Sunbeam Is Your Search Engine

Taking a look at how Sunbeam is polishing up in the final stages of development. Read on for more details on the search engine that runs from your own desktop, and knows how you think.

Digg On Your Desktop

I’ve previously posted a video of the new search interface I’ve been experimenting with. In order to get some feedback on how it works I’ve put together a small application that uses the Digg API to display the popular news stories on your desktop background.

What’s Going On?

I realise I haven’t made any posts in a while – so I thought I’d attempt an all encompassing update on what I’ve been up to with my various projects and some technology related personal junkage (not a word).

Firstly, big news here, I got extremely bored of being completely unable to buy a Nintendo Wii from anywhere in the UK. I’d like to think that if Lik-Sang were still around I’d have bought one from there but due to Sony’s increasing bizarre death throes that won’t happen. I haven’t been playing with the PC much recently, I don’t have time and I don’t see the urge to spend money on upgrading a system to the current elite state needed for modern gaming whilst it’s in so much flux at the moment. My AMD 2600 system lasted ages, probably a year or two before it needed really upgrading, at the moment with DX10 and new chipset designs emerging constantly it’s just a monetary nightmare to keep up on…

Google Hasn’t Improved Search

I’m getting tired of the Google love. There is without doubt no company I’d rather work for in the world – but increasingly because I’d like to give them a kick up the arse. Whenever they release a new product, it does nothing to improve the existing search offering. Whenever they do something to change the existing search offering, it’s a minor layout move. Whenever there’s a new product in labs, it’s no longer outlandish, it doesn’t make me think and again; is no improvement or change to their core offering: SEARCH.

Surrch To Be Called Allegro On The Desktop

You can check out the video of the new Allegro interface, currently in design, by watching the Youtube clip below. I’m searching for alternatives to the traditional listing of search results by trying to present something more intuitive and visual.

 

 

Recently there have been some major improvements to Allegro in terms of speed and usability. You can also now pull results directly from Google and display them in the Allegro results interface when online. Leaving the indexing functionality to hold those sites and topics that you’re specifically interested in. The database is also wholly transferrable, meaning you can swap and share – or even compile a master index of websites.

Surrch Pre Release Available

I’ve uploaded a small pre release version of Surrch to the internets. It’s available for all readers to have a go with and hopefully give me some feedback on. The basis is very simple, but it’s hopefully an eye opener to what you can achieve with a very simple desktop application.

http://www.surrch.com/Standalone.zip is the url, there’s a basic readme included – but if you have any questions about this very early iteration of the first semantic desktop engine then please do email me at phillmidwinter@hotmail.com or phill@home-james.co.uk.

Failing that, then just leave me a message in the comments, I’ll definitely read and get back to you. Thanks.

EDIT: OK, as i’ve had a lot more non tech people looking at this than I realised would be around I’m going to put up a file with all the installers you need to have before you put this on your machine (not much actually – will be installed automatically in beta of course).

http://www.surrch.com/Standalone.zip

http://www.surrch.com/surrch-pre.zip

GUI design started today, so I’m going to be taking a break on it for a little while – expect some further SEO posts in the meantime.

Redefining Search as Surrch

I’ve been working hard on moving the search engine to desktop this past week, and can finally say that the crawler code is working and indexing as quickly as that with a full MySQL database and dedicated machine.

I’d love to see some benchmarks run on it to see exactly how speedy the index is but no time just yet.

Recently I’ve been through some of the applications we’re planning to make available over the next few months, and the direction we’re going to take on such crucial matters as Open Source and outside developer interaction. I can fill you in now on some of the planned uses for the semantic layer.

Now You Can Have A Personal Search Engine

I realise that I the semantic engine was supposed to be up last week – but unfortunately I hit a few snags back there:

• I was unable to get the server resources I needed, namely a windows based server on a backbone internet connection.
• I realised that there was little point in releasing a web based demo, when I constantly talk about the advantages of personal search.

I have more than enough bandwidth and facilities to distribute a personal search engine, I’m working on integrating the Firebird embedded database so that nobody is going to have to deal with any fussy MySQL issues (which is currently what the index is using). Once the embedded database has been successfully integrated, you’ll be able to use the search engine to index topics of your choosing with an intelligent semantic engine powering those choices, as well as your searching of indexed content.

I can’t promise built in web server at this stage to search from, it’s not something I’ve really looked into but you will be able to search directly from the application itself.

If you’re planning on checking it out, the only requirements are Windows and the .Net 2 Framework. No, i’m not a devil worshipper, this product was originally developed in PHP in fact – and there are plans to port using Mono for Linux at a later date.

Search spelt differently

I have taken the time to put together what I’d consider an Alpha version of the search, semantic and NLP (natural language processing) techniques I’ve been talking about to give an idea of the power that’s going to be available to us within the year most likely.

The Search Target

Filtered personal searching is a growth area, allowing users to download their own search indexes based around topics of interest to them.