Sputnik 11

How to Steal a Laptop in Five Simple Steps?

One day not too long ago I was sitting in front of a café helping out a consulting client of mine. I was performing coffee shop user acceptance testing, in which I pay people $10 to try an app. (Sidebar: I am amazed that so few entrepreneurs do this. I guess that they’re deathly afraid that people will tell them that their baby is ugly.

What does instaGrok do?

instaGrok is a research engine for learning and sharing: Users explore graphical concept maps that show how ideas connect. They can also customize the maps (with key facts, links, and images) and pass them on to friends. As Pinterest changed how we curate and share photos, instaGrok will do the same for what we learn.

So it’s not a search engine?

Nope. Search engines just give you links, so it’s up to you to read a bunch of pages and figure out how concepts relate. instaGrok scans all the pages you would’ve gotten as search results, and then it builds a concept map of the important ideas.

Can I try it out?

Sure. It’s open to the public, and we’re getting tons of users. Here’s a concept map on the American Dream that I made in a minute or so.

Who is it for?

K-12 education is our first market. However, we think instaGrok will be useful for everybody who uses the internet to learn (a.k.a. all of us).