Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Search engines: Getting to know you

We mentioned Jeeves-the-search-butler's makeover, as he gets increasingly cozy with those he serves. Well, it's a trend, the BBC reports. "Not content with providing access to the millions of Web sites, many [search engines] now offer ways that do a better job of remembering, cataloguing and managing all the information you come across. In addition to Jeeves, there's Blinkx, which builds on the desktop search feature that builds on search engine technology. In other words, it, like other search-engines-cum-desktop-search tools, are trying to become the new productivity software. For example, Blinkx desktop search "watches" what you're working on - document, email, etc. - and "suggests" sites, video clips, blogs, or documents on your own PC that are relevant to your task. "In the latest release of Blinkx, the company has added what it calls smart folders. Once created the folders act as persistent queries that automatically sweep the web for pages related to their subject and catalogues relevant information, documents or incoming emails, on hard drives too." The BBC also points to Google, Apple, Copernic, Enfish, and X1 as part of the trend (it appears the last three all charge for their products).



BTW, another new search engine just covered by CNET is Accoona.com - a slightly business-focused one that allows you to "super-target" your search by prioritizing the words you type into the search box (the name might be a little hard to remember - or to remember how to spell!).

1 comment:

  1. I have created a artificial intelligence search engine too (it thinks for you and offers keyword suggestion that you may never have thought of, choices from related synonyms, antonyms, homonyms and thesaurus)! Check out http://www.SirSeek.com where you see the working beta (I am not using our own index of websites YET, our search & seek web fetching (ro)bot is still in development, will even retrieve results when none indexed to index). This will index general web sites and pages linked to by those sites, any topic of data will be accepted. I know its got too many affiliate ads (I need the money), I know it doesn't have billions of web pages indexed (YET), I know my internet access provider can be a little slow at time, I know I am not comparable (YET) but I am working on it. Any suggestions are appreciated so I can continue making the World's best search engine (will be better than the rest once complete).

    Currently implementing an automatic spelling fixer for common misspellings (will auto fix misspell words with correct ones or give you a choice to select alternate spellings).

    Also making a business directory (even a separated spam directory so spammers have a place to spam, spam will not go away, so might as well accept it to a special directory) to be integrated into this next best search engine (example of a business/web directory made by me is http://www.FriendlyCanadian.com that caches pages and was the World's first search engine to implement text-to-speech technology using Microsoft Agent).

    I have been making specific topic search engines since 1998 (now moving to a caching, spidering and non topic engine design). Some examples are http://www.Whak.com  (whacky comedy links), http://www.Canuckster.com , http://www.SpareSomeChange.com  (humanitarian/homeless/poverty portal), etc...

    ReplyDelete