Search Engines becoming a wee bit smarter..long way to go

Writing in the Washington Post, Yuki Noguchi a Washington Post Staffer implies that search engines are getting smarter by getting more focused.

In her story:

Google Lets Surfers Sift Through Blogs Search
Giant Enters Competition for Commercial Harnessing of Web Journals
Thursday, September 15, 2005; Page D05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091402455.html?referrer=email

Noguchi cites:

• "Apple recently introduced a podcast search feature in iTunes that allows users to find, subscribe to and listen to the homemade recordings."

• "Yesterday, Google joined a handful of sites that search and sort through blogs so users can quickly find their topics of interest."

• "In many forms, the Internet has already democratized other forms of publishing by eliminating the middle man. Music hobbyists, for example, can release their songs on the Web without the backing of a record label, and programmers develop and distribute their own software."

We are still some years away from the truely intelligent semantic web that will go beyond "dumb" keyword searching to meaningful searches that knows or can anicipate what I'm looking for, based on my previous search patterns.

British Telecom predicts that between 2006 and 2010 we should see "remind me devices"and "deep indexing" which creates greater bonds between people ( iPod play lists etc create insight into another's personality)

Walter Derzko
Expert and Guest Speaker on the Smart Economy and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy

also see http://smarteconomy.typepad.com