“Web search engines are beginning to offer personalization capabilities to users. Personalization is the ability of the Web site to match retrieved information content to a user’s profile. This content can be set explicitly by the user or derived implicitly by the Web site using such user profile information as zip code, birth date, etc. (…) Our findings show that despite the high level of interest in Web personalization, most search engine Web sites currently offer no or limited personalization features.” (Yashmeet Khopkar et al. – First Monday 8.7)

“Topical metadata have been used to indicate the subject of Web pages. They have been simultaneously hailed as building blocks of the semantic Web and derogated as spam. At this time major Web browsers avoid harvesting topical metadata. This paper suggests that the significance of the topical metadata controversy depends on the technological appropriateness of adding them to Web pages. This paper surveys Web technology with an eye on assessing the appropriateness of Web pages as hosts for topical metadata. The survey reveals Web pages to be both transient and volatile: poor hosts of topical metadata. The closed Web is considered to be a more supportive environment for the use of topical metadata. The closed Web is built on communities of trust where the structure and meaning of Web pages can be anticipated. The vast majority of Web pages, however, exist in the open Web, an environment that challenges the application of legacy information retrieval concepts and methods.” (Terrence A. Brooks – Information Research 8.3) – courtesy of victor lombardi

“The corporate intranet is an organism that is at once very similar to and very unlike the Internet at large. A well-designed intranet (…) is perhaps the most significant step that corporations can make – and have made in recent years – to improve productivity and communication between individuals in an organization.” (Ronald Fagin et al. – IBM Almaden Research Center) – courtesy of column two

“(…) the most common measures of search performance. But they’re not as helpful as we’d like.” (Tim Gray – Ongoing)

“Nobody uses advanced search (…) Except the people who do.” (Tim Bray – Ongoing)

“The easiest way to increase your added value is to do small things that have a large positive return for the company. If youíre looking to find something easy to do that has a large positive impact on your value, look no further than thinking about search engines and how your portion of a Web site can be optimized for them.” (Alan K’necht – Digital Web Magazine)

“Scientists in the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant’s labs are experimenting with new types of search and user interface technology that will let individuals and businesses tap into the vast amounts of data on the Internet, or inside their own computers, that increasingly will be impractical or impossible to find.” (Michael Kanellos – News.Com) – courtesy of nooface

Papers submissions of the CHI 2003 Workshop (CHI 2003) – courtesy of louis rosenfeld

“The effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specified users can locate and relocate desired pieces of data or information in information dense environments.” (IAWiki)

“Users are becoming increasingly aware that they need more efficient ways to find the information they need.” (Whitney Quesenbery)

“I want to be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime.” (Peter Morville – Semantic Studios)

“If there were a beauty contest for search engines, Kartoo – developed in France by cousins Laurent and Nicolas Baleydier – would win the crown.” (Contact KartOO)

“The goal of this study is to obtain a better understanding of social aspects of information retrieval in a variety of workplace settings.” (UW Information School)

“The Semantic Web offers exciting possibilities for information retrieval.” (G. B. Newby – Information Research 7.4)

“Suggestions are made for improvements in the design of Web information retrieval (…)” (Marcia J. Bates – FirstMonday 2002, Vol. 7 Num. 7)

“Dynamic URLs, with question marks and other punctuation, tend to put off search engine indexing robots, as well as humans looking at URLs.” (Avi Rappoport – Search Tools)

“Like usability, findability applies broadly across all sorts of physical and virtual environments.” (Peter Morville – Boxes and Arrows)

“(…) users will more and more expect to be able to search automated information stores in ways that are comfortable and familiar to them.” (Marcia J. Bates – Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of California of LA)