Jimmy Wales, it would appear, is planning a search engine, along with his chums at Amazon, through his for-profit venture, Wikia.

Mr Wales has begun working on a search engine that exploits the same user-based technology as his open-access encyclopaedia, which was launched in 2003.

The project has been dubbed Wikiasari — a combination of wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, and asari, which is Japanese for “rummaging search”.

Mr Wales told The Times that he was planning to develop a commercial version of the search engine through Wikia Inc, his for-profit company, with a provisional launch date in the first quarter of next year.

Earlier this year he secured multimillion-dollar funding from amazon.com and a separate cash injection from a group of Silicon Valley financiers to finance projects at Wikia.

Interesting…

Niall Kennedy admits that he’s

skeptical. Sites such as Google, Yahoo!, and Windows Live already have the crowds clicking on search results every day, submitting bookmarks, and, in some cases, flagging spam. Wikia would need a critical mass of users to maintain a useful search index and query analyzer to supply Britney Spears’ fans, medical research, and the many many other search queries submitted every day. The same same search engine pickpockets wandering through Google’s search index will continue to target any significant source of traffic and unlike Wikipedia, you can’t just lock down a contested (or heavily profitable) area and still maintain balance.

Too true.

Ionut over at the Google Operating System blog takes up Wales’ claim that people will be more efficient at deciding whether a page is good or not than a computer:

I think the main job of a search engine is to understand how relevant a page is for a particular query. To scale, a search engine should that algorithmically. While people have a better ability to decide if a page is relevant, that doesn’t mean spammers won’t try to push their sites.

Wales and Wikia are taking on quite a bit at the moment – for example, the OpenServing site isn’t up and running yet (and I’m not yet entirely sure about what it’s meant to do) – and the introduction of a new search engine is a massive task.

And the name is really lame – ‘Google’ has become a verb. Can you imagine anyone ever saying “Can you Wikiasari this for me?” Answer: NO!

Update: In the comments, Jimbo points out that Amazon aren’t involved in the project. More here.

Update 2: Mike Arrington has a screenshot.
[tags]search, wikiasari, wikia, jimmy wales, niall kennedy[/tags]

Why is it that NONE of the recent new functionality has hit my Gmail account yet? Even Mrs Dave’s account is up-to-date with all the cool stuff Google have been adding of late – and by her own admission, she doesn’t use it, and what’s more doesn’t LIKE IT!

So, if there are any Gmail people out there with nothing better to do over the festive period, please can they look at the poor, unloved excuse for an email account that is briggs.dave@gmail.com and maybe make it just a little bit better?

Please?

[tags]google, gmail[/tags]

Shel and Neville at the For Immediate Release podcast interview Steve Rubel. Interesting stuff.

I’ve been beavering away on a new collaborative blogging project, which is called hyprtext. It’s going to be covering web and tech news, mainly. The feed is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/hyprtext.

I’ve already signed someone up to cover copyleft and drm issues and am looking for a couple more contributors. One I need specifically is someone who can cover the open source angle a lot better than I can. We’re looking at a few posts per week, I reckon, not a huge commitment. If anyone is interested, drop me a line.

There are still a few issues to iron out with the site layout. I’m trying to get an RSS feed to publish in a sidebar using the WordPress RSS widget (just the standard one that comes supplied with the sidebar widget plug-in); and I can’t seem to get my MyBlogLog thingy looking anything other than lame. I’ll get there though, I guess.

 Google have finally got round to releasing the brand spanking new Blogger. They’ve been justifiably criticised over the lack of movement on the product since acquisition, and have since been easily overtaken by the likes of WordPress.com and TypePad. Even with this release, it’s fair to say that Blogger has some way to go to truly compete.

You can also now sign into your blogger account using your Google account ID, and Google has made editing the template and posts significantly more user friendly, such as by implementing what sounds like a widget style drag and drop approach.New features include the addition of tagging, which, this being Google, is called ‘labels’ and an option to make a blog private, viewable only by people that you specificy.

This is all hardly groundbreaking stuff, and the launch blog post seems to acknowledge this, stating that the work on Blogger is “far from done”. Are Google back in the blogging game? Possibly.

One feature I’d like to see Google implement is to integrate Blogger into their Google Apps service, which desperately needs some form of dynamic web content creation, rather than the static Page Creator that’s currently in place.

Has anyone tested the ‘new’ Blogger? We’d be interested in any comments you have.

[tags]blogger, google[/tags]

Read/WriteWeb have another of their articles trying to predict what a Google-produced operating system might be like. There’s no reason to suggest that Google are even developing such a thing, but that doesn’t stop the guessing game being fun.

Their conclusion is that it will be a stripped down Linux, which literally just boots the computer into FireFox to connect with Google’s many web services, rather than a Web based OS like YouOS, or a fully functional Linux distribution.

It’s a cute idea, and one which I think has some legs – even if Google themselves don’t do it. I do believe, for example, that the future of the web is mobile – maybe a Blackberry sized device that boots into Firefox via wireless connections and then hooks up with web services like those offered by Google and of course Zoho and others.

This approach would completely knock out the need for any kind of syncing between the mobile device and a desktop workstation, because the systems and interfaces you are using are exactly the same.

One of the problem with this approach is what you do with data. Will people be happy that every file they own is stored online, with Google’s ad bots running through them picking up on everything we do with our computers? It’s obvious that business will have a problem with this although whether that is true of the average home user, I don’t know.

Another fundamental issue is over the technology that is being used to produce so many of the web apps that are out there, and specifically Ajax. Bill Thompson puts it much better than I could:

There is a massive difference between rewriting Web pages on the fly with Javascript and reengineering the network to support message passing between distributed objects, a difference that too many Web 2.0 advocates seem willing to ignore. It may have been twenty years since Sun Microsystems trademarked the phrase ‘the network is the computer’ but we’re still a decade off delivering, and if we stick with Ajax there is a real danger that we will never get there.

It’s an interesting debate though, and one that hyprtext will be keeping a close eye on.

[tags]read/writeweb, google, googleos, bill thompson[/tags]

Zoho, one of the challengers to Google’s online office crown – and a damn good one at that – has unleashed its wiki service, to go along with the whole raft of other services they provide. The editing functionality comes from Zoho Writer, so is very easy to use with full wysiwyf functionality.

TechCrunch covers the story:

Two things make this product stand out. The first is that the Wiki supports embedded data from other Zoho products. For example, a spreadsheet from Zoho Sheet can be embedded directly into the Wiki. Any changes to the spreadsheet, whether they are made in the Wiki or in Zoho Sheet, will be synced. The Wiki product also has a single sign in with other Zoho products.

Second, the entire Zoho suite of products is on the same overall architecture, making syncronization and new feature releases much easier between applications. Contrast that to Google’s suite, including two acquired products (Writely and JotSpot) and one mostly home-grown one (Spreadsheets). It will never be as homogenous as what Zoho has created.

I agree that Zoho is a great looking suite of applications and is probably the closest thing there is right now to a workable, integrated online office platform.

But is there room for a small fish in this pool full of giant sharks? It’s a shame to say so, but maybe Zoho’s eventual best hope of success will be to be bought up by a competitor to Google.

[tags]zoho, wiki, google, online office[/tags]

Ask have launched a preview of their new search page design, nominally called AskX. Appearing in a three column layout, which is similar to their AskCity product, it now displays results from other information sources inthe right hand section, as well as the usual results in the middle. The right column is reserved for narrowing or expanding your search.

It’s quite cool. I did a test search for my hero, Brian Clough, and as well as the web results, it dragged up stuff from Ask News search, their blog search and Wikipedia.

The main problem is the speed at the moment, but I guess this is something they can work on…

[tags]ask, askx, search[/tags]

Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher, erstwhile editors of Techcrunch UK have launched their own site covering ‘Web 2.0, mobile and new technology firms in Europe’ called Vecosys.

Not sure what I make of that name, and the domain forwarding thing they have got going there is pretty annoying – all the pages seem to be held on a Glaxstar server.

The incident which caused the two to leave Techcrunch was explained from TC head honcho Mike Arrington today. It sure is a mess.

Update: Sam Sethi has counterposted giving his version of events. It is difficult to know who to believe, but as much as I like reading TechCrunch, my instinct is to side with the underdogs…
[tags]TechCrunch, Vecosys, Sam Sethi, Mike Butcher[/tags]

Loïc Le Meur responds at length to the many criticisms going round the blogosphere about LeWeb3:

I apologize to the speakers and audience for the last-minute changes to the second day program and take personal responsibility for those changes. For opening the program beyond bloggers, however, I have no regrets

…

Criticism focussed on the politicians I invited at the last minute.

The background is that we in Europe are fighting a battle to raise interest about the Internet and its deeper changes to society. We do not yet have the Silicon Valley ecosystem, but opening an exchange with our politicians is a start. We need to talk to them and they need to understand us.

We need to encourage risk taking in Europe, teach entrepreneurship at school, make fiscal reforms to encourage creation of more start ups supported by investment from business angels and venture capitalists. The Internet creates millions of jobs in the United States. Why not in Europe?

[tags]Loïc Le Meur, LeWeb3[/tags]

So, the first post to hyprtext. Guess I better explain…

This is going to be a blog about the web. Talking about the new web services, Web 2.0 and all that stuff. Yeah, I know, another one. But I’m hoping this is going to be a little different.

One of the differences with this blog is that I don’t want to write it all. I really want other people to contribute. So, anyone email us to register then with the blog and allow them to submit an article. Please do so.

In addition to this, while we’ll be bringing you news of all the latest happenings in the world of the web, we’ll also be offering the occasional comment piece, full of reflection and wild predictions.

Also, we’re happy to host stuff for people. So, if you would like to start a blog, then get in touch. I’m sure I could sort something out here. I guess that’s true of other types of site like wikis, too.

Thanks to WordPress for being great as usual, and Mike Lococo for the original theme which I’ve hacked up a bit.

Oliver Kamm on the government’s craven actions over the BAE fraud enquiry:

Our overriding foreign policy goal is the defeat of aggressive terrorism. So pursuing an inquiry into corruption in an arms deal worth billions of pounds would risk disrupting a relationship with Saudi Arabia crucial to achieving those goals. Mr Blair placed emphasis on the national interest in vague terms so we have no idea what the interests are, because he did not say. The tacit assumption must be that the Saudis might withhold intelligence co-operation, and withdraw from the arms deal. Our security interests would suffer; so would British commercial interests.

This is not only the best defence but also the only conceivable one for a decision taken directly by the Prime Minister. Unfortunately, it is pitiful. The lamentable closure of the SFO inquiry encapsulates the method and reasoning of the banana republic. It jettisons the central principle of democratic government. The SFO said this week that: “It has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest.” To say that this is illiberal scarcely covers it. It is the lowest point in Mr Blair’s Government, and will be a defining one. It gives cynicism a bad name.

John Naughton and Simon Dickson also comment on the story

From The Observer:

Google is on the move. The internet giant has held talks with Orange, the mobile phone operator, about a multi-billion-dollar partnership to create a ‘Google phone’ which makes it easy to search the web wherever you are.

The collaboration between two of the most powerful brands in technology is seen as a potential catalyst for making internet use of mobile phones as natural as on desktop computers and laptops.

I’ve often thought that the future of the web is mobile: a Blackberry sized thing with a reasonably sized screen and keyboard. Let it boot straight up into a Firefox variant and then connect to web services. It doesn’t have to be through Google, Zoho have a perfectly good selection of apps, too. Everything is done online through the browser, which would mean no more synchronising of mobile devices with desktop machines.

Before this becomes a reality though, a better platform than AJAX needs to be employed, as Bill Thompson has pointed out:

There is a massive difference between rewriting Web pages on the fly with Javascript and reengineering the network to support message passing between distributed objects, a difference that too many Web 2.0 advocates seem willing to ignore. It may have been twenty years since Sun Microsystems trademarked the phrase ‘the network is the computer’ but we’re still a decade off delivering, and if we stick with Ajax there is a real danger that we will never get there.

Spotted at Google Operating System.

[tags]google, orange, observer, google operating system, zoho, bill thompson[/tags]

Steve Smith has updated his Tiger Admin plug-in. What does it do? It makes the WordPress admin screen look very nice indeed. Good job!

[tags]wordpress, WP Tiger Administration, steve smith[/tags]