[Sigia-l] re: the future of search

[m.milano]

sheesh...so much for meditative moods.
maybe i misunderstood christina's original post, but when she asked
"what you think the next radical innovation in search will be" it
didn't appear that she was asking for search practices
or professional habits thought to be ill-conceived or gone astray...

maybe its clear that search too needs grow up from a text field and 
and a go button
into a full panoply of tools to use in the right situation,
applied deftly instead of being pushed, squished, and mangled into place.



on the (actual) topic of search, searching, searches:

(*) has anyone taken the the faceted "search" (like tower's browse 
functionality
or some recipe sites, in practice), a level higher and built a 
flexible site/protosite that displays
a dynamic navigation driven by something akin a the faceted browse?
given the right situation, are there options for making the entire experience
a search-like experience?
faceted metadata for our products, contact us, careers, and the other 
usual stuff.

(however, if the normally unchanging reference points of a 
navigational structure
are unpinned, does it get to be a mess?)


(*) anyone have thoughts on implementation/use/application of dialog-based
natural language search engines?
product examples are iphrase,  easyask, soliloquy, etc.
are they great promise unfulfilled?


would it, could it act like an infocom game?



michel.milano