Summly: the Web in Bullet Lists
December 27, 2011
Here’s another example of search amplification, this time from a London youth. Wired reports, “Teen’s iOS App Uses Complex Algorithms to Summarize the Web.” Summly was developed by sixteen-year-old Nick D’Aloisio, who found the usual keyword-based search methods to be outdated. Instead, his app’s algorithm uses HTML to extract text from a page, then condenses it into bullet points. Writer Christina Bonnington elaborates:
D’Aloisio developed his final algorithm by initially employing a training algorithm: His method looked at human-authored summaries of articles of various types and from various publications. It then used these summaries as models for what Summly should be spitting out, and how it should change its own metrics to better emulate the work of flesh-and-blood information curators.
Interesting approach. Bonnington sees the summarized results as akin to CliffsNotes for the Web. She says the results aren’t perfect; it sometimes makes a date or other number into an unhelpful bullet point. Overall, though, she found that Summly did well to quickly glean three or four key points of each page.
That sounds very convenient, especially compared to a long list of pages users must wade through themselves. I have to wonder, though, whether folks who rely on such an app will end up missing important information.
Cynthia Murrell, December 27, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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