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Microsoft's Search Engine Plans

prostoalex writes "Andy Beal from SearchEngineGuide.com interviews Robert Scoble from Microsoft. Scoble tells the audience what current search technologies Microsoft is working on as part of its Longhorn/WinFS development as well as in the field of Internet. Scoble also discusses current problems with local drive and Internet searching, such as absence of metadata for a lot of files out there: "When I take pictures off of my Nikon, they have some metadata (for instance, inside the file is the date it was taken, along with the exposure information) but that metadata isn't useful for most human searches. For instance, how about if I wanted to search for "my wedding photos?" Neither X1, nor Windows XP's built in search would find your wedding photos. Why? Because they have useless names like DSC0001.jpg and there's no metadata that says they are wedding photos.""

5 of 407 comments (clear)

  1. Ouch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    X1, nor Windows XP's built in search would find your wedding photos. Why? Because they have useless names like DSC0001.jpg and there's no metadata that says they are wedding photos.

    Right, dude! The camera should automagically recognize that it's taking pictures of your wedding and include that info in the metadata!

  2. I'm impressed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This whole longhorn winfs thing seems like a big technological advance to me ...

    Manualy adding metadata to each of your 200+ wedding pictures looks so smarter than just creating an old fashioned directory "wedding pics" and moving them into it ...

    I can't wait to start using this wonderful FS

  3. Re:Hmmmm... by khuber · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm so stupid! I named all my folders like that too. folder0001, folder0002, ....

  4. Re:I have a suggestion for em.. by lintux · · Score: 5, Funny

    > Also metadata needs to be created by the user, I aint gonna be entereing data on a keypad on my camera for every photo.

    That's why the next version of Microsoft Photo[tm] will send every photo you make to the Microsoft headquarters so they can add the metadata for you. ;-)

  5. M$ search technology by stefan999 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ever tried to search for Xfree86 on search.msn.com?

    Stefan