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October 17, 2006 12:00 PM PDT

Forget the butler, I'll take the sexy librarian

by Elinor Mills
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Talk about an interactive search engine. A new search site called Ms. Dewey features a sultry woman who makes wisecracks related to the keywords that are typed in. The search results appear as a long, scrolling list in a window that pops up on the upper right.

Set against a futuristic cityscape background, Ms. Dewey--with her hair pulled back--probably represents a digital-age librarian. Her name refers to the Dewey Decimal classification system used for cataloging books in libraries.

Her quips relating to keywords range from mundane and silly to provocative. For instance, during a search for "George Bush" she mentioned how easy it was to make jokes about the president. For a search for "sex" she picked up a yellow ergonomic exercise ball and said "Safety first, and make sure you get it on film." And when I searched on my CNET News.com colleague Greg Sandoval's name, she said "Oh Greg, you do give good search."

She turns obnoxious when the user isn't typing in keywords, though, saying things like "Helloooo, type something here," while pointing to the search box, and tapping the "glass" screen and asking "Anyone there?" She also pretends to lasso the user and reel him or her in. But most of the time she stands around alternating between looking bored or being coquettish.

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.
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