Ujiko - Theme based Search..

The weekend came and went. All I did was read some stuff here and there and yeah saw Goal 2: Living the Dream, though a part of it is still left. Somehow I enjoy writing a blog whilst in office.. damn, this can get dangerous sometime for me. ;)

It ain't that new, but worth mentioning - I did come across this peculiar search engine called kartoo. Visit it and you'll come to know why I referred to it as peculiar. Further, I found out that the same guys have also come out with another creation of theirs Ujiko - again strange and all I was left wondering if I'll ever use it!

The reason I talk about here is that it just doesn't have the usual search engine look, rather its got more of a gizmo look! Essentially, its trying to establish into a different genre of search engines which are theme based. Enter a search item, and it displays not just the search results but also associates certain themes with them. Clicking on the theme would further narrow your search and so on. As usual they don't charge you a penny, but employs more of a more-features-as-you-work approach; i.e. a new user starts on level 0, and depending on his usage of Ujiko, his level increases and so does the feature-set! More of a game-based approach you can say..
Both Ujiko and Kartoo score well on their rich user interface, especially Kartoo. These metadata engines are definitely different but I'm not really sure if they'll be able to attract users beyond the first time.
And yeah, for the inquisitive bunch, they are powered by Yahoo!