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A Search Engine For The Slower Net

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the most-everyone-most-everywhere dept.

Makarand writes "According to this BBC News article researchers at MIT are developing a search engine for people using the web on slower net connections. The software will e-mail queries to a central server and receive the most relevant webpages from the search results by e-mail in a compressed form. Since the program is too big to download over a poor net connection it will be mailed on CDs to libraries for people to borrow and install. They are also considering trying to persuade computer sellers in developing countries to install the program on machines."

2 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Also good to circumvent censorship by pbox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Coincidentally (?) it is also very usefult to circumvent the Great Firewall. Way to go, but it would also be nice to optionally have the cached content (ala google) e-mailed as well. That would send the last standing wall crumbling.

    --
    Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
  2. Re:Because... by fliplap · · Score: 5, Insightful

    RTFA.

    Why don't you just scream "HI I'M FROM 'WESTERN' CIVILIZATION AND HAVE NO IDEA HOW THESE THINGS WORK IN LESS PRIVLEGED PLACES"

    Google is too slow when your school has one phone line that is used for _everything_, including net access. Not to mention the cost of using the phone anyway. This allows all the students to submit thier searches to a teacher one day, the teacher then submits the all searches with only a couple minutes of dialing up. He can retrieve the compressed results a few days later with only a minutes of dialing up. Now go read the article. Someone needs to mod that post down, hopefully the poster can redeem themselves later in the thread with something insightful.