{"id":382,"date":"2003-07-21T15:07:09","date_gmt":"2003-07-21T13:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.multiplicity.dk\/?p=382"},"modified":"2003-07-21T15:07:09","modified_gmt":"2003-07-21T13:07:09","slug":"search-engine-for-low-bandwidth-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krag.be\/index.php\/2003\/07\/21\/search-engine-for-low-bandwidth-connections\/","title":{"rendered":"Search Engine for low-bandwidth connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone forwarded me this article from the BBC Online: BBC NEWS | Technology | World’s poor to get own search engine<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing a search engine designed for people with a slow net connection.<\/p>\n

Someone using the software would e-mail a query to a central server in Boston. The program would search the net, choose the most suitable webpages, compress them and e-mail the results a day later.<\/bq><\/p>\n

The project website is here:
\nTEK Homepage<\/a><\/p>\n

My question is: Why would anyone want that?<\/b>
\n
\nIt’s a 1.3Mb download if you already have Sun’s Java installed, if not, youll have to add at least 8Mb to that. For people with unstable, low-bandwidth connections that sounds like a definition of the word impossible. And their suggestion of distributing this on CD cia local libraries sounds a little utopian as well.<\/p>\n

So let’s look at what this actually does. The way I see it, there are 2 things this solution delivers:<\/p>\n

Asynchronous, off-line search results.<\/i> Send in your query and the results will be delivered to you by e-mail. <\/p>\n

But that exists already, in many different guiles, ranging from CapeClear’s Google by eMail<\/a>, based on the google API’s, to www4mail<\/a>, an open sourced mail gateway for web access. <\/p>\n

Neither of these requires a download, and both deliver off-line asynchronous access to we content, and there are many more of these types of solutions out there.<\/p>\n

That leaves us with the second part of what TEK delivers:
\nDelivering relevant search results<\/i><\/p>\n

According to the TEK website:
\nThe email delivery of the search results introduces a time delay. TEK uses that time to our advantage: the extra time will allow us to filter and refine the search results. We are working on clustering the found pages into similar concepts and then select examples of only the “strongest” to return to the user.<\/p>\n

All pages downloaded to the client computer are stored in the local cache, and are there for other users to search at a later date. <\/bq><\/p>\n

So, they can use the fact that we are dealing with off-line asynchronous communication to deliver better and more relevant search results. If they succeed there, yeah, then we might have a search tool that will grow from low-bandwidth users to the rest of us, because everyone is always looking for fewer, more relevant search results. Unfortunately this part of the project is still a work in progress, although there are some indications on the site that they are indeed cooking up some interesting tech based on a way of clustering similar pages into groups, and delivering only “best of breed” results. <\/p>\n

That of course opens them up for criticism in terms of limiting access to technology, based on rules defined at a single centralized location, a subtle form of censorship. <\/p>\n

In any case, even if they deliver on the promise of a better search-engine, why would I want a 10Mb download when I already have a mail client. If you’re going to deliver search results via mail, why not let people actually enter the search queries that way too? The complexity of a local proxy seems wasteful in this situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone forwarded me this article from the BBC Online: BBC NEWS | Technology | World’s poor to get own search engine Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing a search engine designed for people with a slow net connection. Someone using the software would e-mail a query to a central server in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5,1,17],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nSearch Engine for low-bandwidth connections • krag.be<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/krag.be\/index.php\/2003\/07\/21\/search-engine-for-low-bandwidth-connections\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Search Engine for low-bandwidth connections • krag.be\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Someone forwarded me this article from the BBC Online: BBC NEWS | Technology | World’s poor to get own search engine Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing a search engine designed for people with a slow net connection. 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