Two news items regarding search arrived relatively at the same time. One is a search technology being developed by the Yahoo’s Barcelona research lab called Time Explorer (check out the research paper). The other is about how search may start to be designed with the search-as-entertainment paradigm (check out the slides and the research paper). Both of these search ideas were recently presented at the Human Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval (HCIR) workshop in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

First, Time Explorer is a search engine that returns results in a timeline that stretches into the future as well as the past. The results appear on the timeline, which shows when articles were published. However, if the user moves the timeline into the future, results are positioned at any point in time to when the text might have referred. For example you could check the predictions of an article that was published last year.

Second, researchers believe that the entertainment value of search is an untapped user experience. The research was conducted at the Swansea University in Wales and the University of Erlangen in Germany. Researchers found that users, while searching casually, were less interested in getting away from search results. This may explain why people like StumbleUpon.

What gets me excited is that by bringing these technologies together there is the possibility that I may never have to write another blog and I would be entertained while not writing it. I would simply search for my next (future) blog, copy and paste it today and be done.

Maybe I should blog about it and see if I my prediction comes true.

How cool is that!

Tags: Consumer Attitudes, Consumer Engagement, Consumer Mindset, How Consumers Engage