Doug Ross @ Journal

Search 2.0

The Wink search engine is what can only be described as "web 2.0 search" or perhaps even "search 2.0". Yes, I loathe the term "web 2.0". It connotes a certain -- uhm, naivete? -- associated with Javascript-XML-DHTML-enabled websites that most developers call AJAX. The paragon of web 2.0 applications is, of course, the tech news site Digg, which took off faster than Neil Armstrong strapped to a Jupiter booster rocket.

WebProNews describes the spate of AJAX-enabled search engines as "Search 2.0". In addition to Wink, Rollyo lets users create vertical search engines around a specific topic or site. Have a particular expertise? You can use Rollyo to create a search engine that's highly relevant for that area. Eurekster is on a similar tangent, incorporating a Wiki-like results page called a "Swiki".

But leading the pack, in my opinion, is Wink. Wink lets users tag and rank Google's search results, which results in a "human-filtered" search experience. The ephereal goal, of course, is to deliver markedly superior search results. Given the proliferation of search- and blog-spam aimed at deceiving Google's spiders, such a goal is both timely and worthy.

Check out Wink when you have a moment.

As an aside, Wink appears to be developed in -- what else? -- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). In fact, of ArticleDashboard's Top Ten Web 2.0 applications of 2005 list, seven were LAMP-based (PHP), one utilized Perl (I think), and two used .NET. It's clear where most innovators are leaning and it doesn't appear to be proprietary, closed-source code.