I want you folks at snap.com to, first and foremost, know what I want in the next generation search engine. I'm sorry, but live previews are not the only technology I would hope to have at my fingertips. Seeing as I am not running a search engine company, and will not have an opportunity to execute these ideas myself, then I want to put forth my first as something that you could feature as part of your development stage search engine environment.

Search bots are my own idea for programmable bots that do searching for a user. I want to be download a free program that does the following:

- Presents data in customizable, and even programmable ways: Let's say I want to know how many changes were made to the Internet (or at least the searchable Internet)regarding the search term "monkey" on July 31st, 2005. I want that to be spit out into, say, an Excel document that comes with an appendix ranking the pages that were most frequently changed or altered having to do with "monkey" on that day.
- Mine Internet data for stories: Search trend data, traffic data, peak hour data, all have stories to tell. I want a bot that generates data about the Internet if I want it to, and I want it for myself, on my desktop, as a toy or as a tool - and for free or for subscription.
- I want my Snap Bot to be a liberator. No longer should search engine companies profit substantially by holding too much data close to the vest. I want the data - hey, I might even pay a monthly fee, but I want to mine the data of the Internet myself at home, plain and simple.

OK - I'm kind of ranting, but here's the launch idea: Develop a beta version of my "Snap Bots" idea and release it as freeware with the launch for people to download and play with. Maybe some of the web crawling data it can pick up will be deeply useful, maybe not, but the important thing is that there is no free and available programmable "bot" that the common man can tinker with to search the web and retrieve data, links, contact info, pictures, link strength, traffic info, web alteration info, and search term traffic info (although I'm mildl enthusaistic about Google Trends) etc… Release a search bot for your launch, Snap.com, and it will capture the public's imagination - opening up new possibilities.

PS - Even if I have to let me bot sit and run all night to piece together some sort of complex story, visualization, or data table that I've specified, it's still worth it. People, regular people, have an infinite number of questions that wish to ask of the ever-changing Internet, please let them ask those questions in a wholly new and sophisticated way.