Have you seen Ms. Dewey yet? She’s a human face for search. Far as I can tell it’s MSN’s search results with a twist.
That twist is Ms. Dewey who is played by actress Janina Gavankar. Enter a query and before she gives you the results she’ll make some “clever” remark about your search. Note “clever” is quoted. The remarks tend towards the flirtatious for no reason that I can tell.
Is it useful? Not anymore so than a regular text-based search engine.
Is it memorable? Yeah.
Is it cool that a librarian is the face of search? Damn straight.
Did it crash my browser? Yes.
Is it offensive because she’s an attractive woman? You decide.
What does it all mean? I think it’s a viral campaign to get attention. Good thing I didn’t fall for it.
it would be to easy to laugh this off as an act of desperation from microsoft (and a lot of fun). it reminded me more of subservient chicken (http://www.subservientchicken.com/) than it did of google.
interestingly, one of my coworkers showed it to me and said “i think it’s cool.”
if anything, it falls into the category of intelligent agents/ivrs, which is a strong emerging market.
i wonder if we will see ms. dewey on a flat panel on the drive through someday? search term: hamburger -pickles -lettuce