Web 2.0: The Web Reloaded

JetEye and Search

November 20th, 2005

JetEye (www.jeteye.com) offers a different kind of search service. Now I realize these days there are lots of people offereing a different kind of search service, but this one appeals to me. I might be a little biased as I am on their Technical Advisory Board, but I joined as a technical advisor because of my interest.

The basic idea centers on JetPacks, which are annontated collections of links based on search results. The annotations can include images, notes and even other JetPacks. You can search other JetPacks or the Web (they just delegate to existing search services).

I think the noise-to-signal ratio is growing way too fast; it is harder and harder to find something. I like the idea of looking for product reviews and browsing existing JetPacks and shortcutting to relevant information instead of swimming on sites that happen to text match my search. I remember reading about the recent John Robert’s Supreme Court nomination online, only to find out , with a little digging, that someof the sources that appeared independent bloggers had strong ties to very biased political groups. (This didn’t suprise me either.) A JetPack could tell me this upfront in the editor’s annotations in the JetPack. JetEye’s recently added a JetPack rating feature so you can sift through the possible noise in JetPacks too.

The biggest thing that appeals to me about JetEye is that they aren’t accepting the status quo of “one size fits all” in the search world. I found it very disappointing that in the last ten years the search experience hasn’t evolved much: from the days of Alta Vista and Excite to the current ones of Google and Yahoo, the user’s search experience and tools are pretty much the same. Though search speed, and sometimes relevance, has improved, I still have text box in which I input a search string that is executed against some big index of the Internet, which has been collected through bots and spiders.

Information Retrieval has been a pet interest of mine since college and I am excited to see JetEye and others offer other ideas, models and tools. I can’t wait to see what is next.

Entry Filed under: Misc