), and if it doesn't make money what's the agenda behind it?

That would be me. I thought it would be a cool thing to have - previews of a website before you visit it - so I built it. It does not make money but its monthly cost is minimal at the moment. It is too early to discuss "the agenda" behind it because there is none. If it catches on and becomes popular enough, I have a few ideas on how to make it sustainable without sacrificing any of the privacy features.

First, I'm impressed.

But I'm having trouble believing that it doesn't cost much. Isn't that lot of bandwidth (getting pages and generating previews), especially if you are doing that on the fly? Or does your crawler generate and cache preview images? If the latter how large is your index?

Is the monthly cost minimal simply because you don't yet have much traffic?

Re: Show HN: Peekier – A new way to search the web

#30

Post by Cpoll »

libovness wrote: post #27

From https://peekier.com/about "Peekier (pronounced /'pi·ki·er/)" If it's spelled exactly as it would be if you wanted it to be pronounced another way, it should be pronounced that way

That's almost a plus: People in the know can feel smug pronouncing it the correct way, while the majority of people pronounce it the obvious way. See: Wikipedia's pronunciation.
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