February 17, 2007
More on pigeons and search
I have written previously that using “keywordese”, the language of keywords used to query search engines today, is like using a “grunting pidgin language” instead of a human natural language to communicate our intent to the search engine. This also explained the joke on our Powerset Series A Funding Party t-shirts with the grunting pigeon.
In an unexpected confirmation of the connection between pigeons and keyword search technology, a reader pointed out to me an article on Google’s website about Google’s PigeonRank technology. 
This technology employs huge arrays of pigeons that are trained to peck at pages that are more likely to be high quality results. Although each pigeon is fallible, the wisdom of the crowds means that the results of the whole coop can have high quality.
So far, the PigeonRank technology appears to be applied only to rankings, not to query languages. But it is possible that such work is happening in secret.
Posted by barney on February 17, 2007 at 1:47 pm | No Comments
February 14, 2007
Powerset Series A Funding Party
Powerset had party last Saturday night to celebrate our Series A funding! The party took place at Frisson, a trendy bar/restaurant in San Francisco’s financial district. We wound up with perhaps 500 people attending, completely filling up the space (and all available parking for blocks around) for most of the evening.
Party supported by our sponsors and investors
While the event was lavish and brought back memories of the heady dotcom boom days, when some companies spent a significant portion of their funding on their launch parties, we actually were fortunate to have the cost subsidized by our investors and partners. I want to thank them here.
continue reading the Powerset Series A Funding Party
Posted by barney on February 14, 2007 at 11:57 pm | No Comments
February 13, 2007
Barney interviewed by Bambi Francisco on Marketwatch about PARC/Powerset deal
Bambi Francisco, from Marketwatch, interviewed me last Friday about the PARC/Powerset strategic deal announcement. The video is now available.
We discussed the following questions:
- How fundamental is the PARC technology to Powerset?
- What are the financial terms of the deal? Is PARC now an investor in Powerset?
- How does the deal being completed affect Powerset’s product development plans?
- Why is this technology so special?
- NLP technology has been under development for so long, why is the timing different now?
- When is Powerset going to launch?
The interview was brief and to the point, and I think we shared some useful perspective on the significance of this deal.
I still need to post an entry to an earlier video interview with Bambi last November. It’s hard keeping a blog up to date when so much is happening with your startup company.
Posted by barney on February 13, 2007 at 9:07 pm | No Comments