The big event of the last month (apart from the launch of the Apple iPhone 3G of course) was the release of a vastly improved version of Jimmy Wale's Wikia Search engine.
If like me, you tried the first release last January and were sorely disappointed then go take a look at this new version, it is still rather basic but now actually usable. You can perform a search and then modify the results. Its pretty intuitive other than the fact that its not obvious you can drag and drop the items to change the order of the results!
Its a Wikipedia of search. But like Wikipedia it seems to me that it may prove to be easily gamed. If I wish to boost certain pages and down play others to my own ends then I can. It may not be so bad though as I assume things get averaged out but much depends on how the code works behind the scenes and how the community handles such attempted manipulation.
This is going to be an interesting development to watch especially if it takes off like Wikipedia and a community of editors keep it regularly updated. Its not going to dislodge Google overnight but if the gaming turns out not to be a problem then over time the search results should get better and better and should make it a great alternative to Google.
You will find more about it in this Computerworld article.
