Hey buddy, can you spare a dime? Coins 2.0
Today’s Search Engine of the Day may not be one that you use every day, but what it exemplifies is that Custom Search Engines (”CSE”)now allow anyone to collect a vast number of websites (4,200 coin sites here!) around any topic, slap on a logo, and “Bob’s your Uncle,” you have a “search engine.”
Of course it’s not really a web search engine (hence the quotes), it doesn’t perpetually crawl the web gathering new data on coins, so why nominate it it for Search Engine of the Day?
One, because you’re going to be seeing a whole lot more of these. Already, as I go about my business looking for alternative search engines, more and more of them are these CSE once you take a good look at them.
Two, they are very useful, which is why people love to create them. Coins 2.0 really does make it much easier to look up valuable coins. The major search engines would most likely require you to sift through any number of results, hunting for the good results. So they meet the requirement of improving upon one aspect of the major search engines.
Finally, they are inspirational. Anyone can create a CSE; here’s the link to Google’s program. Or try this excellent alternative search engine, Mojeek. So take a look at this numismatic search engine, and think about your favorite hobby or cause.
Knowing nothing about coins, I just typed in “New Zealand.” Here are the results:
Coins 2.0 also has an enormous, multi-page tag cloud.
I really think that they could have reduced this-a lot.
But when you do find some interesting coins, you can easily “click to enlarge.” That’s a nice feature for a coin collector, I’m sure.
All in all, Coins 2.0 is a very well done project for coin enthusiasts. Now about that dime…
