Groxis Grokker 2.0

Dave Bailey — 2004-03-16T16:21:52.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Tuesday 16 March 2004 at 16:21:52

A useful tool that organises results from search engines into visual categories

Launched in December, Groxis Grokker 2.0 is an information clustering program that can pool data from a number of external information sources or local and networked file systems, presenting it on a single page in a visual format rather than in traditional text-based form.

Although it takes a while to get used to Grokker, it provides an interesting alternative to text-based web searching. Firms wishing to try Grokker can download a 36-day trial version from Groxis.com.

Currently, Grokker2 is only available for Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional, but as it is written in Java, Groxis could make it available for more operating systems. We reviewed Grokker2 in our labs under both Windows XP and 2000 after downloading the 20MB evaluation edition from the Groxis web site.

Mined data is brought to Grokker2 via plug-ins, three of which are currently available - one from Amazon, one to search local and networked file systems, and one for the web. The web plug-in allows the AltaVista, MSN, WiseNut, Fast, Yahoo, and Teoma search engines to be used simultaneously by Grokker.

Groxis plans to add support for Google as a plug-in and also intends to release a software development kit (SDK) this quarter, which will enable developers to write their own Grokker plug-ins for public or private data sources using Java.

Clicking the "Grok" button with specific search words or a phrase starts the search using the plug-in shown on the toolbar, and users can watch Grokker building its view of the mined data.

The system's default view is Grokker's map view, side by side with the Internet Explorer-based browser.

Clicking on a circle will zoom in to the specific section and display any further content. Any more circles represent sub-sections and users can drill into these.

Squares represent single files, and circle colours represent the age of the data, with blue representing old "cold" data and red showing newer "hot" data. Users can revert to a standard Google text-based search by using the Quick Grok button, which shows the 10 top hits in Grokker's map view and Google's results in the browser.

When "Grokking" with different plug-ins, various options to refine the search appear on the bottom of the screen. For instance, when searching file systems, Grokker allows searches based on attributes such as file size, date last modified, whether directories contain specific filenames or parts of filenames, and which program is required to open them. These attributes can also be combined in order to form complex filters.

Further information is shown if the cursor hovers inside these circles, such as the item count, the size of the largest item and the latest modification date. For example, we could run a search for Microsoft .doc files modified after 1 March 2003 with Bailey as part of the name and having a file size of at least 10kB.

File systems can be accessed in search or browse mode, with browse mode giving a total file system view, while search mode can be used to find specific files. Interestingly, when in file browse mode, Grokker can access the super-hidden recycler directory and restore files from there.

Apart from a keyword which can be used to filter information contained in Grokker's map, the Amazon plug-in can use possible shipping dates for items such as books, videos and music, as well as pricing information and a customer ranking parameter. The web plug-in allows searches with a combination of search engine, domain location, ranking, and a keyword for filtering Grokker's results.

Price: $49

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