federated search redefined... more like distributed indexing

Through Linked-In I was pointed to a blog about a new kind of search or another way that the term "federated search" could be defined.

“The triumph of the distributed Web.” He said the aggregate power of distributed human activity will trump centralized control. His main point was that Google, and other search engines that analyze the Web and links, are much less useful than a (theoretical) search engine that knows not what people have linked to (as Google does), but rather what pages are open on people’s browsers at the moment that people are searching. “All the problems of search would be solved if search relevance was ranked by what browsers were displaying,” he said.

source: http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/05/27/a-new-paradigm-for-federated-search/

I like the idea but I am confused about the fact that they are calling this "federated search".

In the enterprise search world we define "Federated search" as the distribution of a search action over two or more search environments. The "distributed" engines deliver results and those results are aggregated by the centralized search engine and presented to the user.

I think it would be more appropriate to name the mentioned method of indexing "distributed indexing" or "federated indexing".

Enterprise search will never be able to search the enterprise

http://dominicfallows.co.uk/2009/05/14/it-is-getting-too-clever-by-half/

Users of enterprise search technologies report that the enterprise will never be searchable ­ – there is just too much private (and valuable) information sitting on PCs and in obscure systems that use strange data formats. Service-oriented architectures typically fail to provide services and degrade into expensive mechanisms for providing limited interoperability between systems. And so on.

I am sure that there is some organisation somewhere that lives up to the glossy images we find in supplier brochures ­ – where everything is under control, and senior management look on approvingly as some smart, attractive, thirty-something professionals adjust a few parameters in the business performance management system. It's just that I've never come across such a thing ­ – and neither will you.

I must disagree with the author on this. Of course it is a challenge to make all data in an organization searchable. With the current indexing and search tools like Autonomy or Google most problems and obscure data formats can be handled. The experience that we have is that there a very few organizations that have a vision on that field.

Google add a page to a result

I didn't know that this feature existed.
You can add a page that you missed in de result to the result page of a specific query.

Another brilliant idea from the boys of Google. This way you collect "best results" with the direct input from (active) users.
A similar functionality is the "SearchWiki" which let you add comments to pages in the results that are return by a query.

Rediscovery of Yahoo Search

Because of all the default settings in IE (Microsoft Live Search) and Firefox (Google Search) it is simple to forget that there is another good search engine that has been around from the "beginning of the WWW as we know it": Yahoo! search.
The strange thing is that what Microsoft does with IE and Livesearch, Mozilla is doing with Firefox and Google. Of course you can change your default search provider, but not everybody knows that and (wants to) use that.

Because of this blog about the good search suggestions that Yahoo! gives, I started to rediscover Yahoo!.
It has a nice clean interface and the results are much more relevant than the search with Live Search. The added "Search assist" is very powerfull and fast.

For some time now I want to use something else than the all-seeing Google. Understand me well: I have nothing against Google, I just think it is good to look at something else in stead of using something because everyone is using it.

Tegens van de Flex en Adobe Air apps in relatie tot beheerbaarheid en accessibility.

Onderstaand een verhaal over de tegens van een "fat client" oplossing als Adobe Air. Lean and mean weboplossingen lijken nog steeds de voorkeur te hebben vanwege update-problemen. Ik geloof nog steeds in het meer aansluiten op de desktop activiteiten van gebruikers....

Zie: http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1492-The-case-against-Flex-based-application-UIs?source=RSS

We're starting to see more vendors coming out with Flex-based user interfaces, sometimes extending them as full-blown desktop applications using the AIR runtime. For example, Documentum's D6 Web Publisher comes with a standalone Flex interface for certain tasks.

To me, turning to Flex for a content management interface is a cop-out. It creates nice demoware for the vendor, but long-term problems for you. I can see why Flex is alluring for vendors: maintaining consistent, cross-browser compatibility (especially with AJAX) is hard and expensive. But why does that mean that you the customer must give up the simplicity and supportability of a native browser-based interface?

Flex is essentially another semi-thick client akin to Java applets (or ActiveX controls). Let's review why the business world didn't like applets for application user interfaces when they were pervasive within enterprise web applications earlier this decade.

They almost always violate web accessibility guidelines. Sure, many thin-client application interfaces are not compliant either, but at least you have the opportunity to make them compliant -- and many platforms (e.g., Plone) do so.

They create support nightmares. Things like automatic updates, license-checking, and incompatibilities with the underlying virtual machine lead to many a help-desk call. As my colleague Kas notes, with AIR instead of applets you are just replacing Sun's virtual machine with Adobe's. The potential for trouble remains.

They are prone to performance problems. Flex applications are prone to the same memory leaks and CPU spikes that bedeviled applets for years. To be sure, I've seen some fat and ugly JavaScript-based interfaces too, but at least everyone can debug those openly. We've also had customers tell us that their Flex interfaces are unusually chatty on their networks.

You can't easily modify them. The vendor sets a unified interface and all their customers have to live with it. That might work for a one-dimensional tool, like a Twitter client, but what about more heterogeneous, multidimensional environments?

To my mind, this last problem is really crushing. I recently participated in a Web CMS vendor demo for a consulting client, where the vendor unveiled their Flex-based webpage-builder interface to initial nods of approval. But then we asked the vendor to continue along the scripted scenarios, and the headshaking started becoming more horizontal. The way some elements were laid out didn't make sense to the customer team, and the empty placeholder blocks had confusing iconography and signaling.

Learning to search

Mostly we are insulting normal users by saying that they just use a search engine wrong by not specifying the right search query for their needs...

Microsoft has developed a program that can help users in getting their search done right. The post on msdn.com on "how well do we use our search engines?" tells the story about a study on getting the search right by playing a game.

Do play the game... it is fun.

Tags van Technorati: search,usability

Google Apps is getting more and more users

According to this blog post by Google, they have more than 3 million users at educational organizations.

It is not so surprising that Google gets very much attention in this user base. Students nowadays grew up with one company they now best. It is the company that delivers the only internet searchengine they know. The company that delivers the E-mail application they use. The company that lets them navigate on their mobile phone. Read the post on Classroom collaboration to illustrate what I mean.

Computing in the clouds is so easy and Google delivers.

Just as a complete generation grew up with the products of Microsoft, A complete generation is now growing up with Google. I see no big difference. It is just a matter of time when Google gets the same negative public attention that Microsoft got. The reason is simple...

When a company gets to "big" or has to much influence the natural "big brother" reaction of the public takes control....