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From the Wikia Search Blog:

• The Web is Read/Write. So Why Isn’t Search?
  “The Internet, legally, is uncharted waters, but it’s not impossible to navigate. By analogy, almost all websites can be treated like billboards.” That’s a quote from an old notepad I found recently.  It’s not verbatim, but close enough  And it’s about nine years old. In 1995, I entered college.  The Web was, relatively speaking, new.  The first [...]
  Dan Lewis
• Search Team Update: August 13, 2008
  Here’s the update from the last week (or so) of Search Team goodness: Toolbar * Wikia Evolution, the search toolbar launched.  Download it at http://re.search.wikia.com/toolbar/download.html * Want to tinker with the code?  Grab it via the SVN at http://svn.swlabs.org/re.search/cool/toolbar/ - there’s no documentation yet, but we’re working on it.  The test .xpi (evolution.test.xpi) can be unzipped as per [...]
  Dan Lewis
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
  James Grimmelmann is an adjuct professor of law at New York Law School here in Manhattan.  His recent paper, “The Google Dilemma” (available via SSRN) tells five stories about the power Google currently wields, and why Google — or whomever “controls” search — needs to wield that power with great responsibility. The paper is a quick [...]
  Dan Lewis
• Around the Blogs: Wikia Evolution
  Our announcement about our new Wikia Evolution toolbar definitely made the rounds.  Here are some of the blog posts about it — feel free to use the toolbar to add these posts right to the Wikia Search index :) You can download the toolbar here. AltSearchEngines — Introducing Wikia Evolution / Firefox Toolbar CenterNetworks — Wikia Search Launches [...]
  Dan Lewis
• Introducing Wikia Evolution
  One of our core values at Wikia Search is Community.  We want everyone to be able to participate in the Wikia Search project.  That’s why we are proud to introduce Wikia Evolution, our new Firefox toolbar.  You can download it here, or via Mozilla’s Firefox Add-On Library. The mission of Wikia Evolution: To empower users to [...]
  Dan Lewis
• Knol Proves The Importance of Transparency
  From day one of the Wikia Search project, the Wikia Search community collectively brainstormed the core principles of the project and, indeed, that search currently lacks and needs.  One of them — transparency — is needed now more than ever. Last week, Google released it’s new content endeavor, Knol — a platform by which anyone can [...]
  Dan Lewis
• What’s the Other 75 Percent? Blogs!
  Last Friday, Google announced that, according to them, the web has one trillion unique URLs.   But Google’s index, quoth their blog, is not that big: We don’t index every one of those trillion pages — many of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content similar to the calendar example that isn’t very [...]
  Dan Lewis
• Search Team Update: July 23, 2008
  Here’s what the search team did last week: Nutch: * Finish FieldIndexer * Finished BasicFields * Working on AnchorFields These are all part of the new Indexer that will allow fine grained control of fields that go into our index. The FieldIndexer is the actual indexer itself that replaces the current Nutch indexer. The BasicFields replaces the current [...]
  Dan Lewis
• Grub: A Roadmap
    Grub, the open source web crawler, is a key part of Wikia Search and an community-benefiting web search experience in general.   My larger vision is pretty simple. I want Grub to be a decent and open snapshot of the web that is kept fresh, and then stored/shared in ways useful to the whole community — to [...]
  Jeremie Miller
• Tonight: Wikia Search at the NYC Creative Commons Salon
  What: Creative Commons Salon NYC Where:The Open Planning Project, 349 W. 12th Street, New York City When: TONIGHT!  7pm to 10pm Who:  Us!  We’re presenting on Wikia Search   And the Livable Streets Network and comedian Max Silvestri. What else: Free beer! RSVP? Via Facebook
  Dan Lewis