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Lucid Imagination launched LucidWorks Enterprise today, a search technology with an API as part of its core.

The move is testament to the new world of the enterprise, where platforms are an attractive option for building applications that leverage the Web and multiple forms of structured and and unstructured data. It's a world where a search app has to be simple to build and flexible enough to connect people to the right information, be it internal documents or social data from the distributed Web.

At its core, LucidWork Enterprise is built on the Apache Solr/Lucene platform. Layered into the thinking it is a realization that content is changing in multiple dimensions. In terms of volume, content is coming in at a new pace. Twitter is testament to the speed in which data is now flowing.

As part of its recent UI redesign, Twitter has also made some significant changes to its backend, and today Michael Busch updated the Twitter Engineering Blog with some details about how Twitter has revised search.

Initially Twitter's real-time search engine was based on the technology of Summize, a company Twitter acquired in 2008. But since then, Twitter has seen phenomenal growth: over 1,000 Tweets per second and 12,000 queries per second, making well over 1 billion queries per day. And the Twitter Engineering Team has been seeking some alternatives as "scaling the old MySQL-based system had become increasingly challenging."

Google has begun testing yet another new feature for its flagship search product, offering entire website previews when you mouseover search results. Before you know it, the enter key and the mouse button will go completely extinct and you'll simply have to visualize the information your in search of and Google will make it appear on your screen.

Human-powered search site Mahalo, created by notable entrepreneur, investor and blogger Jason Calacanis, may soon be involved in a class-action lawsuit, the result of a change to its Terms and Conditions that may have affected the pay of its contractors and employees.

Meanwhile, as Mahalo's legal troubles begin, CEO Calacanis is preparing to launch a new project, itself called "Launch," which aims to be a direct challenger to TechCrunch.

Nine times out of 10, if you're walking down the street and you search for "coffee" on your smartphone, it's because you're in serious need of a cup of joe. You don't want a Wikipedia article or a website for coffee aficionados, you want a caffeine injection right now - and Google's on board with you.

Google introduced hyperlocal search ads for mobile devices this morning, bringing you closer to what you want, when you want it.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking to the audience at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco this week, said that his company expects mobile to dominate search at some point in the future. "Eventually, we think mobile will be the majority of the searches and the majority of the revenue," he said. But that future could take a long time to get here, he added.

Schmidt also touched on the future of search in general, at least as Google sees it, speaking of a time when Google searches become automatic and autonomous, leading to "serendipitous" discovery of the world around you.

Rollyo is a simple way to "roll your own search engine". You can get started by choosing a few pre-defined categories - these contain a list of URLs that you can add to.

It gets a bit more interesting though if you add your own URLs though. From the homepage, click "Create Searchroll" and you can build a custom search engine.

The automotive industry has always been at the forefront of technology, especially at the luxury level. With navigation systems, infrared cameras and other in-car sensors, our cars are becoming more like high-tech computers on wheels. Google partnered with BMW in 2007 to offer in-car local search and "send to car" functionality for users of the automaker's ConnectedDrive service. Today, Google has announced some new features that will improve how it's search engine is used on the road.

Earlier this week, Apple announced it was rolling back previous restrictions on the use of third-party development tools for building applications for the iOS mobile operating system and that it would be, for the first time ever, publishing its once-secret "App Store Guidelines" for all to read. These guidelines explain, in detail, how Apple determines which apps are granted acceptance into its ever-growing iTunes Application Store, now home to around 250,000 mobile apps.

Some of the language in the developer agreement is rather strong and very direct. For example, Apple proclaims that it has "lots of serious developers who don't want their quality apps to be surrounded by amateur hour."

Apple also says: "we don't need any more Fart apps," but it couldn't be more wrong about that, and here's why.

Google unveiled a new way to display its search results this morning, called Instant Search. Instant brings search results to your browser, as you type. Letter by letter - it's amazing. The feature will be rolled out to all users over the coming hours and days but is available to be tested here.

It's fast. It's satisfying. But if respected critics like Nicholas Carr have raised the alarm that Google's legacy search product might make us stupid - what might Google Instant do to our brains and thinking? There are at least two ways to look at the question.