The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[fluidblogger]

Scouting around the net I've noticed numerous blog articles mentioning terms like "The Opposite of Google". "Search Engine Alternative" and "The Explore Engine", being a bit of a netfreak this caught my attention.

I'm always looking for something new & useful on the net to add to my collection of frequently visited tools and sites, however an alternative homepage seems to have eluded me for years, it’s always been the google search box. Search Engines, Directories and Portals have been about for years, and frankly the last time I was inspired by one was, well possibly never! Often I jump on the internet to work, I use the internet to find information, to learn more about something I already know, all the normal things you use it for, but if your anything like me you probably visit the same 10-20 websites all the time, have a search engine as your homepage and can't remember the last time you "browsed the internet"

Here's my frustration, sometimes I just want to find something new, a site I've never seen, something I never new existed, something interesting and something to inspire me, realistically I'd quite like this in my life on a daily basis. Have you ever tried to find something new on the internet? Its virtually impossible.. this about sums up my point.. google “something new i don't know” and you get the iPod website

Anyways back to the point in hand, it appears these articles were talking about a new site called "The Explore Engine". Here we go, about to click yet another "alternative search engine" or another directory plastered in adverts, click, page rapidly appears and I'm confronted with a whole host of little green boxes that they like to call pixels. I clicked one and a little thumbnail of the site and its url was shown to me over on the left, clicked another and it was another website.

I was shocked to say the least, the concept was so simple but I'd never seen it before, its simply random websites, websites I've never seen before. There’s no search box or anything, just one button saying "explore more", click it and you’re presented with another 250 websites to explore.

I spent over an hour just clicking about previewing websites and visiting them; according to my stats at the bottom of the page I have previewed 568 websites and visited 68.

Here’s the bit that astounded me, I bookmarked 46 of the websites, and in the year leading upto this I think I'd possibly bookmarked a grand sum of 7.

In short after several years, I have a new homepage, I feel a breathe of fresh air in my internet life, I'm considering taking up photography and every time I open my web browser there’s a new selection of websites to spark my imagination, and well if I want to search I just type it into my google toolbar instead of their homepage. To my mind it really is the opposite of google, and it’s brought new life to the internet.

And here it is, www.dbpixels.net

[fluidblogger]

as i said in a previous thread re spamming, i hope you don't think I'm spamming here, this is actually my opinion, took me 2 minutes to get to grips with the site but i use it daily now.

I'd be interested to hear if I'm the only one taken with the site!

[OldGeorge]

If you'd given the URL, http://www.dbpixels.net/, you might have gotten some responses sooner than a pregnancy later!

Search engines aren't very helpful with "The Explore Engine," you see; it's not exactly a unique phrase referring only to the site you were so taken with. I had to go to a cache of a wikipedia article they were already considering deleting, presumably as a case of shameless self-promotion.

As to the site itself, I'm not sure yet what I think; the first 2 sites don't interest me, but that's not a fair sample. But since I need to stalk groceries now, I'm just posting the above.

P.S. It's perfectly obvious to anyone who can read that the first post IS your own opinion. Spammers are rarely so articulate/literate or so personal.