Conversation with the Hakia Team: The ScoopBar Launch

Today I headed down to the financial district of NYC where the money is made. The area sure has changed since my time down there in the mid-90s. Hakia held an open demo for their ScoopBar which they demo'ed at the NY Tech Meetup this week. The open demo was at a local coffee shop near the Hakia office and there was a lot of foot traffic during my time with the team. This is such a great way to get local people to learn about your application. Hakia supports a local coffee shop, the local coffee shop supports Hakia, the community gets to learn about two companies making a difference in the community and it probably cost Hakia a couple hundred dollars in total. You might consider this type of community outreach when you launch your app. Alex at Read/WriteWeb has a great in-depth review of Hakia.

Here are my notes from the demo:

• The ScoopBar is great for anyone doing research - after installation, searching in the Hakia toolbar (i.e. Scoopbar) allows you to click a link and be taken to the actual Web site with the search highlighted (no need to find it) and then you can save the text (plus a buffer you select) to a local page on your hard drive. I could see this as a great tool for students and educators.
• Downloads are available for IE currently, Firefox version due out very soon
• A Web API is coming soon
• Downloads available through Download.com

Have you tried Hakia or the ScoopBar? If so, please report in!