Doogle design search engine for graphic design, print design, web design, web development, photography, and fine art related information
What is Doogle?
Doogle is Tom's custom Google search engine geared for design. What kind of design? General graphic design for print and the web. Web design and development, SEO, AJAX, XHTML, Javascript, PHP, and all that lovely stuff.
Doogle works just like Google actually (it is Google afterall), but contains a much cleaner and more relevant search for the artist/designer.
How did it come about?
Well, I (me, Tom) have WAY too many bookmarks (hundreds actually) and the sad thing is, I actually frequent all of them. Yes, I do get out. Right, moving forward...It's a mess to actually get to some of the things I bookmarked let alone remember what the pages/sites were about just by titles. So when I found out about Google's custom search engine, it was like magic. I've pointed some troubled souls to it and it's actually proven to be of value. Essentially, to me, what a custom Google search engine does is gives one the benefits of a hand selected link directory with the power of Google's search algorythm. WOW! In human terms...it cuts out all the crap. However, it's focused and again do not search with it if you aren't looking for graphic design related information.
Can anyone contribute?
Anyone can contribute by submitting sites to be indexed. There will be a whole nice complex system for this soon. Also, I will accept people's subscribed links xml feeds...Have one? Make one. This will help me with an insane amount of requests, keep the reults accurate, and it will also allow people to report bad links or links that aren't relevant. I don't have that much time to be reviewing and entering in sites, though there will always be a degree of human involvement to review quality.
Doogle's search results are accurate because I work hard to keep them that way. The sites that are indexed are carefully selected. I'm a graphic designer and I use this myself, so I'm not going to want it cluttered up with sites that aren't relevant! That's your personal guarantee.
Why Doogle?
I'm being unoriginal and minimalistic. Google carries a very well known branding...this is Google essentially, so why not? The logo was made in two minutes using Garamond because I didn't know if any copyrights would be infringed by using parts of the Google logo's typeface. So better safe than sorry.
The future
Yes, I do have plans for the future. One major thing to come is a system to allow site submissions that at the same time builds onto my xml file(s) and makes it very easy to submit sites and categorize them....along with reporting bad/irrelevant sites. Why not use Google's collaboration feature? It's limited in function and amount of contributors, but I will probably recruit trustworthy contributors. Yes, I do have my own ideas and do like combining technology. However, I promise to always keep a tidy and easy to use site.