Ebrahim Ezzy at the Read/Write Web continues to review Search 2.0 engines.

Part 1 looked at Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty, Wink, and Lexxe.

Part 2 looks at Gravee, Jookster, Krugle, LivePlasma, Qube, and ZoomInfo.

For me, the good thing about these different search engines is their niche orientation. By focusing on specific types of searches, they reduce the clutter of items I'm not interested in. If I want to search music and movies, then LivePlasma is of help. If I want to find someone, then it's ZoomInfo. Krugle is good for code-related technical questions.

As Ezzy says,

S-2.0 enabled data is distributed through the lateral route of a user's interests - rather than the direct route of TSEs, which require a user to carefully craft his/her query to be an accurate statement of the information desired.

Having students explore these search engines for their own interests may be a good stepping stone to performing academic searches using databases.