“Imagination Environment,” created by David Ayman Shamma and Kristian J. Hammond of Northwestern University, reads a television stream’s closed caption feed and displays related images and other media to complement the television feed. Matthew Mirapaul profiles “Imagination Environment” in The New York Times….
Category Archives: Search
Cal Athletics LookSmart search partnership
LookSmart will develop a branded search property for Cal Athletics available at CalBears.com, CalBearsSearch.com and via a toolbar application. “Each time users click on a paid listing, a portion of the revenue will go to support Cal Athletics.” It would be nice if they had a Grub promotion to help utilize all those idle computers and open bandwidth. If all search engines provide a similar impression of a result to their users, the move towards cobrand benefits could be big. Think of iWon.com of years ago….
Ask Jeeves Purchases Tukaroo Inc.
Ask Jeeves acquired Tukaroo Inc., a San Jose-based desktop search technology company founded in 2003. Tukaroo was founded in 2003 and launched their first product January 20, 2004. Tukaroo’s desktop and local network search bar includes a preview window for photographs and all documents. Advertisements are integrated into the local search window….
Salon: Invasion of the spambots
Sam Williams of Salon writes about the emergence of intelligent agents crawling pages and inserting content in weblogs and wikis. “[B]ot writers and copiers find that there are enough newbie operators out there to serve as unwilling page-rank boosters.”…
New York Times on Google PhDs
Randall Stross of The New York Times takes a look at the hiring practices of Microsoft and Google, specifically focusing on their approach to PhDs. Working in Google’s favor is its practice of putting new Ph.D.’s to work immediately in the exact areas where they have been trained – in systems, architecture and artificial intelligence. Google, the company, may falter, but Google, the human resources experiment, is unlikely to be the cause. Microsoft has yet to disavow old templates for hiring. Its chief college recruiter, Ms. Roby, says that among computer science Ph.D.’s, “it’s less likely to find someone with…
Yusuf Mehdi speech at Goldman Sachs Internet conference
Yusuf Mehdi, head of Microsoft’s MSN division, spoke yesterday at the Goldman Sachs Internet conference at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. Audio of the speech is available online in Windows Media Audio and RealAudio formats. Some interesting comments on MSN Search throughout the talk. “All of our aspirations…pivot on on Hotmail and Messenger.” Why do you download a toolbar when everyone already has one? For integration into all of the MSN services of course. Search is front and center, but not the primary motivator for the install. MSN Search handles 2 billion queries a day. Over 10 million people…
Atom linking
The Atom entry link structure detailed by Mark Pilgrim has some interesting search applications. What if the rel started to carry more meaning? You could then semantically track trends and soruces with less parsing, enabling new applications….
Vividence search engine report
Vividence has a semi-annual report on the search industry. PDF link to report. In its May report Google received top rank for customer experience and satisfaction, and last for ad activity. Customer experience and satisfaction rankings: GoogleYahoo!Ask JeevesLycosMSN Ask Jeeves and MSN had a similar pre-search brand image, but MSN did not deliver the same post-search experience. 75% of users say they have one primary search engine. “Although actual search results returned by the leading five search engines do not differ substantially by some measures, Google users reported a higher perceived rate of success and satisfaction with search results.”…
CNET : Google’s desktop bet
Google is reportedly preparing to release desktop search software: project Puffin. CNET News.com analyzes Google’s move to the desktop, similar attempts by other companies past and present, and why Google needs to make this move well before Longhorn ships….
Technorati Developer’s Salon
I attended the Technorati Developers Salon tonight in San Francisco. I arrived at a non-descript side entrance and rang an unlabeled call box. Kevin Marks answered the door, and I knew I was in the right place. After an hour of mingling, pizza, salad, and Anchor Steam, the group of about 40 people headed downstairs. Sputnik wireless access covered the entire two story office space. The office space is very large, considering Technorati employs only 8 people. They should be able to expand to 50 people at least in this office space. Dave Sifry started things off. Technorati picks up,…