Nano2Sol by Marc Boucher

Greg Linden formerly of Amazon and founder of Findory posted an interesting blog post over the weekend about Google looking like it will reject federated search and instead use a local copy of all the data they collect on their own cluster. For those who don’t know federated search, is when a query is sent to many search engines and the results aggregated and reranked and in more general terms is called metasearch.

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Project Phoenix is something I’ve been working on for well over a year in my spare time. It is the rebirth of my active participation in contributing to the evolution of search engine technology. My interest in search began in 1995 when I created the first Internet directory and search engine in Canada, Maple Square. By the time I sold Maple Square in November of 2003 I was already working on several other non-search related projects.

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The other day I came across a posting on Search Engine Land about Pandia offering a vertical search called the Search Engine Detective. What a great idea. A vertical search or meta search engine if you that focuses on search engine related news. And while I appreciate the idea, the search itself is limited to 25 selected sources and what’s more it’s powered by Google’s Co-op.

Google Co-op is great project, for Google. if you aren’t familiar with Google Co-op here’s the official intro.

“Google Co-op is a platform that enables you to customize the web search experience for users of both Google and your own website.”

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The European Space Agency (ESA) today issued a call for proposals for either a Class M mission, meaning medium size mission, or a Class L mission for a larger, long term mission.

With the success of the Huygens probe by the Europeans I’d like to see a mission to Europa considered. With an ocean beneath its ice covered surface Europa sure makes a tempting research objectives in the search for life beyond the Earth.

Nanoforum, a pan-European nanotechnology network funded by the European Union, has just released it’s Ninth Nanoforum Report on Nanotechnology in Aerospace. This 151 page report is available for download after you register (free) on the site.

While the report is geared primarily for the European market those interested current trends in nanomaterials and nanotechnologies will find the report full of useful information with references to ongoing projects outside of Europe as well.

The report excludes military R&D applications and is targeted at audiences who are “non-experts of an academic level with a general interest in the potential of nanotechnology for aerospace applications, and experts involved in setting the strategic R&D agenda in this field”.

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