A couple interesting TechMemes for today:
Matt’s got a great post noting how page view metrics are breaking down with AJAX implementations. Notable from his mini-rant is this:
* If you’re doing a start-up and want impressive page view metrics, stay the hell away from AJAX.
*If you would even *for one second* consider staying away from AJAX for the sake of impressive metrics, you’re running your start-up ass-backwards.
Next, in the “Could be Good as Google” department we have Jimmy Wales of Wikimedia and founder of the superbly excellent Wikipedia project announcing today that WikiaSaria WikiSaria Article from UK will be a community based search engine to rival Google’s search. This is really provocative news as Google appears comitted to the mechanistic, machine driven approach to search, believing it’s the best and most scalable way to deal with spam and the growing complexity of organizing the world’s info. An alternative vision is Yahoo’s approach which includes more human interaction and editing than Yahoo but still relies heavily on the algorithm. It appears the new search will focus mostly on human input from the exploding community of onliners.
Wales: “Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’, for example, and you will not get any useful results,” he said.
Spammers and commercial ventures are also learning how to manipulate Google’s computer-based search, he added.
Mr Wales believes that Google’s computer-based algorithmic search program is no match for the editorial judgment of humans.
Also note the many misquotes about Amazon as a participant.
Wales: Reporters and bloggers note: Amazon has nothing to do with this project. They are a valued investor in Wikia, but people are realllllly speculating beyond the facts. This has nothing to do with A9, Amazon, etc. Help me out, spread the word. I am looking for a community of people to continue the development of wikiasari and so on. Discuss here. Join the mailing list. —-Jimbo Wales 23:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
More on this huge story from these blogs:
Niall Kennedy: Wikiasari: Wikipedia success applied to social search?
Michael Arrington: Wikipedia to Launch Search Engine: Exclusive Screenshot
Adam Turner : Wikipedia founder plans search engine to rival Google
Pete Cashmore: Wikiasari – Wikipedia Founder Launching a Google Rival
Joe Duck 
Interesting Joe. I am going to have to dig into this more. I have been working a lot with Atlas (msoft – AJAX) and it is really nice…hard not to want this capability in your websites. Really changes the game and enhances scalability from the server side by having the ability to process client based algorithms and not having to always rely on java script.
I think Atas/AJAX will have a very bright future.
My main concern here would not be the metrics, rather making sure the search engines properly index all the content. I’m going to ask Matt about this.
Yeah, Jim is trying to clear things up a bit – http://rexdixon.wordpress.com/2006/12/24/techcrunch-was-wrong-about-wikiasari/
Rex