I haven’t yet found out what the new Second Life search engine is. It certainly isn’t based on Google Search Appliances (GSA), but I’m waiting to find out if the Lab is willing to reveal the technology being used.
In fact, it’s kind of nice, actually, at first blush. You don’t need the new project viewer to play with it, either.
The new search system is being served from http://vip.search-phx.secondlife.com/ (edit: or http://search-beta.secondlife.com/ – General-rated content only?). You’ll need to confirm a security exception with your browser to get to it (because the existing SSL certificate doesn’t cover this subdomain, apparently), which pretty much disallows using it in the 1.x series viewers’ internal browser, but works just fine in your regular Web browser.
From there, you’ll need to confirm access through Second Life’s openID server, and then you can go nuts with it.
It certainly seems effective, especially compared to using it within the viewer. Given a lot of screen real-estate for the results, you can work through a lot of returns very quickly.
Booyah! Speedy! Thanks.
Would have been quicker, but I stopped for coffee part way through.
As long as, unlike the current search, it works behind firewall, I’ll be happier.
actually, use search-beta.secondlife.com. thats what their viewer uses. i think the thing you’re pointing to is an internal thing, maybe subject to change?
@Seamas Not sure. That’s the URL that the project viewer requested when I tried it.
My big problem so far has been the slplugin.exe not working in Win7x64. (._.)
So, I’ve been running search and profiles in an external browser for over half a year now. (>_<)
Big problem with that is that external browsers seem to not send the right 'token' to the site to enable Mature and Adult listings. So, I'm stuck in a world of PG results only… And, since when was ~I~ ever PG? (O.o)
So far, I'm a bit 'meh' over it. But, if it means that I can get back to a fully capable search again, I'm all for it. (^_^)
Night and day how much better it works compared to the existing search. I mean…the existing is just plain broken. This works. Total improvement rather than a marginal one.
UI wise, I like it. The Viewer 2 tabs need to gain text along with icons the same way the new Search navigation works. That’d improve Viewer 2 greatly. Imagine if in the new search navigation “Everything”, “Destination Guide”, “Events” and etc weren’t there and there was just a column of monochromatic icons we have no idea what’s behind until we click. It’d be pretty bad and that’s a long standing issue with Viewer 2 right now and seems obvious to correct now that they have that UI pattern elsewhere.
I also like that “Events Happening Now” is front and center, I always thought the Event tab made sense to be first and foremost and maybe attendance of events would go up if so. Hopefully that’s the case.
I’m going to start using it predominantly for awhile and see if it holds up. So far, no complaints.
“Big problem with that is that external browsers seem to not send the right ‘token’ to the site to enable Mature and Adult listings.”
Hmm. I’m getting Mature and Adult listings externally… not sure why it’s working for me and not you.
(On the other hand, I can’t find any way of filtering the results by rating…)
From the blog post: “We search for something, find an interesting event or place to go shopping, and then want to go back to our search results and find another place to go–but they are gone. When using the new Search, results are saved for 15 minutes so that you can easily go back and explore other options.”
Why are the results displayed in a time limited fashion and why 15 minutes? One wonders if thats the length of the tea break they get at LL. (stop shopping back to work!) It certainly takes me longer than 15 minutes to look round some places
Unfortunately (due to a known bug, to be fixed) accessing via search-beta.secondlife.com will default to General *until* you reset your maturity in the Viewer. (Set it to General, then set it back.) This and many other bugs will be fixed before new Search goes to mainline.
Thanks for the heads-up, Yoz!
[...] Nino spiega qui come accedere al nuovo motore di ricerca via web, quindi senza la necessità di usare il viewer [...]
L.Knoller: That’s a very good question. That has been fixed in Firestorm. The fix was submitted to LL, and implemented – and then backed out again, reportedly because the search team got furious about it. No, I don’t know the explanation.
Wow, when you can tell in less than 30 seconds that something is much improved, that’s a good sign! Kudos to the Lab for this progress, and thanks as always for your reporting, Tateru.
@LKnoller – the times it takes me less than 15min is when I land somewhere from a search and discover I am being shot at, a security orb starts hollering, or the drop down stating I am now on a capture RP sim fills my screen
But the rest of the time it will take several minutes for the place to rez, and then way longer than that to hunt for whatever you were searching for on the entire sim
I didn’t have to accept any certificate exception for http://search-beta.secondlife.com/ at the time of this post.
You don’t, no, but that URI will apparently trigger a bug that forces your search results to General-rated content only, until you forcibly reset things in-world.
@Tonya Souther
That’s good news, I’ll add it to the list of reasons I’m counting the minutes till Firestorm is in final release
@Fogwoman Gray
Yeap that was the point I was groping for. If you spend over 15 mins checking some place, when you’re ready to move on the results are gone. In that case there is no difference to the user between losing the results after a TP and losing them after the alotted 15 minutes. As far as I’m concerned its an unexpected behavior and an annoyance. Why it would be that way by design I have no idea, unless search is going to be sponsored “The Amazing Race” and the CBS network.
This 15-minute limit does sort of match my view that the Lindens, collectively, don’t really know how people use SL.
With a few exceptions, notably Torley and Michael, the Lindens who come in-world are rather boring. Their AVs might not be from the Library, but they don’t give a sense of being active participants.
Then you see the wild assortment of AVs used by the Phoenix developers. They’re not here as part of a job-description.
@Wolf – I think a lot of Lindens that are active in SL use ‘alts’ except for official stuff in-world. After all, if you want to do some quiet building or socialising you don’t want to be griefed or asked for a bear every few mins.
One of the traditional benefits of working for the Lab is a single, paid-for account for the duration of your employ. A ‘civilian’ account, where you can still socialise and do the things that all the rest of us do – assuming you’re not sick of us complaining about your work all of the time
The 15-minutes limit is there because Linden Lab just wants to destroy Second Life.
It was quite obvious, boys.
@Hitomi: correct – I talked to a Linden yesterday, who had hidden himself from the Search results because of the hug amount of spam sent to him. He specifically mentioned commercial spam.
@Hitomi: I talked to a Linden employee yesterday, and he explained he had to hidden himself from the Search results because of the huge amount of spam that is sent to him. He specifically mentioned commercial spam. I’m sure most Linden employees get the same treatment on their official accounts, with griefing and bears requests as a bonus.
I’m quite happy with the new Search performances up to now. Have to do more testing, though.
Hitomi, whether they have Alts or not is irrelevant. It’s whether they have an active involvement with the game. Some of them, there’s no sense of any vital spark in the Linden AV they use.
Wolf: “Then you see the wild assortment of AVs used by the Phoenix developers. They’re not here as part of a job-description.”
/me purrs.
Has someone already tried the NEW Search while having google-analytics.com, google-ads.com etc in their hostfile?
And so the steps towards anti v1.x begins.
FYI, I just released the Cool VL Viewer v1.26.0.4 with built-in support for the new search engine (along the two older ones, still available and working).
That was an easy port (one afternoon, most of the time spent figuring out why a damned search_token parameter was not showing up where it should have)…
Ah, it so happens that I had recently been installing and exploring each of the three main versions of the LL viewer2. That bug was obscured by the settings being reset in the due process
If you use the latest StarLight skin – look up ‘Viewer Skins/StarLight’ in the official SL Wiki – with the official Beta 2.7.0 Viewer you can toggle between the two different versions of search in ‘Preferences->General’ without having to restart your viewer.
I have found this quite useful for comparing the two versions and when looking for obscure items that one seems to find better than the other..