Persistent Search - The Holy Grail of Search? Friday, December 22, 2006
Whilst doing some research into a topic this week, I was looking for a means of running a series of persistent searches for terms related to the topic. What I wanted was a means of defining my search terms(s) and leaving it to operate in the background of an online service that would then alert me whenever new entries "appeared" matching the search - not dissimilar to persistent search with RSS feeds.
A couple of close options I knew of were
- Google Alerts which appears to provide "as it happens" alerts, but which waits for the Google Spiders to detect the item
- Technorati Watchlists, but which only monitors blogs
I'm not the only one who sees the opportunities for services satisfying this requirement, Bill Burnham being another. Monitor 110, which I've written about before, which is seeking to provide a discovery service for hedge funds, will have to tackle this if it is to provide a really valuable service - milliseconds count in trading.
The concept feels analogous to Workflow systems that present "users" with relevant items to action. At one time these systems used to poll for items to present to users but over time moved to event triggers.
Anybody know of any good services in this space or ways of easily executing persistent search?
posted by John Wilson @ 1:08 PM Permanent Link
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