Some years ago I started hacking on YASE - Yet another Search Engine. The project never saw usage outside my own little pet projects. This was just fine - the project served its purpose as my testbed for playing with php and mysql. YASE basically existing as nothing more than a wrapper for fulltext indexing in mysql and illustrated how to perform crawling and indexing of websites. The implementation was directly tied into mysql - so yes, this was “yet another search engine”, but it was just mysql search. The YASE project started to be mostly about php, mysql and writing phpunit tests - during the years it was a welcome change from writing complicated rutines for interacting with coorporate search engines. So basically, YASE served its purpose, but now I feel the urge to evolve the project into something else.

I have realized that I want to focus on the development process of search based applications itself - to see if I can realign the concept of search with the possibilites offered in modern browsers and from social networks. Doing this will require that I establish a framework for interactive feedback from social networks and updating the indexing structures to support this. This will involve using HTML5 features such as websockets and inventing/examining indexing and communication protocols for social networks.

You can follow my efforts on github

So - the journey starts. Or am I continuing it? This blog will serve as a follow-up to my earlier blog pedant.dk where I documented my thoughts on whatever software or conferences I found interesting.

During the years 5 years I maintained that blog, I collected various tips on sofware and documented them for later use. I also wrote down some of my thoughts on software architecture - the most recent one being Mindful software. The name of the blog “pedant.dk” reflected my preference for attention to detail.

Today I will be launching my new blog - searchzen - to reflect my growing attention to search based applications and how to implement information systems that can evolve and adapt to changing use cases. These days I am interested in Search engines and Geographical information systems, so most of my posts will probably be about that. I also spend a great amount of time implementing Rich Internet applications (mostly using ExtJS) so you can also expect to find content about that here.