Modify Colors
In a previous article I looked at some existing Linux compatibility sites and concluded that all of them failed to meet my “Checklist for the Perfect Site” not because of the information on them, but because of an inadequate ability to search through the information. What most of the existing sites excel at is locating information for a specific product, but what if you want to know what is the most compatible product? Two of the three sites I looked at do that, but only one of them does both searching for a specific product and searching for the best product. It gets even worse if you want to search by the features. None of the sites I found can do that. So what if you want to find a printer that prints in color and costs less than $100? You’re out of luck.
Based on this, here are the three ways I previously concluded a perfect site must be able to search:
- By specific product names – This is the most obvious and is done well by most site. This would be useful to someone who is having trouble with a particular product or is looking at buying a specific product.
- By best compatibility – This is done by some sites, but not all. Although searching by the specific product is good if you already know what you want to buy, if you don’t yet know what you want to get, finding the device with the best compatibility could help you decide.
- By the features of each product – This is where every site I looked at fails. This feature comes in use when you want something specific, but don’t know exactly what product to buy. For example, suppose I wanted a black and white laser printer that had wireless networking. I could search for every single printer that fit those criteria or I could look at all the compatible printers and check each for the features I wanted, but both those approaches would take forever.
(If you can think of other useful searches, please leave a comment.)
Only one of the sites I looked at could do two of these and none could do all of them.
Clearly there is a need for a better Linux compatibility site, but what would this site be exactly?
Based on my previous findings, there is no need to collect new information, so a perfect site would be something like a search engine for the existing sites, but it would also have to have some basic information in its own database to enable flexible searching.
The sites database would have to include an entry for each product with the features and price of the product, a yes, no, or maybe ranking on the Linux compatibility of the product, and links to sites with more information on how well the product works with Linux. If all this information were made searchable, you would have a very useful Linux compatibility site.
The remaining question is how to get the information into this database and how to technically implement the site, but I will save that for a later article. Again, if you have suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.
Related posts:
- Linux Hardware Compatibility Sites: Does anyone do it right? One almost unavoidable problem with using an operating system that...
- Hardware Compatibility Info Linux.com published an article explaining where and what to look...
- Ubuntu Brainstorm: The Perfect Combination of Open-Source and Democracy Today Ubuntu announced something that I have thought they should...
- Easy Guaranteed Computer Compatibility Buying new computers, particularly laptops, can be a bit of...
- OOXML and Office 2007: What Do Compatibility Issues Mean? With the semi-recent approval of OOXML by the ISO, an...
JLumin – First, thanks for your indepth comment.
“Working with the other compatibility sites should not pose too big a problem I guess.”
I was not even really thinking of working with them, unless of course they want to, but rather just linking to them for more information. The only compatibility-related data I was thinking of having “on” the site was a yes, no, or maybe rating.
“Create a standardised web-form reflecting the structure of the database that can be filled and updated wiki-style.
Perhaps even vendors will contribute.”
That is exactly what I was thinking. I don’t know exactly how to implement it, but wiki-style is definitely the right approach.
“I’m thinking of the many price guides that offer some kind of standardised input forms for their advertisers. They usually offer exactly the kind of search facility you are describing. The data is kept up-to-date by the vendors out of self-interest.”
1. Yeah. Places like pricegrabber do exactely what I am thinking of, except for the Linux compatibility part…
2. You made me realise that pricing data might be able to be retrieved from a site like pricegrabber. Based on the number of sites that use data from those places I expect that they provide an easy way to include their data in your site.
That’d be a great site.
For getting the data a couple of possibilities:
Working with the other compatibility sites should not pose too big a problem I guess.
Getting a steady stream of up-to-date data:
Create a standardised web-form reflecting the structure of the database that can be filled and updated wiki-style.
Perhaps even vendors will contribute.
I’m thinking of the many price guides that offer some kind of standardised input forms for their advertisers.
They usually offer exactly the kind of search facility you are describing. The data is kept up-to-date by the vendors out of self-interest.