• On MovieTome: Is this supposed to be Cobra Commander?
October 17, 2006 12:00 PM PDT

Forget the butler, I'll take the sexy librarian

by Elinor Mills

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.
Recent posts from News Blog
Neil Young Archives Blu-ray: Rip off?
Acronis revises survey results about backup habits
Acronis miscalculates data on users' bad backup habits
Flickr co-founder presses beta button
Comcast, Sony open retail store
Cox to try coaxing the Internet into submission
Was InfoWorld's CTO of the Year award a year late?
VMWare VI4 renamed to vSphere
advertisement

Can RIM get its mojo back?

The new BlackBerry Tour, carried by Verizon and Sprint, arrives Sunday, even as RIM seems to be losing sales to exclusive devices like the iPhone and Pre.

With Chrome, Google reignites the OS wars

roundup Google Chrome OS, due in 2010, underscores the Web giant's cloud-computing ambitions and opens new competition with Microsoft.
• What Chrome OS has on Windows that Linux doesn't

About News Blog

Recent posts on technology, trends, and more.

Add this feed to your online news reader

advertisement
advertisement

Inside CNET News

Scroll Left Scroll Right