As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm a sucker for a good beta of new technology. I love seeing what might come of something. In owning up to this, I got into a conversation with a guy who's writing his own social search engine.
Some of the tricks inside Seekum are that it allows you to vote on the results of the search, and then it goes one step further: Seekum lets you discuss the results with others. So, people can not only look for something, but ultimately, they can come to understand how others came across the results they found as well.
Michael Whitney of Seekum says that he is one of the growing number of people who think Google's incredible math chops aren't all that's needed to make good search happen.
So what makes someone decide, "I think I'll make my OWN search engine?"
I like to toy around with many ideas at
the same time and seekum is just one of many juggling around in my
head. I feel that search overall can be improved, and that allowing
people to make single decisions on results will affect the results as a
whole as the user base grows.
What are you programming this in? Is this LAMP, RoR, AJAX?
Currently we are using a barrage of
technologies. The major horse work is being done with PHP. We are using
MYSQL for our database, and are looking to implement AJAX in the near
future to clean up and further develop the interface.
When you get into your "wildest dreams" mode, where does Seekum end up?
I would
like to see Seekum being a platform that allows the masses to answer
questions that search in today's world cannot. I want the meaning of a
search to be understood by Seekum through the use of the people's tags,
and other user contributions. A person might search for "Apple" looking
for Washington apples, while another is looking for the new Mac. Of
course I wouldn't mind seeing it as the most visited website on the
planet.
What were you doing BEFORE you started working on Seekum?
Well before I started working on Seekum, I spent the greater part of last year working on
Taxigrab.com. Taxigrab.com
is an online taxi aggregator that allows people to find taxi services
and reserve them online. Before Seekum was placed online I had spent
sometime working on the idea and general algorithms with search to help
with search results. I wanted to measure click through as a basis, as
well as include synonyms to greater understand a pages contents.
When you get huge and want to hire everyone away from Google and
MySpace, what qualities/skills/mindsets do you think people will need
to survive in the future?
The
future is the most fascinating part of any company in my opinion. The
word "change" keeps resonating in my mind when I think of seekum being
huge and an industry leader. The truth is we are a company that is able
to adapt to change fast and without hesitation. Breaking the rules
doesn't guarantee that you will grow huge and become famous, but
following them does guarantee that you will never do anything
extraordinary. A mindset looking towards the future requires that you
have an open mind, we don't have a master plan in place to elevate us
to the top, but when the time comes to make the crucial decision that
makes or breaks us, we will be ready.
Take a look around. Search for a few things, and then let me know what you think.
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web2.0 ,
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