Friday, April 11, 2008

Search in Second Life Opens Up!

"Librarians Like to Search, Patrons like to Find"

The new build-in browser in SL opens up massive opportunities to search in web-based resources out there on the Web.

A simple example, but with huge potential, can be seen at the booth of the booth of the Dreams fair (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dreams/120/26/25) we now have a box that says: "type your search in chat with /5 "

HEALIA ("The high quality and personalized health search engine"

People can start searching right away, no need to click on something first.
Just say: /5 stroke (for instance)
It displays a blue box (load web page) and opens the build-in browser with the results.

But, that is not all! ;-)

The search is pushed via the web-search of the Healthinfo Island browser toolbar with pre-installed quality health search options (http://healthinfoisland.ourtoolbar.com, still in beta, and constantly in a updating stage.

This results in a webpage INCLUDING a topframe displaying all other searchengines installed in the toolbar.
Patrons can repeat the search with the same query without typing again by clicking on the next search engine in that frame above.

The script that send this chat to the web-url was written by MB Chevalier, who also published a post on his blog about this.
I thank him for taking the time to talk with me about this, write the script and adjusting it to my wishes. ;-)
More on this later, little movie in preparation.


0 comments: