Ambient Makes a Reappearance
December 21, 2009
Every few moon cycles, search ideas morph and surface with fresh lipstick. There was the nomadic search and there was ambient information. Ambient is back, and the idea is to take the information from RSS, Twitter, geolocation, and updates to Web pages and snap the Lego blocks together. Great idea, and it is one that outfits like Bright Planet, Deep Web Technologies, Fetch Technologies, Jack Be, Kapow, and a number of intelligence service systems are doing. Sure, some of the outfits are farther along (intel services); others have nifty technology (Fetch Technologies); and others shave updated established content acquisition systems (Bright Planet).
If you want to read more about ambient search, navigate to “Beyond Real-time Search: The Dawning Of Ambient Streams” by Edo Segal. The write up in interesting and contains a Venn diagram to pinpoint the opportunity for those who want to know about one of the “next big things”.
The Google is slogging away in this space, and it has been since it bought a Seattle start up and hired Dr. Ramanathan Guha. Other Google wizards are coding their souls’ insights to make information more timely, smart, useful, and “federated”.
For me, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
The challenges we face in terms of making real progress stems from the fact that the overarching goal is one that requires a multi-disciplinary approach across a myriad of data sets. While there are many companies executing in each of the quadrants few are in a position to access the full scope of data and therefore the ability to create the Holy Grail of filters is limited.
That’s an interest area of the Google. I don’t think it will carry humans beyond search. Moving beyond search requires a leap frog play and a willingness to leave behind the popular notion of intentional information retrieval.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 22, 2009
I disclose this is a freebie, designed to provide some context for what appears to be a break through insight. For reporting what seems to be new but is actually not new, I am monitored by the Bureau of Industry and Security. Keep industry safe from learning about the past is my motto.
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