Ms. Dewey Options

[bwelford]

I guess MSN or is it Live has really seen an opportunity here. Given that ASK has fired Jeeves, they saw an opportunity for those who like the human touch. Meet Ms. Dewey. She seemed a little flighty since Firefox crashed the first time I tried to seek her help, but persevere and you may get useful advice.

[manager]

Ms. Dewey gets really upset if you enter the following search term: b***h

didn't realise that was a cuss word it' removed itc

lol

This post has been edited by manager: Nov 7 2006, 10:06 AM

[JohnMu]

LOL! too embarassed to admit that was one of my first ones as well

I noticed you can send search results to other people. A cheap form of anonymous emails? Egad -- the mail is also not readable in a text-based email client. Sigh. Microsoft, tsk, tsk...

John

[manager]

he he...... she needs to wash her mouth out with soap and water as my mum would say.

On a serious note, the SE is not very useful.

TreV

[JohnMu]

It's just MSN Live with a flash user interface -- I'm sure you could slap together something similar for Google or whatever your favorite is. The main problem is that it's just plain slow.... (and shows so few results)

I can't wait for something similar that starts reading the results back to you

John

[FP_Guy]

I didn't have the heart to type b***h in even though she is not real.

[gabs]

not loading for me

I assume is like ye oldie www.runabot.com but with search

[lee.n3o]

Man thats sooooo cool for about 10 minutes..... Good Find!!!

[Jozian]

I like it!

But, I'll never use it. Gimme data.

It was a nice diversion though.

Question is, guys and gals, not what WE think as uber users, but wether it will attract a couple percent following from the masses...

-Jeff

[joedolson]

It's cute. Interesting, but not really "useful". From a practical perspective, Ms Dewey doesn't add value: she's not giving additional insights into the find, just offering snarky comments and flashing cleavage. The search is significantly slower than just using Live.com on its own and provides a more limited results list.

However, like I said, it's fairly novel and well done. (Although, from a usability perspective, I had difficulty seeing where the input box was - kept trying to click too far to the left.)

It's link bait, really. No lasting value, just something to create a buzz. (This isn't to say that all link bait has "no lasting value"...but that's why I linked to the link bait thread...) Will it attract a long term following? Maybe...but more likely it'll be a temporary blip. It's just not a practical solution for search: it adds no end user benefits.

[JohnMu]

Now what would be really fun would be something like an "Eliza" that returned witty comments to all search queries . Maybe someone could put together a Greasemonkey script to do that

Ms. Dewey is worth a refresh or two and a useless query or two, but it's not an alternative to traditional search.

Which elements could be reused though? Imagine if it was possible to get real, live, one-on-one input from a human to your search results? Imagine a live "Ms Dewey" that really commented on your searches? Aside from the obvious problems, what kind of input would you want to hear?

Would you want help to create a better query or to get better results? Would you want a commentary on the top results? Would you just want entertainment? Would you still search for "keywords" or would you rather oraly describe what you're looking for? (can you even oraly describe everything you use keywords to find?)

John

[joedolson]

Would you want help to create a better query or to get better results? Would you want a commentary on the top results? Would you just want entertainment? Would you still search for "keywords" or would you rather oraly describe what you're looking for?

Well, really I'd want both: first priority, for a useful search engine, would be assistance in creating a better query. Suggestions of possible search refinements, corrections of spelling, etc., would all be useful. Commentary on the top results might be interesting...not certain that's what I want to hear. Perhaps a "detail" toggle which would give you options to provide additional information.

However, for the sake of entertainment it would be fun to have an alternate option to make snarky comments about your searches...

This makes me think of Donna's most recent post at SEO Scoop. In it, she talks about natural language queries: this is something that I think would combine very naturally with an interactive search avatar: you could begin to really feel like you're asking a person a question. In that context, with high speed connections, high quality graphics, natural responses to queries, you could really start getting into the kinds of interactive computing experiences that show up in the cyberpunk sub genre of science fiction: a personal assistant to help you locate data, refine your queries, etc.

And hey, while we're dreaming: why not make it virtually immersive?

[JohnMu]

Only slightly off topic Ms Dewey's learning CSS

What next? Ms Dewey visits cre8asiteforums?

I took a peek behind the curtain, for those who are interested -- it's sending a query to a URL like http://msdewey.com/Search/search.aspx?s=google&h= and getting back some IDs for the video snippets (which it looks like it downloads on the fly, which is why it takes a bit for it to reply to your queries). You could actually take the same information and wrap your own "Ms Dewey" around it .

John

[cre8pc]

Fascinating! Everytime I think I'm done with her, someone finds something on her or the "search engine" that I hadn't known yet.

My husband said he has MsDewey on his monitor at work, (because I kept sending him more news on her), and a woman walked by and said, "Get that porn off your computer." He said she was just joking, but we both though how interesting of a thing for a woman to say as she sees MsDewey in passing.

So. John. You're saying we could pop her into our own search.

Just saying...

[SEOigloo]

Hello Everybody,
Personally, I'm not at all comfortable with the phony woman in servile position aura of this creation. For the most part, the responses I've seen this past week to the launch of this product revolve not around the value of this as a viable tool, but the jokey/sexual things one can do in interaction with this generated character. There's enough of this type of thinking in the media already, and I don't think things like this do anything for the prestige of search.

Just my two cents.
Miriam

[cre8pc]

She's actually not so much of a servant as much as she's an illustration of just exactly what works to get someone's attention (and traffic, hits, etc.) on the web.

The things she does and what she's scripted (her words, from her journal) to say are funny or brazen. What she does freaked me out, made me angry, and made me laugh, but I really really really disliked her whipping out a giant machine gun (or whatever it was) and shooting a man who starts to walk across the monitor.

Aside from the obvious sex-pot approach, I think she (the visual) is a test of what we'll be seeing in the future as far as technology. She doesn't scare me as much as what I see on the TV set. I can barely stand to watch TV anymore and my kids are avoiding it too. The violence is over the top.

I have many questions...including, does Microsoft really understand what the heck they're doing by letting this application run around? It's not a viable search engine, so what, exactly, is their point?

<<added..Your point, Miriam, about the " prestige of search" is something I hadn't considered. It just adds to my curosity about why msdewey was let loose.

This post has been edited by cre8pc: Nov 15 2006, 08:33 PM

[Cath]

She was mildly amusing for about 30 seconds One thing I noticed though, she carried on behaving like she was waiting for me to search for something even when I had, and was in the process of looking through the results, which was quite annoying, even when the screen told me she was thinking she was still trying to reel me in with an imaginary fishing rod. Before attempting to rule the world I think she needs to get her body in sync with her brain.

Cath

[JohnMu]

Link bait.

How is this any different than those "girls" you can install as a screensaver who "walk" around your desktop? Prefabricated video sequences which are triggered by certain words. Wow. It's like that children's toy which plays different songs depending on which button you press, only you have to guess at which buttons work -- and inevitably end up telling other people to "try this one" (I fell for it too)... link bait. (heh heh, I'm starting to get obsessed by that phrase)

When you compare, besides the obvious search results, the 1966 ELIZA (online here) was better in terms of interaction... it might not have been "flash", but that's just a technicality.

Kim, how do you think this is the future of technology? Is it a better Bob / Clippy? or do you feel that real human interaction (like ChaCha) is the direction it will go (if so, how will it scale?)? or is it just a trigger for the emotional side, something that is missing in the default Google UI?

John

PS Stumbling through the Wikipedia entry, I came to EllaZ -- pretty neat. Now they just need to add 5 billion web pages

[cre8pc]

Kim, how do you think this is the future of technology?

She's a robot.

The technology is a bit of what you found already, with the bringing together different parts and presenting into a whole new unit. It's still slow and awkward, but they're trying.

Humankind is fascintated with automation. Msdewey reminds me of the "smart house" that talks to its owners. In a Disney verison, it talks back, givers orders, and takes over the house when it takes on a "life" of its own.

Msdewey and others to come like it are experiments to see what we'll tolerate. The easiest and fastest way to get the experiment out to the public is to give it a pretty face and make it flirt.

Just yesterday I saw these statements...1 percent of Internet sites are adult oriented (porn). 40 percent of Americans don't use the Internet. I don't put much stock into these quick stat feeds, but they do help us understand that we, in general, are being tracked and measured.

You can bet Msdewey is monitoring every click and future versions will be designed to meet our demands. Her replies, btw, are scripted. This is slanting our responses (pushing our emotinal buttons, for example. The actual search engine results are useless.) The Human Factors folks are likely freaking out

[bragadocchio]

Interesting result when you do a search for:

Blockbuster Video

Might not be safe for work. She gets pretty animated, and a little R rated.