After some time away from my blog. I am back, and if my resolutions for 2008 are to be trusted I should be a good boy and post more often on my blog (objective once a week).

This quick post to highlight the launch of Wikia Search, a project from Jimmy Wales (read Wikipedia) that is supposed to bring an alternative to web search by bringing a human touch to the whole thing. More information can be found in the next two links:

• Jimmy Wales’ Search Project Gets a Grub Stake - BusinessWeek Tech Beat
• Wikia Search Is A Complete Letdown – Techcrunch

I will not comment on the fact that this early version does not actually include any human touch to web search, but wanted to comment on the whole concept. It appears strange to me to think that people interested in searching for information will take the time to “rate” search and thus help the search engine do a better job. It seems to me that from a user perspective it defeats the whole purpose of a search engine, which is supposed to help us make sense of the whole Internet mass (not the reverse).

I don’t know how the people behind this project search, but in my case and the case of people around me, I don’t want to spend time searching for information. I want to spend time reading relevant content. If I cannot get the content I want the first time, then I will not use that search engine. And user reviews and rating takes time to make sense. With new websites, blogs and so on being created everyday, how can user rating keep up with all this.

Anyway… that was just a quick post on this. Will try to give me some more thoughts soon. Also a review of Zotero plugins for Firefox should come soon (I think I am going to get addicted to that thing real quick).

Update: One more article about Wikia Search on BusinessWeek. When your product is far from making a difference, is more press coverage good… or bad?

• The Spare Design of Wikia Search – BusinessWeek