|
By Xavier Mohr, CEO
SLReports.net Linden Lab held its first-ever in-world press conference in the Linden sim of Abundance today, inviting reporters from around the grid to listen in as Sally, Jeska, James, Catherine, and other Lindens discussed the new and improved search functionality coming soon to a Second Life client near you. In-world media present at the event included SL Reports, SLNN, writer Prokofy Neva, and others. "The new search is basically a work in progress," said Jeska Linden, reminding the press that they were still taking feedback to the system and making modifications accordingly.
I downloaded the release candidate with the new search functionality myself. I found it to be interesting, to say the least. A quick search for "Bank" not only brought up groups and parcels related to the query, but also a number of keyword-relevant classifieds (some of which weren't exactly relevant) in a right-hand column. I did notice however one change explained by James Linden, the Linden Lab programmer spearheading much of this morning's conference. This would be the refreshing lack of space- and punctuation-heavy advertisements which users often place in the hopes of making their ads "float to the top" or otherwise be more easily noticed. According to James, special attention has been paid to the placement process of classifieds in preventing such ads from being submitted. In fact, aside from the interesting new interface and classifieds reorganization, many of Linden Lab's search system changes tend to be back-end. Queries and results are now handled on a Linden Lab web server through an application powered by Google Enterprise.  The new search system is primarily web-based, with results pages loaded in-world in the search window. Some search functions are still based within the client, however. At present, no developer API exists for the new functionality although James Linden reiterated that non-Linden programmers are welcome to write scripts which utilize the results pages.
Of interesting note is that the new search system boasts the ability to index objects on parcels. Linden Lab's version of this functionality, however – unlike early versions of SLBrowser – only indexes items marked "For Sale," or items specifically tagged to appear in "Search," and only indexes parcels that are flagged to appear in search results through the existing L$30 per week checkbox located in the "Land Options" screen of the Second Life client. "We don't index anything that you don't have the ability to tell us not to index," said James Linden in response to a question of user privacy, citing that items had to be specifically marked in order to appear in search results. A controversial matter in some circles is what seems to be the diminished presence of classifieds when searching "All," though my rough trial with the new functionality did not bring up such concerns. Users can still search specifically in the "Classifieds" category, as they can with Events, Places, Groups, and People. Under the new system, search results are estimated by James to be updated about every 2 days. Public preview of the new search is currently offered through Release Candidate 1.18.5.1, available for download at secondlife.com.
|
