MAMA: Opera develops search engine for web developers

[mandy]

Opera Software ASA today revealed a search engine that indexes structural information about Web pages so Web developers and standards bodies can see what technologies are being used to build Web sites and how they are being used.

The Metadata Analysis and Mining Application search engine -- MAMA for short -- is being tested by the Oslo, Norway-based company and should be released in an invitation-only beta by the end of the year, said Snorre Grimsby, Opera's vice president of quality assurance...

full article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/arti...ticleBasic&articleId=9117275&intsrc=news_ts_head

From Opera:

What can you get from MAMA?

The intent has always been for MAMA to provide those developing the Opera Web browser with a tool to quickly find live examples of markup and other Web page structural components. We at Opera believe this tool can also be useful to other stakeholders in the standards and browser-making world. For example:

    * Browser manufacturers and others can use MAMA data on the popularity of widely used technologies to prioritize bugs and justify adding support for new technology to in-progress releases.
    * Standards bodies can use the data to measure the success and adoption rates of various technologies.
    * Web developers can use the same data to justify support of various technologies in their work.
    * It can provide real-world, practical samples of the Web developer's "art", for inspiration and instruction.

MAMA can definitely provide data on discrete issues such as "what is the 18th most popular element?" (SPAN), or "how popular is Flash?" (found in 33.5% of MAMA URLs). It can also dig deeper, by yielding regional and other data breakdowns. This allows us to discover that some countries like Germany show a decreased tendency for Flash (25% of pages), while other countries have much higher incidences (Chinese URLs in MAMA used Flash 67% of the time)...

full article and more information on MAMA: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/mama/