open source search

There is an interesting post on open source search / filtering software on O’Reilly blog today.  mepath is powered by open source software from the language – PHP to server – Lunix to database – mysql to server – apache and the actual website is produced using the lifestylelinking open source project.  The game now with all the data is to find the ‘Signal’ in Linkedin words.  That is filtering the content based upon the structured data they hold, professional profiles to company data.  Bring in a twitter stream and the firehose (too much) data.  Can it be filtered to find the best stuff?  This is all great and a step forward but the game changer is when this data gets used to actually make the world go around?  Right now its being used to filter content based upon social capital or professional capital, and while humans have their hands on the levers of business right now this is enough for progress.  But why not get this data working at source to contribute to doing what ever its purpose is?

Tags: filtering, firehouse, LinkedIn, PHP, search, signals, twitter