"QUAERO: isn't that the search engine that former French president Jacques CHIRAC declared to be the EUROPEAN challenge to Google? A pub-lic alternative to Silicon Valley-born commercial search engines, funded by the French state, in service of the PUBLIC GOOD, in the true tradition of the GRAND PROJET? An INFORMATION MACHINE capable of reclaiming European LANGUAGE and intellectual HERITAGE in the age of GLOBALIZATION?

NO. Quaero is the name of a CONSORTIUM of technology firms and RESEARCH LABS working together on multimedia and WEB SEARCH PROJECTS. It is a STATE-SPONSORED effort to stimulate PRIVATE French technological competitiveness.

According to Franc,ois BOURDONCLE, one of its participating developers, `Quaero is definitely not a project to build a web search engine, it is a project to make significant advances on the handling and indexing of multimedia content. It is completely out of the question to build a new, state-owned, state-operated, or even state-funded search engine. Only the R&D around these cutting-edge multimedia indexing technologies are in the scope of the project.'

But still, the issues that the idea of Quaero has raised – since its public launch by the former French president – constitute a formidable challenge. Internet search engines are political projects proper if only because they give and take power; they represent science, technology, (trans)national politics, private enterprise, culture, territoriality and language in ever different combinations. They are also social spaces. Internet search, the indispensable public tool that allows one to survey the ever increasing web, is currently in the hands of only a few global players, to whose private interests its setup corresponds."

This weeks Todo includes a simulator that implements the distributed-database query interface: the simulator (dubbed hatsim) allows to "replay/simulate" crawler & user activity for the P2P software and emulates a dummy p2p to be used for client development.

it's been less fruitful than expected but a very blooming workshop! Though we did produce some code fragments the major contributions were in discussion and the community building process.

We made contacts with coders outside open-search, in particular we've found a candidate from the vrije universiteit to plug a P2P layer in the open-search client. We compiled and tested a first windows version at the workshop, though there is no package yet.

We've received comments from designers & layouters, and also some hands-on design experiments and brainstorm about the user-interface that are to be followed up…

the road is still long, but the open-search path is on the verge to become a street! stay tuned.

Although we do need programmers, there are a lot of other tasks where we could use your help. If you are wondering where you can help out, check out the TechnicalTodo and TheoreticalTodo. Also, make sure to subscribe to our discussion mailing list to keep up to date with current efforts.

All in all, the workshop was a succes, despite the low attendance. It was almost a 30 degrees celsius in Amsterdam, not the best weather to sit inside behind a laptop screen. Thanks to all who did come regardless!

after the keynote it's gonna be a 3track workshop:

• open software philosophy (legal issues; end-user participation; editing)
• web-development (open-search look & feel and desktop integration)
• core-development (p2p bindings, search&page ranking)

we'll provide a framework to "plug in" code-prototypes that runs on osX and Linux.

It should compile under windows with CYGWin but we do not have access to a MS operating system. Maybe also sth to try at/after the workshop. – we'll provide bootable gnu/Linux CDs for participants with a PC.

more later..