Aardvark is a search engine founded by ex-Googlers, that uses social network power. It is not based on information created by users and than indexed. It is distributing the query among your afiliates and their afiliates, who find themselves good at different fields - if you’re lucky you might get the answer. Idea is not stupid, or rather decent. User can ’search’ by using IM, e-mail, SMS or Twitter.

To increase probability of being answered you should take care and gather as much friends in the service as possible, which is a little bit hard especially at the begging after releasing public beta version. But there is an option to grab the contact list from Facebook connect.

After typing in the query the algorhytm searches for person that is most probable to have knowledge about what user is aksing. Than user just have to wait for the answer. Basis for poining on specific user as the one who has appropriate knowledge is the fact that he introduced himself as having knowledge on particular field, coming from specific region or interested in something user asked about.

It looks like this sort of human powered search is one with completely new approach. It is interesting how many degrees of affiliation can be potentially used. However it can be a great source of help and really practicl information in some cases. Except for that Aardvark looks like it is going to be not only the source of information but also sort of place to make friends and have fun.

-mw

At Gord Hotchkiss’ site we can find interesting interview with dr Teena Moody from UCLA’s Semel Institute, who conducted survey on how human’s brain work during searching the web. The research is based on the method name as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Main goal of this research was to find out on the scale of differences between human’s brain work during reading and searching the web. Another dimension of the research was to check if there are any differences between different grops of people - heavy users and novices.

Magnetic resonance revealed that brains of novices, named by dr Moody Internet-naive persons, during searching the web behave at the same way as they were reading, on the other hand heavy users’ brains work more activelly, more brain centers are active. Especially front and limbic lobes are being used by heavy-searchers. These two lobes are responsible for making decisions and conflict settlement.

Brain centres active during searching the web for heavy-users and novices:

Explanation for that fact is quite simple, using the Internet changes our brain work procedures, people who do not use Internet everyday behave like children in the mist - they just fell lost in new enviroment and act like they were reading it, gathering the information to get the full scope of view. However heavy-users make decisions basing on the information the just have found in perfectly known enviroment.

This partly supports thesis that using Internet changes our brains.

-mw

Topicle is a search engine that connects concept of vertical search with social search. Registered users contribute by adding websites to created categories that from than are searchable by Topicle. It also contains some element of personalised search - process of adding new category is named “creating engine”. It is about adding few URL that are found to be most relevant to the category.

All created search engines/categories are editable by all users, so outcome of work of different members of community can turn out efficient and relevant. Naturally this kind of search is built on trust so it adds some risk of time waste to its use, especially in business search, but on the other hand we can count that there is somebody thinking exactly like ourselves so this choice might turn out to be success.

-mw

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo reached an agreement on set of rules of dealing with the question of doing business in countries where freedom of speech and human rights are restricted. Let’s remind that in the past these companies were criticized by watchdogs, NGOs and even US Congress for “enabling censorship in such countries“, we read in yesterdays WSJ.

According to this set of principles IT giants are going to protect personal information of their users around the world and implement goverment demanding in way that compromises privacy. They declared also to make deepened reasearch on fields of securizing personal information and freedom of speech before launching new ventures - as we can read at SearchEngineLand. This declaration is supposed to be open project and other companies can join and decalare to respect this rules too.

Honestly I dare to doubt that it will turn out efficient. It looks like CSR strategy movement. UN acting in the symbolic field of policy cannot deal with that, becuse of economic interests of its members. It’s rather doubtful that commercial organizations, set on making profit, will do it. But let’s do not judge nothing, the idea is decent and worthy. If it work it will be a new beggining of Web as grassroots medium - free information circulation with bypassing the censored servers. But of course it will not solve all problems.