* * * * *
                                        
                      I think this is a new search engine
                                        
> **FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.,** March 25 /PRNewswire/—So what does one kid [sic]
> frustration over his disappointing fate with online Search Engines get you?
> The answer is a new place for web owners to list their sites. On Friday,
> March 22, Mach Find, Inc. announced the launch of its brand new Search
> Engine Company called, “Mach Find” (www.MachFind.com [1]). 
> 

PRNewswire press release that was forwarded to me via email 

I'm not really sure what to make of this. Curious, I went to MachFind [2]
only to find it doesn't find anything at all. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. As
in, “we don't actually have anything in our database yet.” 

Now, Dennis Williams, II [3] has an interesting take on the search engine—you
submit a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and it becomes part of the database
immediately. Google? [4] AltaVista? [5] Yahoo? [6] You submit a URL and
they'll “get back to you” with their spiders (software that crawls a website
for indexing). 

But, there's a catch. It's $2 per URL submission. Not per site, per URL!
That, I think, is a bad move on his part; more and more sites are dynamically
generated and the concept of a “page” is well … not very well defined
anymore. Heck, the Electric King James Bible [7] has over fifteen million
pages [8] yet they're not exactly static pages. And if I were to submit The
Boston Diaries [9] I'm not sure exactly what keywords I would be submitting
it under (well, perhaps the ones I have in the <META> tags but that's a
rather limited view of what goes on in here). Two dollars per site, I can see
that; two dollars per page? 

> Mach Find operates under a premise and understanding that while the
> internet continues to grow, through filling up with more websites, it is
> only the truly innovative net locations that cause it to expand. This
> expanse has limitless potential, and we certainly want to be a part of it. 
> 
> It is our belief that rather than bottle up this beautiful potential of
> technology and growth within the confines of a company, sometimes the
> higher success and profit lies in sharing it. Mach Find feels that no
> individual who is interested in the basic knowledge and understanding of
> technology that he has committed himself to be a client of, should be
> denied access to it. 
> 

Mach Find Growing Technology [10] 

Well, right now the search engine is quite useless as there's nothing there
to search. I tried several terms, including “Mach Find” and “Dennis Williams,
II,” and nothing. Is it too much to ask to seed the database with sites? Or
for a period of time, let URL submission be free to help populate the
database? Something? Anything? It's definitely in that “Catch-22” stage—it's
not worth me spending the two bucks to submit a URL because no one is going
to use the engine because there are no search results that I can see, and as
a user, I'm not going to use the search engine because there are no search
results. 

No one is exactly going to flock to your search engine for either searching
or submissions, I hate to say. 

But I do see they are hiring. [11] Perhaps I can get one of those five
positions left on the Creative Team of Experts. Looks like they might need
the help. 

[1] http://www.machfind.com/
[2] http://www.machfind.com/
[3] http://www.denniswilliamsii.com/
[4] http://www.google.com/
[5] http://www.altavista.com/
[6] http://www.yahoo.com/
[7] http://literature.conman.org/bible/
[8] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2000/08/31.2
[9] https://boston.conman.org/
[10] http://www.machfind.com/technology
[11] http://www.machfind.com/kc/jobopps

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.