I have two new ideas (at least new for me), and the first one is called
iIndex: Search Your Own Stuff.

While stuck in an airport yesterday, I outlined something I might call
iIndex. "Use this service to configure, create, and search an index of your
documents (selected text and image files), your favorite websites, your
citations, your email, and your address book."

Given this premise I allow people to feed a set of HTML forms things like:

  * URL's of remote HTTP servers (your favorite websites)
  * URL's to local file systems (your documents)
  * unique identifiers such as DOI's, ISBN/ISSN numbers, LCCN numbers,
    PubMed numbers, etc. (your citations)
  * URL's to a standard XML file of names, addresses, and telephone numbers
    (your address book)
  * URL's to a Unix mbox file or mailing list archive (your email)

Given this input, I would then create an iIndex.xml file specifying what
content a person wanted indexed. It's a configuration file. I would then
index their content (using whatever indexer I desired), save the index
locally, and allow these people to search their own personal index.

What do y'all think?

--
Eric Lease Morgan
Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
University Libraries of Notre Dame

(574) 631-8604