Starting in Sitecore 6.4, they introduced a new Search namespace – Sitecore.Search, this uses the Sitecore -> Search -> Configuration -> Indexes section in Web.Config.

From what I know, Sitecore recommends using the new namespace and the old namespace is going to be deprecated starting Sitecore 6.5. The following is a blurb from Sitecore 6.5 Release notes from SDN:
“The Sitecore.Data.Indexing namespace has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version of the CMS in favor of the more powerful and flexible Sitecore.Search classes and corresponding index definitions. “

Since there is only one document on this new namespace, it’s difficult to get more information when you find yourself in a bind. I had to google search to find bits and pieces and so I am writing this post.

Here is the link to the PDF on this site. Click Here (NO SDN access needed)

The basic configuration is given below:

      <configuration type="Sitecore.Search.SearchConfiguration, Sitecore.Kernel" singleInstance="true">
        <indexes hint="list:AddIndex">
          ... ... ...
          <index id="IndexNAME" type="Sitecore.Search.Index, Sitecore.Kernel">
            <param desc="name">$(id)</param>
            <param desc="folder">im_index</param>
            <Analyzer ref="search/analyzer"/>
            <locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
              <master type="Sitecore.Search.Crawlers.DatabaseCrawler, Sitecore.Kernel">
                <Database>master</Database>
                <Tags>master content</Tags>
                <Root>/sitecore/content</Root>
                <IndexAllFields>true</IndexAllFields>
                <include hint="list:IncludeTemplate">
                  <template comment="Template1">{8917CADF-2148-4328-B595-217C5A9CCA7D}</template>
                  <template comment="Template2">{2A18027D-CA51-4E5D-A7C1-51096E09C16C}</template>
                </include>
                <include hint="list:ExcludeTemplate">
                  <template>{8C18027D-CA51-4E5D-A7C1-510965555C}</template>
                </include>
                <!--<include hint="list:IncludeField">
                  <fieldId>{GUID}</fieldId>
                </include>-->
              </master>
            </locations>
          </index>
        </indexes>
      </configuration>

Here is a piece of sample code to query the index:

    Sitecore.Search.Index searchIndex = Sitecore.Search.SearchManager.GetIndex("Search Index Name"); //replace string with the name of the search index
    using (IndexSearchContext context = searchIndex.CreateSearchContext())
    {
        SearchHits hits = context.Search("search string");  //replace string with the actual search string
        SomeRepeater.DataSource = hits.FetchResults(0, 25); //first param is the start item, second is the count
        SomeRepeater.DataBind();
        ResultsCount = hits.FetchResults(0, hits.Length).Count();
    }

Here are some useful links:

Search Index Troubleshooting by Alex Shyba

Index Viewer in Sitecore Shared Source

I hope this is useful. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Rendering the “enter” key nearly useless, Instant anticipates your query and combines its Google Suggests recommendations that would appear as you typed in past queries with an instant live search for those queries as you type.

Google advertises a 2 – 5 second time savings per search, and “smarter” predictions that allow you to find what you’re actually looking for faster. The results are, according to Google, automatically localized, giving you relevant results each time, without having to type in limiting words or phrases.

Once again, Google has defined the paradigm for search.

Will this be enough to counter the bad publicity over privacy intrusions by a Google Site Reliability Engineer David Barksdale? This latest security breech and the perception of a “hush hush” handling of the problem (Barksdale was “quietly” fired) adds to the perception that Google may be careless with security.

It’s a concern, but not a major one. Google is keeping careful tabs on its business and its business model. They are on top of what is going on in the search engine business in particular and the cloud computing business in general.

Because of Google’s continual innovation and leaps ahead of the technology curve, I predict that Google, Google Instant, Android, Apps, Gmail and all the other innovative Google features will become even more popular in coming months and years.

In August, Android shipments beat out iPhone shipments for the first time, which is important for business owners and developers. DigiTimes reports that Android shipments around the world will surpass 55 million.

If that’s true, it means a 561 percent growth over last year’s shipments.

You want to keep posted on smart phone sales so you can not only choose the platform to use for your personal and business phone, but also so you can develop apps for the most popular phone platforms.

You want to focus attention on the phones that are growing the fastest and look to have the longest staying power – complicated apps can take up to 6 months to develop, and as with all technology products, you’ll want to stay ahead of the curve, not behind. Now, iPhone apps are still a huge portion of the market, so you don’t want to ignore the platform, but Anroid is a force that looks to have staying power, at least for the foreseeable future. As Android grows, developers and hardware manufacturers are undoubtedly going to focus more attention and more resources on the platform, making it a solid choice for future projects.

One development you will want to watch for is more countries open to purchasing Android apps. Currently, customers in only 13 out of 46 countries that sell Android phones can actually purchase applications for the phone.

In order to grow the Android market, Google will need to find a way to fix that little problem.

But while Apple likes to promote itself as a freedom-loving, innovation above all company, that moniker applies only to the users of its products (and now, it only applies to small pockets of those users).

Apple itself is a company that is closed, exclusive, and protective – all values that don’t blend with the ethos it tries to project, and doesn’t fit well with innovation and development.

Take the recent lawsuit that Apple filed against HTC. They have accused the Taiwanese company of infringing on their patents. They’ve used a careful strategy, filed in two courts, and have addressed tick tack little issues, like sliding a button to unlock a phone.

But what is Apple really after? Well, Apple has found that they like zero competition – it drives profits immensely. So now that the Google Android platform has proven to be a formidable opponent to the iPhone, Apple has decided that instead of fighting the Android on features, price and user interface, they will fight the platform in court.

Rather than going after Google directly, they are starting with the smaller companies that use the Android OS, chipping away at the base. Experts like patent attorneys and intellectual property consultants see Apple filing multiple suits over several years, starting with those that don’t have the money and power to fight back.

Instead of using patents to increase and forward innovation, Apple uses patents as weapons in a war to limit innovation through competition and try to whittle the electronic world down into a one-screen theater, where Apple is all that can play.

Google and Verizon have made a significant commitment to the Android platform with the release of the sleek Droid phone and the associated intense marketing campaign. Meant to provide a serious competition to the iPhone, Droid features an accelerometer, high speed internet, turn by turn driving directions from Google maps, a host of organizational features, speech recognition technology, as well as voice commands for many purposes, including Google Search by voice.

On top of all those features, there are now more than 10,000 apps for the Android platform, including Wedatamation’s own FileDroid file explorer for the Android platform.

You’ll want to check out some of these other great Android apps if you are taking the leap to Google’s new, high tech offering in the smart phone world.

Some of the top free apps for Android include Dolphin, iMusic, FeedR, and ChompSMS.

Larry Dignan of ZDnet likes Dophin for mobile web browsing better than nearly any other browser. With speed, reliability and multi-touch sensitivity, there’s a lot to love about the nimble Dolphin browser.

The Chomp SMS program is a better way to send SMS text messages in an Android environment. It doesn’t drain the phone’s battery the way the native texting program does, and has other great features that make it a no-brainer addition (especially at the price of “free”).

FeedR is an intuitive app/widget to manage various RSS feeds. It works with feeds that come installed, but you can add your own and manage the list with ease. It is able to update automatically, without user input.

With iMusic, you can download and listen to MP3s for free; as many as you like, as often as you like. You do sign an agreement to erase the songs after you listen, or just listen to the song directly from the web and skip the download.

There are dozens of other highly functional and advanced applications for the Android platform, and more are added each week.

Consider not only using those apps, but creating or having one created that features your own business.  Webdatamation‘s developers can work with you on those apps, or let your own people have a good time coming up with a game or useful app that gets your name out in the Android world.

What does this mean for the average business with a web presence? It means that you want to optimize your site – not just for Google and other web crawlers, but also for small screen browsers.

Although there was some talk of needing a “mobile device only” version of every website, this kind of duplication is not necessary.  In fact, a cascading style sheet, or CSS, can be written into your web page, instructing the device as it loads your page, to optimize your site for the phone or PDA that is requesting it. So writing in CSS is the first step to optimizing your page for hand held devices and smart phones.

Use a program like the Openwave Phone Simulator to test your web page and see how it will look on a “generic” cell phone type device. If you know the specific parameters of a particular type of device (say, an Apple iPhone), then you can increase the parameters and get an accurate view.

Then optimize your content. Remember that too much text is too much for a smartphone device, and keep the articles short (no more than 500 words, on average). Many small articles with relevant links are better than one long article.

Make sure that the most important elements in your page will load in the center of the phone’s screen, and are accessible without scrolling.  Make sure your pages load quickly. Cell phones and smart phones have slower internet connections than most broadband providers, and you don’t want a clunky website that gums up the works. The customer will click the “close” box after a few seconds.

Many cell phone users will block the photos on your site from loading, so be sure to have relevant and interesting ALT tags that identify your photos. You want your page to make sense to the viewer who has no photo access.

With a little planning,  you will have a great website that is optimize for both PC and smartphone use.

As we all know, Google is committed to retaining that top billing, and they have responded to Bing and created some innovations of their own. Bottom line for both search engines is more relevant results for their users, and that means that SEO – search engine optimization — is even more important than ever.

While details will be coming forward for the next many months, many bloggers and some other sites have noticed a drop in their SERP rankings with Caffeine and Bing. This doesn’t need to happen, however.

In fact, smaller websites actually have a better chance of raising their rankings, if they use carefully targeted SEO.

Relevant Content
Good content becomes even more important than it has been in the past. If your site can match more precisely what the user wants to find, then you have a better chance of a high ranking.

Be specific in your content pages, and they will have a better chance of rising to the top. Carefully choose your keywords; if anything, specific keywords have become more important.

Be sure to include long tail keywords that get specific about your offerings: red mardi gras beads for parties instead of mardi gras beads or party beads. Think about brands, too: Canon digital cameras instead of digital cameras.

The titles of your pages are important. Each page should have a unique title specifically matched to the content you’re featuring. And you don’t want to ignore the Meta descriptions, even though they still don’t figure into the SEO searches. But if your page lands high up on that SERP, then you want to have an engaging, accurate and catchy Meta description to encourage the click.

The bottom line – although it will take more months to really see how Caffeine and Bing are going to respond, SEO continues to be highly important to web design. Money spent on SEO is money well invested, with the new search engines as much as the old.

Although only about 20 percent of internet users use the Firefox browser, many of those users are the serious internet surfers. Those in the industry almost universally prefer the open source app to the Microsoft browser.

So when Mozilla announced in 2008 that they would soon release a mobile version of their browser, they generated some buzz. There were some stutter steps with the first versions, but as with all Firefox products, the bugs get worked out pretty quickly.

The latest release is Fennec Alpha 1, and it has been revamped with a CSS user interface. What does this mean? Well, even though the browser only works on Windows Mobile Smart Phones like the HTC Touch Pro currently, the CSS interface means that it will be easily adapted to a wide range of different devices, unlike the original version.

So, if you have another operating system on your phone, no fear. Firefox is making use of  that CSS based interface to create mobile browsers for other systems. Recently, a Firefox official noted that Symbian phones make up nearly half of the smartphone sales, so Firefox will need to “have a presence on the Symbian platform.” So expect a Symbian version to be officially announced in the near future.

Still, there are plenty of other smartphone owners who prefer Firefox as a browser – will Fennec be coming soon to an iPhone near you? Probably not – and you android users need not hold your breath, either.

Firefox officials cite licensing and technical issues that prevent them from developing Fennec for iPhone, RIM and Android. Still, it will be great to see if all the things we love about the PC Firefox browser are integrated into Fennec quickly enough for them to gain a big market share.

This model mirrors the HTC Magic found outside the U.S., with a 3.2 inch touchscreen display and a virtual keyboard.

Reviewers say the phone, which has gone through several name changes on its way to market, is an improvement on the first T-Mobile G1 in nearly every category, and is smaller as well.

While some will regretfully note the lack of a hardware keyboard, others point out that most of the new smartphones at this pricepoint have virtual, not physical, keyboards. While users may be used to this feature (or lack of a feature) some would prefer the physical keyboard.

The Bluetooth stereo support is standard on the new phone, and it has an adequate video and still camera, at 3.2 megapixels.

It accepts a micro SD memory card, although you have to open the battery cover to find it. The autofill choices are more numerous on the G2, and the dictionary seems to do a better job of finding the word you’re after, making typing go more quickly.

The OS is still Android 1.5, and there are a growing number of apps for the system.

This new offering fully committed to Google’s Android operating system only reinforces the fact that Android will be supported in the future and continue to be stronger.  Apps like Webdatamation’s FileDroid, will continue to provide an avenue for businesses to reach new customers and provide useful services to the smartphone community.

Ask about Android development next time to speak to one of our staff.