True Knowledge: Semantic Search System
April 16, 2009
A happy quack to the readers who sent me a link to this ZDNet Web log post called “True Knowledge API Lies at the Heart of Real Business Model” here. I had heard about True Knowledge — The Internet Answer Engine — a while back, but I tucked away the information until a live system became available. I had heard that the computer scientist spark plug of True Knowledge (William Tunstall-Pedoe) has been working on the technology for about 10 years. The company’s Web site is www.trueknoweldge.com, and it contains some useful information. You can sign up for a beta account, read Web log posts, and get some basic information about the system.
About one year ago, the Financial Times’s Web log here reported:
Another Semantic Web company looking for cash: William Tunstall-Pedoe of True Knowledge says he needs $10m in venture capital to back the next stage of his Cambridge (UK)-based company, which is trying to build a sort of “universal database” on the Web.
In April 2009, the company is raising its profile with an API that allows developers to make Web sites smarter.
Interface. © True Knowledge
The company said:
True Knowledge is a pioneer in a new class of Internet search technology that’s aimed at dramatically improving the experience of finding known facts on the Web. Our first service – the True Knowledge Answer Engine – is a major step toward fulfilling a longstanding Internet industry goal: providing consumers with instant answers to complex questions, with a single click.
The company’s proprietary technology allows a user to ask questions and get an answer. Quite a few companies have embraced the “semantic” approach to content processing. The reason is that traditional search engines require that the person with the question find the magic combination that delivers what’s needed. The research done by Martin White and my team, among others, makes clear that about two thirds of the users of a key word search system come away empty handed, annoyed, or both. True Knowledge and other semantic-centric vendors see significant opportunities to improve search and generate revenue.
Architecture block diagram. © True Knowledge
Paul Miller, the author of the ZDNet article, wrote:
True Knowledge is certainly interesting, and frequently impressive. It remains to be seen whether a Platform proposition will set them firmly on the road to riches, or if they’ll end up finding more success following the same route as Powerset and getting acquired by an existing (enterprise?) search provider.
ZDNet wrote a similar article in July 2007 here. In 2008, Venture Beat here mentioned True Knowledge here in July 2008 in a story that referenced Cuil.com (former Googlers) and Powerset (now part of Microsoft’s search cornucopia). Hakia.com was not mentioned even though at that time in 2008, Hakia.com was ramping up its PR efforts. Venture Beat mentioned Metaweb, another semantic start up that obtained $42 million in 2008, roughly eight times the funding of True Knowledge. (Metaweb’s product is Freebase, an open, shared database of the world’s information. More here.) You will want to read Venture Beat’s April 13, 2009, follow up story about True Knowledge here. This article contains an interesting influence diagram.
I don’t know enough about the appetite of investors for semantic search systems to offer an opinion. What I found interesting was:
- The company has roots in Cambridge University where computational approaches are much in favor. With Autonomy and Lemur Consulting working in the search sector, Cambridge is emerging as one of the hot spots in search
- The language and word choice used to describe the system here reminded me of some Google research papers and the work of Janet Widom at Stanford University. If there are some similarities, True Knowledge may be more than a question answering system
- The company received an infusion of $4.0 million in a second round of funding completed in mid 2008. Octopus Ventures provided an earlier injection of $1.2 million in 2007.
- The present push is to make the technology available to developers so that the semantic system can be “baked in” to other applications. The notion is a variant of that used in the early days of Verity’s OEM and developer push in the late 1980s. The API account is offered without charge.
- There’s a True Knowledge Facebook page here.
I recall seeing references to a private beta of the system. I can’t locate my notes from my 2007 trips to the UK, but I think that may have been the first time I heard about the system. I did locate a link to a demo video here, dated late 2007 That video explains that the information is represented in a way “that computers can understand”. I made a note to myself about this because this type of function in 2007 was embodied in the Guha inventions for the Google Programmable Search Engine.
The API allows systems to ask questions. The developer can formulate a query and see the result. Once the developer has the query refined, the True Knowledge system makes it easy for the developer to include the service in another application. The idea, I noted, was to make enterprise software systems smarter. The system performs reasoning and inference. The system generates answers and a reading list. The system can handle short queries, performing accurate disambiguation; that is, figuring out what the user meant. The system made it possible for a user to provide information to the system, in effect a Wikipedia type of function. The approach is a clever way for the user to teach the True Knowledge system.
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