DISCUSS: Beagle Status-Quo

[Srikant Jakilinki <sriks dcs gla ac uk>]

Hiya Guys,
     As you might be aware, MSN desktop search has also been released 
recently. And Yahoo will be in the space not before long. Tiger-OS is 
just round the corner. Copernic is having a good following. X1 seems to 
be gaining a foothold etc. It is getting quite heated and it is exciting 
out there. Can I then just ask all of you (the core members 
specifically) a silly question as to how see and how we intend to make 
Beagle different and better from any of these?

1) First of all, me thinks they are good baselines to compare ourselves 
to and since we are still developing we can take the good points from 
each and leave out the bad ones. And of course we can always borrow from 
good research and cool ideas that we all have (like that of metadata 
attachments or resonant small-world network building). So, please join 
the discussion and let everyone know your thoughts on this. I will put 
this post in the Wiki too if that makes it easier.

2) Of course, we are not competing or anything like that but purely from 
a technology and end-user viewpoint, we should ensure that Beagle is 
right up there and better to search our computers than any of these. My 
suspicion is that unless Linux has such robust, integrated search tools, 
  plans to invade the desktop market will be cut short. Total search is 
too important a functionality and opportunity to be missed and once 
users get addicted to that, any migration to another computing platform 
will be made much harder.

3) I have attached a slide from Yahoo press release. We could work on 
such a thing. I can compile the list and put them in a tabular and 
graphical modality if desired. As one can guess, I am into such research 
as part of my PhD (too sad that I cannot publish yet as per funding 
rules) and hence could do with a little bit of community thought on this

----
Regards-Cheers-Sincerely,
Srikant
http://sriks6711.blogspot.com
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~sriks
"Before you know it the future is now - book early to avoid disappointment"
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