Please help us with this.

[User3204]

I don't have Silverlight installed, and I'm not going to go through that palaver on this machine, but anyway, I can still suggest a few things, and hopefully they're not already there.

If it allows the use of saved searches, I hope this is something that can only be done by staff, as we don't want students to create a search that finds a load of naughty pictures and then save this for their friends.
If possible for the staff to tweak the results that come out of the search, so that when it is saved, they can only allow relevant results, or conversely, include useless or just plain wrong items in there to make them learn how to search properly.

I would also suggest that if it goes off and indexes a local server (SLG/VLE/Intranet etc) then being able to tag the pages to a subject (I don't really know how search engines work in-the-background) so that it can discount searches for French from History subjects (etc).

If there are a lot of saved searches, then ideally we would want to be able to categorise them by subjects, relevant to what is taught within the school. And on a per class/year basis (although I don't know how you would restrict or steer the students into the right search "zones"). Every time some company try to sell me some web service I ask them if it is Sshiboleth / AD Integrated, even if I don't know how to do either.

Is this something that would be located on-site at the school, in the RBC/LA ISP, or centrally hosted? In which case would you be able to access Intranet sites from outside the school campus or not ( There are advantages to both.) ?


I know there is a lot information lying around on our internal Common/information drives, would it be able to search this stuff ? Having a decent index of the staff shared drives would be really handy for when we lose track of stuff.

[dwhyte85]

I have to say... I quite like it in terms of look and how it works, tad slow but i'm guessing it's on shared hosting, for a pupil this would be pretty good... but not something i'd like to use long term. I did notice a few rogue results when searching Rugby, nothing illicit just a bit odd... iPod touch!?

Anyway, I like it... if/when it's filtered, sped up and tweaked it'll be something I could a child at our school using.

[button_ripple]

• A version for mobile devices/lower-powered devices (PDA's etc...)
• Ability to search locations on a local network (e.g. get it to search a shared area), also you will need to put users into groups to stop pupils searching the staff shared area.
• Different colours/themes for users to choose from
• Option to remove the remember me box, schools using single logins for pupils (e.g. Primary Schools often have class logins), if pupils tell it to remember the password, this could cause problems
• Allow users to select the search engines to use

Other than that it is a really good search engine - reminds me a bit of Profusion, which allowed users to search about 10 search engines at the same time!!

[mac_shinobi]

What we need from you is feedback. What features would you like to see, what does it currently not do, and more importantly a name!

1. An iPhone app ?
2. Skynet - not sure if there will be any copyright issues on that though - Just dont let it take over your system hehe

[mac_shinobi]

• A version for mobile devices/lower-powered devices (PDA's etc...)
• Ability to search locations on a local network (e.g. get it to search a shared area), also you will need to put users into groups to stop pupils searching the staff shared area.

Something like spotlight

• Different colours/themes for users to choose from ( or just different colours for different types of users ie staff, pupils etc.
• Option to remove the remember me box, schools using single logins for pupils (e.g. Primary Schools often have class logins), if pupils tell it to remember the password, this could cause problems
• Allow users to select the search engines to use

Other than that it is a really good search engine - reminds me a bit of Profusion, which allowed users to search about 10 search engines at the same time!!

Also when clicking or double clicking on the pages that come up ( the results ) would be nice of it to open as apposed to just sitting there. Yes I know there is an open link but that requires me to move the mouse again.

[gregory]

I like the idea but..

1. way too slooow..
2. can't annotate flash pages..
3. this spider view confuses me..
4. doesn't support screen readers
5. it doesn't do much, does it?