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• What's wrong with search again?
  2003-10-29 09:47:13  Mark Sigal | [Reply | View]
  
  
  I tend to come at things from a life cycle perspective, and look for solutions that facilitate that life cycle. I think search is great, but when I find stuff that I want to keep, it's all very ad hoc. While I bookmark occasionally, that approach has proven unwieldy. It just doesn’t scale real well. Plus my point is that there is a difference between SITES I visit, where bookmarking is the way to go and INFORMATION I find that I want to keep and categorize. For example, I read a lot and come across articles of interest. I like to write online reviews or blogs. Frequently I come across products of interest that are referenced online and want to put that into a bucket that is meaningful to me and organized so the relevant associated information is connected to it. Plus, I often receive emails that are integral to a topic of interest and want to throw that information in the same bucket, without having to think, “Oh, that’s email, I have another application for managing that.” And I like to share this information. For me, email is the preferred way to do this, but I know lots of people that posting to their blog or web site is their default path. Also, having spent the past year playing with consumer oriented web services, I spend a large chunk of time wanting to being able to actually doing something at the end of the day that leverages the information I find, whether that entails booking a ticket, making a reservation, buying a product, etc. So I am clear, I am not expecting a magical brain to find the relationships, watch my keystrokes and act as my autonomous agent for me. That may indeed be the future but the solutions I have played with have either been disappointing or too low utility for my needs. I just want a better system for performing these types of actions, as I make discoveries of interest. I’ve talked to 100+ people who do this type of stuff manually every day on an ad hoc basis so its clear that I am not the only one with the itch needing to be scratched.
  
  As to your question/comments on infomercial, I am ultra cognizant of maintaining the balance between speaking of what you know and pushing your specific solution. That’s why I mentioned and linked to 16 different solutions, and of course don’t speak to my own (but your point is reasonable regardless). Plus, so I am clear, my company’s solution does not do all of the things that this blog speaks to (it only handles a subset of them).
  
  Appreciate your comments.
  
  Mark