Blippex for a Different Kind of Search
October 17, 2013
Since Google came to dominate the internet search landscape, many rivals have launched. Some have found varying degrees of success, but none have come close to overtaking the master. Now, blogger Christopher Mims believes he may have found a contender in Blippex; “This Is the First Interesting Search Engine Since Google,” Quartz declares. We also found Blippex interesting.
Mims notes that, unlike most competitors, Blippex is not trying to reinvent the Googly wheel. Its approach is different. Instead of indexing the web in general, Blippex looks only at pages its users have visited. The article explains:
“Blippex’s algorithm, called DwellRank, decides relevance based on how long users spend on a site and how many times Blippex users have visited it. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have, independently of the Blippex team, established that the amount of time someone spends on a web page or document is, not surprisingly, a pretty good measure of how important and relevant it is (pdf). Blippex gets this information by having you download a plugin for your web browser. This plugin measures how long you spend on each site and sends the information to Blippex, anonymized—that is, stripped of any information that could identify you.”
Isn’t this approach a bit limiting? For now, yes, but the makers of Blippex liken the young site to Wikipedia, which became much more effective as users contributed information. Currently, says Mims, the site’s user base is mostly geeky early adopters, so it is a good place to go for programming questions. It is also adequate for recent events, he writes, but is not the place for more obscure searches. With the limitations, why bother? Well, Blippex’s “fanatical” commitment to privacy is one reason; like DuckDuckGo, the site does not track its users. They even made their browser plugin open source, so folks can verify that it is not collecting private information. And, of course, the results will get better as more people install that plugin.
There remains one question—how will Blippex make money on this ad-free site? If co-founders Max Kossatz and Gerald Bäck have figured that out yet, they don’t seem to be sharing the answer. The company, based in Austria, launched last July.
Cynthia Murrell, October 17, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Search Engine Patent
October 16, 2013
SearchYourCloud called my attention to the US patent “Search Engine.” The number is US849573. You can snag a copy at the USPTO via its search engine. Be sure to refresh yourself about the USPTO syntax. Simon Bain, the inventor, is now a senior manager at SearchYourCloud. For those who want to keep pace with new methods germane to search, I found the explanation of the query expansion and deduplication processes of interest. You can get more information about SearchYourCloud at this link. Worth a look.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2013
Xenky Search Vendor Profile: Entopia
October 15, 2013
I have posted a profile of the now offline enterprise search vendor Entopia. You can access the write up at www.xenky.com/vendor-profiles.
Entopia is an interesting case. The company, like Endeca and Fast Search & Transfer, had embraced the idea that information access was the DNA of an organization. With access to information and metadata, a manager could make better decisions. The marketers jumped on the bandwagon and rolled out some fancy buzzwords to surround the incredibly complex Entopia system.
The Entopia approach is, in my opinion, one that took the SAP R/3 massive reengineering of work processes and applied the notion to information. Entopia included Tacit type tracking to identify people who were centers of influence in a company, search, concepts, automatic indexing, semantics, etc.
The only problem was that the cost of implementing the system once a client had been found was high. In 2006, the company wound down. The firm is still offline, but its very ambitious explanations of what information could do inspired many other vendors.
Like Convera, Entopia described a wonderful world of information access. The problem was and still is delivering in a way that meets users’ expectations and delivers a visible, easily documented payoff to the organization buying the dream and the software.
The profiles will not be updated or maintained. I am providing the information because some students may find the explanations, diagrams, and comments of interest. The information is provided on an “as is” basis. If you want to use this for commercial purposes, please, contact me at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Remember. I am almost 70 years old and some of the final versions of these profiles commanded hefty fees. A reader reminded me that some big outfits have taken my work and reused it, sometimes with permission and sometimes not. Well, these are for your personal use.
Stephen E Arnold, October 15, 2013
Ways Bing and Yahoo Are Better than Google
October 15, 2013
With 70 percent of U.S. users relying on Google, here’s a lone voice reminding everyone of the value of Bing and Yahoo. MakeUseOf asks (and answers), “What Do Bing and Yahoo Have that Google Doesn’t?” To be clear, writer Craig Snyder still believes Google is obviously the best. However, he describes a few tips the ruling search engine could pick from its rivals, illustrating his observations with helpful screenshots.
Bing’s top advantage, the article states, is rooted in aesthetics. Though Google comes up with some fun and interesting themes for special occasions, the Bing home screen is a visual treat every day. Snyder also prefers the way Bing handles image searches. He writes:
“I use Google Images frequently, but was a little surprised at how differently Bing handles their image searches. Bing Images includes ‘entity understanding,’ meaning that the search engine can interpret if what you’re looking for is a person, place, or thing and show image results more effectively based on this understanding. Bing Images filters out exact or near duplicates much better than Google. Bing even uses higher quality images as part of their algorithm.”
On the other hand, Yahoo’s strengths seemingly lie everywhere but their search functionality. Snyder complements the site on its start page, which presents quite a bit of well-organized information at a glance. He also wonders why Google has yet to offer suitable alternatives to Yahoo Local, Yahoo Answers, or Flickr. The article concludes:
“In my opinion, it’s not even worth questioning that Google is the best search engine you’re going to find. However, some of us are looking for more. Yahoo! offers a better homepage. Bing looks fresher and offers a more promising approach to searching for images. There’s more out there if you’re looking at the grand scheme of things, and it’s important to stay tuned in with what the other search engines have to offer.”
At least, as Snyder notes, such features from competitors keep Google on its toes. Though it would still lead the field, he suspects it would not be as good without the prodding from its rivals. I suppose that’s what healthy competition is all about.
Cynthia Murrell, October 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Yandex Faces a Possible Challenge in Search
October 11, 2013
I read “Russia Plans State-Backed Web Search Engine Named after Sputnik: Report.” New search engines are not news. Most of the come along with a news release and then disappear. Some linger in a weird online-but-no-visibility mode for years.
The write up reveals an alleged search engine initiative from Rostelecom, a telecom with backing from the Russian government. the source for Reuters is an article in another newspaper. I don’t know how much of the information is accurate at this time.
The idea is not a new one. Several years ago the European Community put some money into a Google alternative. I am not sure what happened to that initiative, but I think user behaviors are tough to change.
The write up includes a remarkable “factoid” from an analyst/expert. Here’s the passage I found amusing:
Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts said in a note that developing high-quality search technology may require the best talent and long research and development and that the quality of search results may be well below that of leading firms. “Even if the launch of Sputnik is well-executed, we do not expect it could significantly eat into the market shares of Yandex or Google,” the Merrill Lynch analysts wrote.
Enough of my self-indulgent comments about the nature of “real” journalism.
Let’s assume that Russia wants its own search engine. Several questions struck me as potentially interesting:
- What’s up with Yandex? If I were looking for a decent search engine, why not tap Yandex the way the original FirstGov.gov leveraged Inktomi in 2000?
- Is the initiative an indication that the notion of a free and open Internet is going to be given a bit of Stalinesque revisionism? My hunch is that the answer is, “Yes.” I just don’t have any current information on the concern the wild world of electronic information causes in Russia.
- How much money will Russia pump into the venture? Search is darned expensive, and some pretty big outfits have pumped money without end into search only to end up as a flop.
Interesting development. Too bad the write up did not include some reference to Jike, the Chinese search system. Jike may have some useful lessons to offer.
Stephen E Arnold, October 11, 2013
Alert Relevance: Off the Rails?
October 10, 2013
I signed up for alerts via the Yahoo.com service. My topic has been “enterprise search.” In the last month or so, I have noticed that the Yahoo alerts are cheerleading for an outfit called TopSEOs.com. Here’s a snap of the alert I received today:
The top hit is not about enterprise search in my traditional context. The “enterprise search” refers to TopSEOs.com’s ability to push content to the top of a results list. On one hand, manipulations that give a company focused on spoofing results pride of place in an alert is evidence that Yahoo and other systems cannot detect methods of manipulation. On the other hand, the ability a marketing manager struggling to “prove” that his/her efforts are of value to a company will want to hire these manipulators as quickly as possible.
What does this type of “alert” manipulation suggest to me?
First, the notion of relevance is completely subverted from objective results germane to a query. That’s too bad for those who don’t know the difference between a relevant result and an off-point result.
Second, the endless discussions about whether the results lists bias one site versus another or boost one concept in relation to another are irrelevant. The systems seems to be more under the control of the spoofers than the folks responsible for the search system. I hope self-driving automobiles work better.
Third, the hype about systems understanding context, semantics, and personalization seems to be either unworkable or too expensive to implement. Enterprise search does not connote SEO or search engine optimization to me. Why am I seeing these results?
Answer: One more example of search becoming less and less reliable and useful. You can set up a Yahoo Alert and judge the utility of the service for yourself at http://alerts.yahoo.com/.
Stephen E Arnold, October 10, 2013
Xenky Search Vendor Profile: Convera
October 9, 2013
I have begun to put up early drafts of profiles I have written over the years. These are descriptions and commentary about vendors of search, content processing, and analytics systems.
The first profile to go live is one of my early analyses of Convera, a vendor which has largely dropped out of sight and out of mind—the famous Excalibur Technologies which reinvented itself as Convera. Anyone remember ConQuest Software. That was absorbed into Convera and made maintain word lists and controlled vocabularies an interesting task.
You can access the Convera profile at www.xenky.com/vendor-profiles. If you want to argue about one of the comments in this draft profile, use the comments section to this blog post.
The profiles will not be updated or maintained. I am providing the information because some students may find the explanations, diagrams, and comments of interest. The information is provided on an “as is” basis. If you want to use this for commercial purposes, please, contact me at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Remember. I am almost 70 years old and some of the final versions of these profiles commanded hefty fees. Enjoy the tales of search systems that sometimes work okay and sometimes don’t work.
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2013
Progress on Personalized Search
October 9, 2013
Some searchers have become excited about algorithmic breakthroughs that promise more personalized results, allowing us to more easily find what we need. A team at North Carolina State University , led by Dr. Kemafor Anyanwu, is advancing the contextual search field with a fresh approach, we learn from “Scaling Up Personalized Query Results for Next Generation of Search Engines” at the University’s Newsroom. Writer Matt Shipman tells us:
“Anyanwu’s team has come up with a way to address the personalized search problem by looking at a user’s ‘ambient query context,’ meaning they look at a user’s most recent searches to help interpret the current search. Specifically, they look beyond the words used in a search to associated concepts to determine the context of a search. . . . And the more recently a concept has been associated with a search, the more weight it is given when ranking results of a new search.”
That makes some sense; if I’ve recently been researching wild animals and search for “jaguar” (the article’s example), it is likely that I would rather not have to sift through results about luxury automobiles. The trade off with personalized search, however, has always been the dramatically increased computational power required to run such a system. The team from NC State has addressed that, too. The article tells us:
“Anyanwu’s research team has now come up with a technique that includes new ways to represent data, new ways to index that data so that it can be accessed efficiently, and a new computing architecture for organizing those indexes. The new technique makes a significant difference.”
How significant? Well, Anyanwu says her team has found the new approach to be about 170 times as fast. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but is it enough to make personalized search feasible? We’ll see. A paper [PDF] on the project is scheduled to be presented at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, being held in Santa Clara in early October.
Cynthia Murrell, October 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
New Tickets Search Engine Helps Sports Fans See Their Favorite Teams
October 7, 2013
Digital Journal recently covered a new search engine that is sure to benefit Houston Texans fans looking to attend games on the cheap in the article “Ticket Search Engine Whiztix.com Helps Houston Texans Fans Find Tickets to Sold Out Games”.
According to the article, fans can find tickets as low as $20 on the Whiztixs site which consistently provides an affordable and efficient way to search for resold event tickets online.
Here is how it works:
“The free-to-use tool aggregates results from different event ticket selling sites all in one place, allowing users to find the cheapest tickets available, often below face value, and the best deals on seats. WhizTix has saved customers money on tickets for sporting events, concerts and plays—even events that are sold out.”
As someone who tends to wait til the last minute to purchase tickets, this sounds like a great alternative to finding tickets on Craigslist. I am not a huge sports fan, but I would certainly be interested in using this service to see concerts or plays.
Jasmine Ashton, October 07, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Google Vulnerable to IBM Watson: Interesting Sort Of
October 5, 2013
Wired Magazine has done some interesting things. Once headlines were invisible to those who suffered from color blindness. Then there were editors who morphed from real journalism into global media magnates and Drukeresque business pundits. Now there is a story which pits IBM search technology against Google’s ad based search machine.
Crossing the search swamp. Image source: http://englishrussia.com/category/entertaiment/page/10/
Navigate to “Google in Jeopardy: What If IBM’s Watson Dethroned the King of Search.” Read it. Now. I cannot do the write up justice. I did mark a couple of passages as worthy of my “Use Later” file. At my age, I don’t think I will get to this burgeoning file. The addled goose is ageing and losing hope for eternal life. I will leave that the the Kurweilians of the world.
Passage One:
If IBM did search, Watson would do much better than Google on the tough problems, and they could still resort to a simple PageRank-like algorithm as a last resort. Which means there would be no reason for anyone to start their searches on Google. All the search traffic that makes Google seemingly invincible now could begin to shrink over time.
What strikes me is that IBM “did” search. There was STAIRS. There were prescient search initiatives which went from IBM to outfits like Google. Anyone know about CLEVER and Dr. Kleinberg? Anyone remember WebFountain? What about Ramanathan Guha? ATS? Inform/360? Patent Miner? Text-Pac? Aquarius? Elms? And more! IBM has been in search for decades and pretty much shifted from proprietary search to open source search with proprietary wrappers. Open source search allows IBM to use nuts and bolts from open source and redeploy resources to “add value” to a search system which is free to download. Do you have an IBM supercomputer and the funds to pay IBM’s engineers to get content into Watson, tune it, and integrate it into your organization? Better do some back of envelope cost analyses before inking a deal for Watson.
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