Forum Moderators: bakedjake
Being developed at MIT for countries with slow net access, the new engine (The TEK Search [cag.lcs.mit.edu]) allows users to email queries with results beign returned by email later that day.
"To avoid a glut of information, the software then filters the results and chooses the most relevant. "
Scott
Its not like the major SE's are slow giving you results anyway!
The theory is that if a department / class doesn't have a permanent phone line, then they can submit the queries over night in a batch and receive them next time they are on.
Scott
ok, so they get the results back via email - then what are they going to do - they'll have to connect to look at the web pages of the results.
so how much more stress is it to initally goto a search engine which would take less than 30 seconds to load all the pages and do the search.
Also in large parts of the world outside the West, Cyber Cafes are the primary means of accessing the web and post and wait means paying twice. Once to post your info and secondly to check the results. What happens if the returned results are not what you want....
You do realise that the World Wide Web isnt available to everyone in the World dont you?
Bang your head against a wall a couple of times then try to imagine life without Internet access 24 / 7.
Perhaps try to invisige how difficult it must be to teach anything with limited resources. Yes we did without prior to the web.
But emailed search results is a vast improvement on no search results at all.
Yes, this service is of zero use to 99% if not 100% of the people here. But you aren't the people this is intended to help, so saying it is ridiculous is an extremely narrow minded point of view to take IMO.
You say Google already offers quick search results? How quick is it when 20 to 50 students need to use the same dial up line within a small time period to research information? Not quick enough (and remember they have to wade through the spam that is complained about / generated* by members here).
Completely writing this off like some of the comments here have done is like saying food parcels are ridiculous because we already have food.....
Scott
*delete as appropriate
[edited by: jeremy_goodrich at 4:32 pm (utc) on July 15, 2003]
[edit reason] no google tool urls - sorry! [/edit]
My wife is from a very small country - population, somewhere around 300,000 people in the *whole* country. Very, very small place.
And yet - they have permanent internet connections. It is an LDC (lessor developed country, the proper way to call it a "3rd world country"). With limited resources, limited GDP, etc, etc - and a host of other issues! - they have permanent internet access.
Why? Because, it is important. Any country - with even limited resources, so long as they are not fighting starvation & civil unrest on a massive, and I mean massive as in the UN is there now helping out, then they have already built out the infrastructure to harness the power of the internet.
Sure, you might have to travel a bit to reach the connection - but it's there. I've been to a few remote places myself, and it's something amazing, to know that Mount Everest is so close, and so is a latte & an internet cafe (for cheap, too).
There are lots of countries in the world, and yes - perhaps more of them don't have internet access. But, from my (albeit limited) perspective, it seems that this is a need that with time (perhaps 2-5 years at the most) will no longer exist.
Though I didn't read through the whole bit about this engine, perhaps they will offer extended pre-processing & filtering of the results to add value to encourage more people to use it, ala an information agent on demand that will learn your preferences? Now that would be something!
I just mean, even dialling up to the internet on a 386DX33 on a 14.4K modem using Lynx, pretty much any SE is acceptably fast, so this new SE-by-email had better have some pretty darn nifty features...
They send a summary HTML page of the results (stripped of excess images, javascript) back to you.
If a page you have already received turns up in another search query by your client, then it isn't sent again to save bandwidth / storage space (?).
I still believe the general, "it's completely unnecessary" arguement isnt accurate.
Granted I have no facts to back up my own arguement, but I would assume that given relative technology costs, connection costs, hardware availablity, user demand that there must be quite a few places in the world where an overnight batch search function would be much more economical.
Plus, would you think that the guys at MIT would roll out such a project with quite specific objectives and uses, without researching it first?
Scott :)
Well, at this point, many people believe even thinking of generating a new search engine is a bit redundant ;) and people have lots of reasons for doing research.
I've got family in Nepal & Afghanistan at the moment - nobody has any problems with their internet access :)
With lynx, you won't need to strip a page of javascript / images, as the text browser will do that already.
Hm, still sort of not see the need here...and in countries, such as incredibly poor African nations where they are embroiled in civil war, they are usually too preoccupied with survival to worry about things like the internet. I've met a few people from different countries there, that all had no problems obtaining access, over the last few years...
I guess I'm just a bit at a loss as to where these people live.
Further, if they send you a batch of pages, that all are not what you need, then you need to wait much longer...it would be far better to be able to browse the results yourself, for your limited internet session, than wait for a downloadable zip file that may or may not contain the valuable data you need.
Keep in mind, in a lot of developing coutries, equipping classrooms with state of the art technology generally is not a priority if you have a low budget.
For a teacher wanting to add to a subject area he or she is teaching, this could offer a cost effective way allowing students to research information and study the results the next day.
For a class of, say, 30 students, having 30 PC's just for infrequent information searches is a luxury and the budget could be allocated elsewhere.
It could be especially useful for new schools being setup in areas that need them - the technology requirements will be much lower.
But as I said, I dont know. :) Just merely wild conjecture on my part. Still think it's a good idea. :)
Scott
I know, I know, being pendantic - but in some countries (such as where my wife is from) the teacher's don't have the freedom to be so "ad hoc" with the curriculum ;) So, it wouldn't be useful there...
I used to live and teach on a tiny island in the philippines, and though it was a little more touristy and had many internet cafes, i travelled throughout the provinces and found that though not everyone had access to computers (but lots did through friends or schools or internet cafes), when there was one 95% of the time it had at least a 28.8k modem connected to it.
Even at .5k a second data transfer rate, people can still get google results in a few seconds.
It probably would take longer checking the email.
Now they have thought of a "E-mail search engine" next what,"e-mail Web surfing"? You get sites mailed to your e-mail address?,Yes, it has been done but I don't remember the details.
And in the late 1980s, the few of us outside universities in Australia who had UUCP access to the Net had to do ftp by email overnight. Yes, files were fetched bt sending an email request to a uni machine, which then fetched the files and emailed them to you the next morning (9600 bps). Seemed quite acceptable back then.
But I agree that I cannot imagine a backwater where they have access for a minute, long enough to send the request, then they wait a day for the SERP, and presumably they have used up the minute allocation, so they click a link on the third day?
I used to have only a few minutes to conduct my research and obtain information, because i used to have to take it in turns to use the net, i would have valued such a search engine, i could have made my search request the first time i had access and then received the information the next time.
The network was shoddy anyway, and connection was poor so even when i had the token it took about 10 seconds for anything to load. So this service would have benefited me.
I know there arent many in that situation but it will help a few people everywhere. IMO thats a very good thing.
Just my 2 bob :P
It was one of the first free hosts.
[/offtopic]
If the files below are too big for you to download, please send email to tekadmin@mit.edu and we will gladly mail you a CD with the installers.
Given their example of someone living in Malawi - they'll send 'em the tek software on a cd rom per mail to Malawi? C'mon ...
The other distribution solution bbc mentioned is:
They are also considering trying to persuade computer sellers in developing countries to install the program on machines.
Really? Industrial leaders of 1st world countries don't tend do think about 3rd world country problems - they rarely send food packages, pharmaceuticals, water and stuff (not never but really rarely). Not even the MIT can make me believe that they'll do this with a piece of software that helps educational researches!
Hmm, if i wouldn't be 100% sure, i'd say it's april fools day.
Sorry, allthough the idea sounds interesting, i fear it's damned to fail. The fact that tek is developed by the MIT doesn't automatically make it a success, imho.
I'd say it's even dangerous because the results are filtered - therefor somehow censored. A server (or a research team) in Boston decides what's valuable informations for students in Malawi? Um, Bill isn't involved, or!?
Nice 'n interesting find anyway, Marketing Guy!
