TextDigger and Open Web Service
April 5, 2010
The flurry of semantic activity reminded me that I had not updated my files on TextDigger, a semantic player based in San Jose, California. In February 2009, the company received an infusion of $4.3 million from “True Ventures (San Francisco, CA) with a follow on investment from Intel Capital (Santa Clara, CA), CBS Interactive, and some private investors. The company says:
TextDigger was founded by a group of former CNET employees and executives who developed patented linguistic technologies that, today, are used to auto-generate thousands of natural language texts posted on CNET’s award winning websites. Several members of TextDigger also founded SmartShop, which was acquired by CNET Networks in 2002. SmartShop developed a feature-rich comparison shopping engine distinguished by its ability to merge catalog data (product specs and features) from different sources, normalizing their divergent syntax and semantics, and presenting a unified catalog.
The has an interesting Open Web Service angle. In effect, the firm’s automated semantic tagging tool can be used by anyone who wants to tap the company’s technology to add to the Community Semantics term list. TextDigger’s technology is the top rated service in this project, which carries more weight for me than the comments from azure chip consultants, poobahs, and carpetbagger. TextDigger offers a version of its system for search engine optimization. You can sign up for a demo of the service on the TextDigger Web site here.
I read a paper by Tim Musgrove and Robin Walsh a couple of years ago. My recollection is that TextDigger’s technology had an interesting “more like this” function. My memory is hazy, but these types of functions can be computationally hungry. As Intel’s chips get more horsepower, semantic operations become less expensive. Intel has shown interest in other text-related investments, including Endeca. The commoditization of search and spare CPU cycles may open the door to some content related processes turning up in silicon. I am tracking the use of “open” as a differentiator, and like the word “search”, “open” has many shades of meaning.
Stephen E Arnold, April 5, 2010
A freebie.
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