New life for Search Engines? (abstract) Mark A.C.J. Overmeer AT Computing bv Nijmegen, The Netherlands Mark@Overmeer.net
Interface Search Engine Presentation About the author	While search-engines are the only way to get a view on all information which can be found on the global Internet, their results are not satisfying. The main reason for this is the unpresedented size and growth of the information to be searched. In one talk, two ideas are presented to solve some of the problems which may improve the usability of search-engines. The first is about the development of an interface which supports the data-mining of a user much better than current engines do. The second is about how we can restructure the search-engines to improve the quality of their data. This talk was presented on June 9 1999, at the TERENA-NORDUnet Networking Conference 1999 (TNNC): "The Challenge of Gigabit Networking".
paper	A Search Interface for my Questions As frequent users of search-engines, we get the impression that producing any result at all is so hard for the developers of the software, that helping the user with understanding the results is too much to ask. Some experiments in this field have been published, for instance by AltaVista, but their reach is limited. Of course, interpreting information is hard. We are used to have librarians to help us digging into books. But can someone with some extra education ask better questions on Internet? Not with the current interfaces. In this talk, an interface is shown which helps (trained) people during their search in the enormous quantities of information which can be found on Internet. Key functionalities for this interface: additional support by the engine when going through results; developed for trained people to give them more power in their search.
paper	My Personal Search-Engine The information on Internet is growing to such a quantity, that it is impossible to get an up-to-date overview on the information which is contained in it. Only financially powerful organizations can afford to build search-engines. But even with their effort, the indexes do not reflection the (change in) content of Internet-sites. In this talk, a layered model is proposed, which make it easier to develop your own search-engine, and at the same time get a much higher quality on the data. The main contribution to the improvement is made by a localized network of servers which scan a region of the Net for changes. The changes found are passed to search-engines which are interested in that information. The target of the talk is to form a group of developers from various countries to try to establish an experimental, multi-language network. The Presentation
	About the author Mark Overmeer got his MSc in Informatics from the University of Nijmegen, NL in 1990. Since then, he gained professional experience in maintaining a large variety of UNIX-systems, from tiny to super-computers. In his current occupation, this knowledge is taught to system-developers and -maintainers at AT Computing bv, a leading training institute on UNIX and UNIX-related languages in the Netherlands. Next to his professional activities in computers, he maintains a very popular Dutch Internet-site since 1995, and actively participates in development of Public Domain software.