August 9, 2007
Technology Review on Building a Better Search Engine
Technology Review recently had an article featuring Powerset: Building a Better Search Engine, by Michael Reisman.
In addition to Powerset, the article also mentions Hakia and Cognition Search, and closes with a discussion of a semantic search project inside IBM.
I am an avid reader of Technology Review and am really excited to have an article about us in this great publication.
The full article is worth reading.
Here are just a few excerpts about natural language search and Powerset’s technology:
The company claims that the engine finds the best answer by considering the meaning and context of the question and related Web pages.
“Powerset extracts deep concepts and relationships from the texts, and the users query and match them efficiently to deliver a better search,” Powerset CEO Barney Pell says.Powerset chief technology officer Ron Kaplan has led PARC’s XLE team since the 1970s and is the author of much of the technology behind XLE that has been licensed to the company. Kaplan says that he and Pell began to collaborate on the idea about two years ago.
Current methods of searching used by more traditional engines focus on isolated keywords and broad but shallow content coverage. This leaves a lot of room for improvement, Kaplan says.“They are really not getting at relationships,” he notes. “The best that they do to approximate relationships are words that are close to other words.” He adds that a much deeper level of analysis is required.
The article came in time to announce the upcoming launch of Powerlabs, our early user community:
The company plans to release demo versions of the search engine on its Powerlabs website, where consumers can test-drive the product beginning in September. User feedback will be taken into consideration as Powerset makes the final product, which is slated for release next year.
“The key challenge is to get the system to the point where people can understand how to use it and get real value out of these systems even though they are not perfect,” Pell says. “We are finally at the point where we are going to cross that threshold.”
Posted by barney on August 9, 2007 at 8:21 pm | No Comments
April 7, 2007
When is Natural Language useful?
In talking about Powerset and natural language search, I am frequently asked “When is Natural Language search useful?”. The idea here is that maybe there are some specific situations where you really want natural language search. My general response is that this is like asking “When is Natural Language useful?” to talk to other people? The very question assumes that there are some particular situations where you want to use natural language, and others where you would prefer to just grunt out a few words.
I am aware of a number of situations where it is really clear that you want the power and usability of natural language for search, including:
continue reading the When is Natural Language useful?
Posted by barney on April 7, 2007 at 8:07 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