Ggoal - Blog

On the web like on the field. These are the miracles of Web 2.0. The fan which once used to be glued to the TV, now has his own team, and this team is called Ggoal. The football European Championship has lead to a co-operation among users which has few precedents. The community acts like a team while it supports Italy. In a few days hundreds of users have built an impressive building around the word “Euro 2008“. Calendars of the fixtures, cities involved, organisation of the trip, betting, predictions, blogs, foreign portals and so on. It seems that this time the Ggoal community has paid particular attention to online news updates. Video services, pdf documents, classification of images and exclusives and specials. This is delivered with attention to detail which  can only be provided by a team made up by real people.

In this respect Italy has already won. The Ggoal community has few precedents. In a few months the success of the web 2.0 experiment has lead to unexpected results mainly in terms of quality. The Ggoal users soon learn the true value of their contributions, which relies on quality. The suggestions are relevant including comments and details. The requested searches are fulfilled in a few hours by the community itself. As occurred for Euro 2008 entries.

We believe that the strength lies in the participation. If it is natural to gather to support one’s team then it is also natural to co-operate to exchange knowledge and information. A “bet”, just to stay in theme, which seems to be a winner.

After months of daily work to supply a reliable and human search facility, we are always more convinced of a fundamental assumption: collective intelligence is required to inform the collectivity.

The case of People’s 2005 income being published by the italian tax authority on the web was an obvious and direct example. It was talked about for days. Legitimate or not, the citizens were touched by something which involved them directly, so they wanted further information. And so who to ask? On which websites does italian people’s 2005 income appear? Which portals have collected this information? Which institutions should one ask for clarifications? A vital help was provided by Ggoal.

No spiders, no confusion and dispersion. The intelligent user wants the suggestions to come from like minded individuals, people involved in a search and an exchange of information that protect and help users, thanks especially to a responsible conduct. The statistics confirm this. In a few days Ggoal was overwhelmed by visits. Between May 2nd and May 10th Ggoal received 230,000 requests.

The issue of people’s income being published online was important, but for us what counts are the trends and new habits of web users. And the web tells us that users in order to quickly and reliably know about the websites which published People’s 2005 income preferred asking a human community, the Ggoal community.

Web 2.0 offers these new and great opportunities. Ggoal is the first Web 2.0 search engine which embraces them all. Ggoal is an innovative search tool beyond any expectation, running after users’ requests, offering the support of a , and preparing the ground for fulfilling information. The Ggoal World is this and much more.

Millions of people follow the Italian elections on the web. The race of the websites is aimed at providing election results in real time. The Ggoal community has done its duty in these days by providing a complete round up of information to its users. Information coming from other users. Ggoal’s task is obviously not to make predictions or forecasts, but, like every reputable search engine, to inform. To inform in detail about the different aspects regarding the 2008 Elections.

On this aspect Ggoal has not surpassed its own expectations. Thanks to the cooperation of a community which is growing considerably day by day, the people who have used the first Web 2.0 search engine have obtained what they were looking for. The elections are a complex topic, which do not only concern the knowledge of participating parties, but also the views of single candidates and mainly the existing electoral law. Yes, because the intelligent voter, like the intelligent user, could want to know for example the text of the law which leads us to the elections in these days.

Therefore, people who use the web to know, deepen and choose a crucial subject like the elections of their own country have to receive precise results, reliable answers and guarantee of neutrality meaning efficiency. In this the Ggoal community is leading the way. The Ggoal Team, which monitors the requests and suggestions by users, confirms that there have not been excessive cases of propaganda by users. The contributions which the staff received have all been oriented towards sharing information: precise, detailed, clean and impartial. This is a sign that Ggoal is a mature and intelligent community. This is also good politics and does politics good.

We wished to communicate this positive feedback, which has allowed the administrators to better understand the Ggoal team players, but above all has shown users that they can trust a fully human search engine.
Regarding the outcome of the elections, we agree with the fair play saying: “may the best man win“. 

“Link Packaging”, meaning groups of links. What is it for? To collect like in a catalogue hypertext proposals of the web according to a chosen topic. Ggoal has done it for companies, single users, schools, and public institutions. The usage of the web for all these different groups has to be quick and efficient. A District uses the internet to find institutional websites, a school to locate educational institutions, companies to obtain information about their core business and their sector, and single users to search a range of information. At times searching can take a long time. Millions of pages to go through to find appropriate results and often keywords are located in pages which are not relevant and can be a distraction.

Ggoal has, therefore, created a personalised Link Packaging service. The user asks the Ggoal Team to collect the main sites of a sector or topic. Ggoal’s search includes italian and international requests and is checked for quality and associated with a relevant description of the page. Each link is then associated with further keywords to widen the range of information.

But what is the usefulness of Link Packaging? In this: where the collection of supplied internet addresses are all grouped into one link by the Ggoal Team. An example? Lets imagine that we are a press office, and we need to look at the main national and international newspapers, so they need to be readily available. Ask Ggoal, and Ggoal will provide the link:

http://www.ggoal.com/site/piz_search.php?fraseCercata=quotidiani

If you are a registered user you will find the link in your personal panel or ask for it by e-mail for your personal use. You can use it from any workstation, bookmark it from Ggoal, but also on other internet services. There is also another advantage? The Ggoal community keeps on updating with new Link Packaging requests which increases, improves and optimises in real time. You can add suggestions and contributions according to the novelties you find on the Web. Provide a service to the community other than updating the catalogue.

A search topic. A collection of quality internet addresses. Only one link to click on.

See you soon!

When you have a tool like Ggoal at your disposal, it is important to know what and how many functions are available, how many services it offers, and how it’s searching system, bookmarks and personalisation work.

There have been many cases in which Ggoal has mistakenly been considered a directory software like Yahoo with folders and sub folders in a hierarchical system. Misunderstandings which often prevent the user from obtaining the best use out of the search engine.

The innovation of Ggoal is precisely this. To enter in a non hierarchical logic of contents. No hierarchy between the requested links except those decided by the user. No hierarchy between keywords matching a specific keyword. A different interpretation could create confusion: for example one may expect that the word “sport” has “football” or “skiing” below it and not the other way round.

This concept of subcategories does not belong to Ggoal. For this reason we prefer to describe Ggoal as a galaxy and not a tree. There is a centre (keyword chosen by the user), around which a range of keywords rotate linked to each other by meaning; belonging which in the case of same words (like some english words which in the case of different contexts have different meaning) can create unexpected relationships between keywords. This is what we consider the creative aspect of language, and of Ggoal as a language tool. 

The use of the software is simple and to facilitate the use of all the search engine’s potential the Ggoal Team has developed an elegant and quick “help” section which shows the logic used by the software to associate and return results to the searches. All you need to do is go to the homepage of the site and click on “How it works“, next to the orange icon.

We hope we have made all the Ggoal team happy.

We have to breakdown the word “museum” meaning the place where you can find old, past, used and no longer usable things. But then again Ggoal is used to proposing new angles of meaning and to rename the meaning of Web and online searching. We say this, due to the young age, because it could seem a paradox that Ggoal has been entered in MoMB Museum of Modern Betas , a virtual place that celebrates new Web 2.0 findings, and it collects them in one infinite exhibition hall. It is a virtual room, obviously in which for love of paradoxes, we find, in the view of modern, all the products for Web in “beta”, that are in continuous evolution.

What makes Ggoal a “beta” search engine? Naturally, the continuous improvement, flexible usage, personalisation options and even minimal graphics. But there is an element which is more important than others: Ggoal grows with contributions by users. This continuous and real participation, the direct line which is created between people who have as final goal that of fulfilling requests of the Net’s population, which inaugurates growth possibilities and unpublished  improvements.

That is therefore where the creative meaning of “beta” resides: not final phase, subsequent to alpha and which actually announces the whole alphabet still to be developed, and a new language still to be invented. And this language will be the result of collective intelligence of millions of human minds.

We greet therefore with enthusiasm our entry in “museum exhibits” in this paradoxical world of Web 2.0 which no longer indicates infinitely old but on the contrary extraordinarily young, modern, unpublished and innovative inventions. And so… Alpha, Beta, Gamma… the lesson begins!

Ggoal is like Homer’s Ulysses. It passes the Pillars of Hercules of the known Web to discover new worlds. Ggoal is moving towards unknown ground to improve the quality of online searching, and it could not miss the shores of America, where the alternative to the main search engines is neither utopian nor mad.

“We are not afraid of Google” can be read in a banner of the site Alt Search Engine, a famous blog specialised in alternative search engines to the giants of the Web. Alt Search Engine is part of Read Write Web, which is one of the 40 most read blogs in the world. Ggoal therefore has entered in the American Olympus with an article translated in English, which shows the overseas brothers the features of the first Web 2.0 search engine developed in Italy.

We have lifted our anchors. Now it will be your breeze of fresh air to blow the sails and direct the fleet of collective intelligence wherever it can explore, discover, and share new worlds and technologies. Ggoal‘s sails move thanks to the blowing of many users who daily, with their contributions, add to the hold of a bottomless ship, which mainly carries a load of human knowledge, made by people and for people.
Ship in sight. Ggoal is coming!

We mentioned just yesterday about the inclination of our Spanish colleagues towards Web 2.0.  From one of their initiatives Maestro Alberto took inspiration to launch a similar idea in Italy: specifically to publish on his blog the photos of Italian Web 2.0 start ups. And we took part.

Today we return by fatal coincidence to talk about Spain, because on our blog we received a post by Casker, who told us that he tried Ggoal and that he was enthusiastic about it. We thank him for his intervention, and we especially welcome his fantastic offer to make an official translation of Ggoal in hispanic.

As you know Ggoal  is a creation based mainly on ideas by users and that of Casker is certainly a demonstration that it can be done; actually it is being done.

We take this occasion to tell everyone that we are planning to enter our e-mails on the blog. For now here is an e-mail for suggestions, advice and ideas: suggest@ggoal.com.

Gracias!

It is obvious that Ggoal likes to be provoked. Even more by intelligent minds such as Maestro Alberto and his great blog. It was his idea, launched in a post, to publish photos and images of Italian start ups in Web 2.0 fashion. It was a game, so it had to be taken seriously! 

We sent some photos to Maestro Alberto, and he published them with enthusiasm. We were the first to participate to this fun and useful contest, which will allow companies with Web 2.0 projects made in Italy to get to know each other and become known. We hope that after us there will be a large album with start ups which launches italian minds overseas and beyond.
But our “Carpe Diem” was also an occasion to present ourselves to the users. Ggoal is a search engine made by people for people. People in flesh and blood who work daily to improve the Net. It was necessary that you saw us, other than through software, also in our “human too human”. Shape. Here is a selection of photos sent to Maestro Alberto.
It is really us, the Ggoal Team 

Hi Ggoal’s users and fans! Today we want to talk about an interesting debate concerning the use of Web tools as Web 2.0. For instance, Stefano Befana wrote a stimulating open discussion on One Web 2.0 proposing an accurate analysis on search tools used by young people as Google and Wikipedia.The post of One Web Blog shows a recent research of the British Library according to which young people use Web 2.0 tools in order to download images and videos. Only a minimum percentage use them in order to learn more cultural information and details.

Moreover, it seems that the use of Wikipedia has been criticized because it is not a sure source so it can be a sound teaching instrument as it is subject to modifications, reviews, elimination of sentences, etc. The editor of One Web Blog says that it doesn’t worth to criticize the Web and he proposes a given guideline for users, especially young people in order to allow them to use these kind of tools in a correct manner. Therefore, web tool creators are responsible for that! According to Besana, trends of Web 2.0, in fact, pave the way to the training and teaching world.

Besides, it’s also amazing to read all the comments to the post that show the real interest on this topic among parents, teachers and IT professionals. There are those who propose a necessary integration between technology and classical books and those who invite to not consider Google and Wikipedia as the real IT “Deus Ex Machina”. Moreover, the category of teachers is described as conservative one and restrained.

Among comments, you will find those who have already tested Ggoal describing its brand-new services concerning the content control and above all the possibility of users to create their own content. We hope that in the future parents and teachers will acquire more web skills that are a familiar feature among students and we also hope that the Web (which is made of by people) becomes responsible for the user. The first step made with Ggoal is to ignore marketing and adv demands because if we sell adv spaces and we consider target references, we carry out a forced selection of contents and of users we want to  have. In fact, if it is true that Web 2.0 is based above all on the Internet communications services that allow users to express in a new manner their creativity, ideas and personality, it is fundamental to know web users without identifying them with potential customers and without creating confusion between correct information and promotional one.

We would like to hear the voice and opinion of bloggers specialized in the training and teaching world as the fantastic authors of Maestro Alberto and Web 2.0 & Something Else and generally the ideas of all bloggers that everyday contribute to enriching the web with new communications, training and learning proposals. Morevover, we would like to hear the voice of those who have ever thought about this problem (parents, teachers, bloggers, students, web users and surfers, etc) and have tried to find an answer.

That’s all Folks! That’s Ggoal!