Attack of the Hideous Logo

OK, I often like Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day, but this SearchCredible she mentions is creeping me out.

I shan't copy the image, lest I violate any copyright, but go look at it, or else let this description suffice: there's a sort of cartoon superhero figure in a cape, posed as if flying toward the viewer, brandishing a magnifying glass (for detailed searches, I presume).

So far, so good, but the creepy thing is that it has this huge, elongated mouth that surrounds the search bar where you'll type your terms, leaving the white space of the search field to suggest featureless teeth. The mouth is way bigger than anything else on the figure, and I don't like it.

Also, the figure has googly round eyes in which the iris is completely ringed with white, as if in terror or agony (possibly from having its mouth stretched the width of its body).

I find the overall effect spooky and disagreeable.  Sorry, SearchCredible. You may have a perfectly good search engine there, but I'm barely moved to try it.

Although to be honest, I'm not even sure how awesome it is: apparently the idea is that you type your query (into this superhero's mouth), and then choose one of a number of credible resources in which to search for it.

And there are plenty of good sites listed, like JSTOR, the Library of Congress, PubMed, Dictionary.com, etc., but if you know you want to search for something on the Library of Congress site, couldn't you just go there directly? Or use Google's 'Advanced Search' features to run a Google search on the LC site?

I suppose this site does offer a good list of suggestions for 'credible' places to search, and you can enter one query and then search it in multiple places without having to retype, so I guess that could be useful to people.

Also, I do like that it recognizes that some sites are better information resources than others, and makes an attempt to differentiate between credible sources and less credible sources--although some of us stern librarian types might question the inclusion of YouTube, Wikipedia and search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo as authoritative sources. I would consider these more ways to find information that may or may not be credible, than actual credible sources in their own right.

"I found it using Google!" is not, in itself, something that will guarantee that your information is any good.

So I don't personally foresee ever using SearchCredible for anything, but I could imagine it being useful to someone. If he or she isn't scared off by the giant mouth and staring eyes of the logo, that is.

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