Quixey: A New and Impressive Search Tool To Find Apps for Many Operating Systems
For the past few weeks we’ve been able to use a new search tool in a private beta named Quixey. This new resource is 100% focused on finding apps and add-ons/extensions for most major mobile platforms, Mac and Windows, and web browsers. Web apps are also listed.
Today, the Quixey became available to all users at Quixey.com. It’s a free service.
In just a few words, we really like what we’ve seen in terms of the comprehensiveness in terms of apps and formats, quality of the results, ease of use, and layout/appearance of search results and info pages. It’s a bit early to say but after using many tools to find apps Quixey has a very good shot of becoming our go to resource for app search. They are off to a great start.
If you’re using Quixey to find an app you’re already aware of you’ll most likely not even have to click the search button and simply selecting using a drop-down menu that appears below the search box. If video demos or reviews are available on YouTube they are also included.
Searchers can narrow results by operating system, free/fee apps, and if the app has been mentioned on TechCrunch or screen shots are available on Flickr.
Users can also find other apps from a developer of an app they have or are researching by clicking the name in each result.
Again, we like Quixey a lot and plan to use it a lot (we’re app junkies around here). However, that doesn’t mean it can’t use some additional features. Here are three of them.
- An option to take an entry about an about an app and send the info using one or more tools to your mobile device or to a friend or colleague. This can be done with cut and paste or downloading to your computer and then syncing. Neverthless the process stills needs to be easier and completed more quickly especially for some users.
- An actual mobile version of the service. We were able to use Quixey on a mobile Safari browser but the experience needs to be improved.
- An option to limit by the date an app became available or was updated as well as a list of new apps for a specific date.
As we always, it’s only a beta and in this case it just became available to all users. So, stay tuned.
Learn More
1. Read About What Quixey Calls Their “Functional Search” technology
2. Watch the Quixey Introductory Video
We will have more to say about Quixey soon. If you or those you work with are in search of an app or you just want to see what’s available for a topic, it’s more than worth a look. Even if you don’t have a mobile device Quixey still has plenty to offer you.
Filed under: Patrons and Users, Resources, Video Recordings
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.