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Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

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Re: Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

#2
http://dowser.sf.net

A desktop metasearcher + archiver + personal search engine. It got lost in the noise when Google & Yahoo had their pissing match over desktop search in late 2004. The failure wasn't inexplicable: it was just too much work for one person... which makes the quote on the bottom of the page bitterly ironic.

Re: Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

#3
post #2

http://dowser.sf.net A desktop metasearcher + archiver + personal search engine. It got lost in the noise when Google & Yahoo had their pissing match over desktop search in late 2004. The failure wasn't inexplicable: it was just too much work for one person... which makes the quote on the bottom of the page bitterly ironic.

I guess nowadays such things are made as Firefox extensions, e.g. Breadcrumbs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2954 .

Re: Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

#4
post #2

http://dowser.sf.net A desktop metasearcher + archiver + personal search engine. It got lost in the noise when Google & Yahoo had their pissing match over desktop search in late 2004. The failure wasn't inexplicable: it was just too much work for one person... which makes the quote on the bottom of the page bitterly ironic.

Dowser is/was amazing. When I was at Flock I would always use it as the example of what we should be doing with search in the browser.

Mozilla's start page with the google box is nice but nothing compared to dowser.

Re: Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

#5
post #2

http://dowser.sf.net A desktop metasearcher + archiver + personal search engine. It got lost in the noise when Google & Yahoo had their pissing match over desktop search in late 2004. The failure wasn't inexplicable: it was just too much work for one person... which makes the quote on the bottom of the page bitterly ironic.

Dowser is/was amazing. When I was at Flock I would always use it as the example of what we should be doing with search in the browser. Mozilla's start page with the google box is nice but nothing compared to dowser.

That's... actually very cool and gratifying to hear. Thank you. :)

Re: Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

#6
post #2

http://dowser.sf.net A desktop metasearcher + archiver + personal search engine. It got lost in the noise when Google & Yahoo had their pissing match over desktop search in late 2004. The failure wasn't inexplicable: it was just too much work for one person... which makes the quote on the bottom of the page bitterly ironic.

I guess nowadays such things are made as Firefox extensions, e.g. Breadcrumbs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2954 .

Yep. When the Slogger plugin came out I decided Dowser's time had come & gone.

Re: Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

#7
http://cadmium.avecora.com/

Failed social network advertising system that targets advertisements to Facebook Application users, by profile keywords (interests, activities), age, gender, specific networks, etc. Also targets ads throughout the web in participating partner websites.

Apparently no interest, and then Facebook launched Social Ads, with similar targeting features a month or so later.

Was hoping to integrate it with other social networks (Bebo, MySpace, Hi5, etc) and integrate with other websites to serve highly targeted advertising.

Also, ask me in a month, and I'll see how well my current venture is going. :/

Re: Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

#9
post #7

http://cadmium.avecora.com/ Failed social network advertising system that targets advertisements to Facebook Application users, by profile keywords (interests, activities), age, gender, specific networks, etc. Also targets ads throughout the web in participating partner websites. Apparently no interest, and then Facebook launched Social Ads, with similar targeting features a month or so later. Was hoping to integrate…

Great sense of web design on all your sites, and being 15 is pretty impressive too :-)
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