I've heard Ubuntu 13.10 will ship Smart Scopes technology.
What are smart scopes?
Application Development – What Are Smart Scopes?
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The short answer is no.
Thes Smart Scopes Server collects aggregated statistics related to search queries and doesn’t collect any data to identify any user. Only the search query is stored on the server.
Users are not tracked in any way: there isn't a notion of anyone’s search history and queries and feedback cannot be correlated to a user. As a consequence, Smart Scopes search results are not personalized. If collecting anonymous search queries is still a concern, any scope or entire communication with Smart Scopes Server can be easily disabled via the user’s Privacy Settings dialog.
If a scope requires personal information to work (such as account information) then it will only be able to run on the client but never on the server.
The Smart Scopes spec contains information about all the data that is sent to the server.
The following scopes are available in a default Ubuntu "Saucy Salamander" development image for desktop (which will ultimately become the Ubuntu 13.10 release)
Master scopes
Master scopes can aggregate content from other children scopes. They are provided by the unity-scope-home package.
Default master scopes
These are the visible scopes when first opening the Dash.
- Home scope
- Applications scope
- Files scope
- Videos scope
- Music scope
- Photos scope
- Social scope
Other master scopes
These are master scopes that are not visible in the main Dash screen, but which can be revealed as Categories when expanding the Filter Results control in the Dash.
- Web scope
- News scope
- Recipes scope
- Notes scope
- Info scope
- Books scope
- Reference scope
- Help scope
- Boxes scope
- Calendar scope
- More suggestions scope
- Graphics scope
- Code scope
Other installed scopes
The following scope packages are available in the Ubuntu development image (Saucy Salamander) as sources results are presented for:
unity-scope-audacious - Audacious scope for Unity
unity-scope-calculator - Calculator scope for Unity
unity-scope-chromiumbookmarks - Chromium bookmarks scope for Unity
unity-scope-clementine - Clementine scope for Unity
unity-scope-colourlovers - COLOURlovers scope for Unity
unity-scope-devhelp - devhelp scope for Unity
unity-scope-deviantart - deviantART scope for Unity
unity-scope-firefoxbookmarks - Firefox bookmarks scope for Unity
unity-scope-gallica - gallica scope for Unity
unity-scope-gdrive - Google Drive scope for Unity
unity-scope-github - GitHub scope for Unity
unity-scope-gmusicbrowser - gmusicbrowser scope for Unity
unity-scope-googlenews - Google News scope for Unity
unity-scope-gourmet - Gourmet Recipe Manager scope for Unity
unity-scope-guayadeque - Guayadeque scope for Unity
unity-scope-home - Home scope that aggregates results from multiple scopes
unity-scope-manpages - Manual pages scope for Unity
unity-scope-musicstores - Ubuntu One music store for unity
unity-scope-musique - Musique scope for Unity
unity-scope-openclipart - OpenClipArt scope for Unity
unity-scope-openweathermap - Openweathermap scope for Unity
unity-scope-soundcloud - SoundCloud scope for Unity
unity-scope-texdoc - Texdoc scope for Unity
unity-scope-tomboy - Tomboy scope for Unity
unity-scope-video-remote - Remote videos engine
unity-scope-virtualbox - VirtualBox scope for Unity
unity-scope-yahoostock - Yahoo! Finance scope for Unity
unity-scope-yelp - Help scope for Unity
unity-scope-zotero - Zotero scope for Unity
unity-scopes-runner - desktop runner for misceallenous scopes
unity-scope-launchpad - Launchpad scope for Unity
unity-scope-sshsearch - SSH search scope for Unity
Best Answer
Smart scopes is a technology that provides functionality to choose the best set of scopes to present to the user depending on the search term, whether the scope is locally installed or remotely available on Canonical servers.
The "smartness" is achieved by consulting Canonical's Smart Scopes Server with every search query made from the Home view of the Dash.
This technology will be available from Ubuntu 13.10 onwards, and it can be tested already in the Ubuntu "Saucy Salamander" development images, which will eventually become the 13.10 release.
How it all works
The journey starts when the user opens the Dash and types something to search for. The search query will be submitted to both local scopes in the user machine and to remote scopes in the Smart Scopes Server. You can think of scopes as dedicated search engines (e.g. the videos scope will search for videos), whose results can be combined and prioritized before they're presented to the user.
This is where the Smart Scopes Service kicks in: a remote service used by the Home Scope to determine the best matches for Scopes to trigger for a search term. It is also responsible for returning results of any remote scopes for that search term, as well as accepting anonymous metrics generated during that search.
Efficient
In order to provide a richer variety of results, a great number of scopes will be installed on the local machine. Each one of these will be activated only if the Smart Scopes Service deems it necessary, and all scopes will be unloaded after a period of inactivity.
This, combined with the lion share of the work being done on the remote server provides for a very efficient and modularized process, giving the user a fast experience in getting content despite of all the processing happening behind the scenes.
Smart!
The Smart Scopes Server will constantly learn about the results being clicked on the Dash according to the search terms, and adapts the returned results and their ranking based on the metrics it receives. The more the service is used and the more the Ubuntu user base grows, the more accurate the results will be.