Not sure I have much to say about this yet. I have lobbed a mail to Jimmy Wales to see if he’d be open to talking here…
Jimmy Wales, founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, is planning to build an online commercial search engine that would compete with Google and Yahoo.
The search engine, code-named Wikiasari, would combine open source technology and human intervention to deliver more relevant results than the algorithm-based systems used today, Wales said Tuesday. “Human intelligence is still the best thing we have, so let’s let humans do what they do best, and computers do what they do best.” Wikiasari combines the Hawaiian word for quick, “wiki,” with the Japanese word “asari,” which means “rummaging search.”
Apparently Jimmy is planning on taking the Nutch engine and mashing it up with conversational media approaches like Wikipedia. So far, no idea exactly how, and he mentions a two-year timeframe…Hmmm…