Google’s Marisa Mayer has written a post about the future of search. There are a lot of non-trivial problems in some of the scenarios she describes, but I see others - such as location-assisted search - as very useful next steps. The real point here is that our metaphors of search will change; right now, we use text to sum our anomalous knowledge state, but in the future our location, or relative position in a social network, or even everyday analytics like the outside temparature may guide and inform our searches. The real next steps in search are the integration and vectoring of search using such data. To experience this, do a location-based search in Google maps on the iPhone - this is a very early snippet of the future.
The WaPo writes about Lifestreaming (or more appropriately, Datastreaming). This article focuses on everyday data collection and the tools we use to collect and share such data. I see Datastreaming as the vanguard of ubiquitous computing. That is, ubicomp isn’t Bell’s SenseCam, but rather the collection of streams we choose to share (as well as those recorded about us). Server logs, surveillance cameras, datastreams, lifestreams - these are the “streams” we should be building ubicomp applications to use and support (rather than the traditional paradigm of us integrating ubicomp into our lives). Chris Messina, featured in the article, delivers another fantastic blog entry, providing a little more background on the article.
Finally, Andy Baio recounts turning to Mechanical Turk to analyze Girl Talk’s new album. Turking research is an emergent trend - Brynn Evans recently ran a study, and Ed Chi’s group had a CHI paper on MT methods. I’m sure there are plenty more examples.