Search Pad is Coming

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Update 9 July ’09: I tried it… nice additional feature but not a game-changer. Actually I believe I’m very underwhelmed.

Actually, reader, I’m a little tired of all these search posts. But new things keep happening and this one is compelling enough to note. I really miss Google’s notebook feature (actually a lot of people do). It was like BasKet for the Web. It sounds like Yahoo! is about to launch a new app called Search Pad that will be like Google’s notebook but with a teensy bit of intelligence.

This sounds like a right combination. If the search engine can be intelligent enough to figure out that you’re doing some sort of research and then help you with an easy-to-use note-taking, organizing system, fantastic. But if it becomes even more intelligent and can offer even more useful things than just archiving notes, that would be a powerful assistant.

There is some nice potential here. I wonder if Yahoo! will take advantage or underwhelm. Either way Google please take note, your competitors’ efforts to improve how people use the search results they get are becoming more sophisticated and intelligent. Will Wave make up for the loss of notebook?

CASAA Birthing – New Decision and Knowledge Engines

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I’ve been talking about computer-assisted shallow atom assembly (CASAA) in my posts thinking about how we acquire knowledge in life with the pervasive Internet. Yesterday I read about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, which they’re actually calling a “decision engine.” From what I’ve read they’re making a clear effort to push search in the CASAA direction. Look how Balmer describes it: Continue reading “CASAA Birthing – New Decision and Knowledge Engines”

The Nervous System’s Emerging Stream

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In a recent post, Nova Spivack considers “the stream” as the Internet’s next evolutionary stage. I think he makes a lot of compelling points and I’m clearly partial to stream terminology (like it says above, I’m trying to mind the current). It builds on McLuhan’s notion of the nervous system, which is neat. Spivack’s conceptualization of recent Web innovations are something akin to a stream of consciousness, or more specifically streams of thought and conversation. But I end up wondering how fluid this stream really is. Continue reading “The Nervous System’s Emerging Stream”

Acquiring Knowledge: A Great Shallow Breadth Over Depth (1)

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Has our approach to acquiring knowledge moved from the deep end of a continuum to the broad but shallow end? The Internet medium and associated technologies used to develop, contribute, and distribute knowledge with it, call out for knowledge acquisition through breadth. I think, in general, we’re using it to acquire knowledge via a great shallow breadth of sources over acquiring it via single deep sources. We’re developing an acceptance that acquiring knowledge via a great shallow breadth delivers an equivalent fulfillment of knowledge and in most cases, we may even be developing a preference for this method of knowledge acquisition. Continue reading “Acquiring Knowledge: A Great Shallow Breadth Over Depth (1)”