The Future of Personal Search
How Document Management and Computer Search Can Be Improved
Today, computer users have to be involved in the filing of their information and have to search in many places to find it. Cloud search solves both of these issues.
Cloud search frees users from having to search multiple devices. A single search is initiated from any device and the cloud handles the complexities of the search. The user is not required to track the location of their files and so can focus on other issues. Microsoft could take advantage of cloud search in their ongoing competition with Google.
Currently, users create a personal cloud of information as they create documents and interact with systems. This generates a lot of data which can be difficult to file and subsequently find. Information is put into lots of different places such as work and home computers, mobile devices and networked storage, as well as within web-applications like Facebook and iGoogle.
Finding data in the cloud can be difficult because the user has to perform a number of searches across different devices which may require knowledge of information location. Cloud search solves this by not requiring information to be arranged in files and folders and by providing search from any device that is anywhere in the cloud.
The End of the Desktop Metaphor
A data cloud is implemented in terms of a “searchtop” metaphor which replaces the desktop metaphor familiar to PC users. The desktop metaphor focuses the user’s attention on the manual filing of information into a hierarchy of documents to aid later retrieval. Retrieval can be made easier by using a desktop search tool, but the user still has to file data into the hierarchy in the first place.
The searchtop metaphor completely discards the desktop metaphor. Files and folders are no longer present. In the searchtop metaphor a file is just a collection of data with some additional user and computer supplied data associated with it. A user may add to the additional data a collection of tags that further describe the file’s content. A computer adds to the additional data whenever the file is processed. If the file was received by email, the additional data would be updated to record who sent it and the date the file was sent and received.
Automatic Data Management
Data is placed into the cloud which indexes it to support cloud search. The user does not have to indicate where data should be saved, it is just saved, and the user retrieves data by performing a search. Common facilities such as most recent documents and short cuts are saved searches.
A user can define what information can be searched in their cloud (physical devices and websites) and what parts can be searched. The cloud search system automatically removes any information a particular user cannot access such as a colleague’s files, as well as information that it does not make sense to search, such as executable computer files.
A Single Search From Any Device
Cloud search works across devices from different manufacturers, such as iPhones, Blackberrys and Nokia cell phones and any other device that can store data.
Users are uploading significant amounts of personal information to websites. WIthout the ability to perform a single search over these information points, personal data can easily become out of date or lost. Cloud search unifies all of these separate systems into a single, coherent whole that is easy to use and easy to live with.
