This version of Helioid is a meta-search engine offering category based personalization. Below is a partial screen shot of the outputs.
By interaction with the categories on the left you can choose the results to be shown on the right. Please let us know if you have any suggestions, comments, criticisms, complaints, anything. Try out the Helioid preview now.
Continue Reading...When retrieving documents for a search query, a simplistic approach that ranks the most relevant documents highest will leave users completely unsatisfied if it incorrectly interprets the query. Incorrect interpretation is an inevitable possibility when dealing with ambiguous queries, which in some experiments were shown to represent over 16% of all queries. To address this we can apply a topic modeling algorithm to the fetched search results and then use a reordering algorithm to ensure we highly rank both relevant documents and topics with a high probability of being in different topics.
The web is really big, but when one searches for information the topics they are looking for exist within a much smaller portion of the web. A system that knows our individual preferences can optimize its document search, by starting its search from documents that we likely prefer.
The simple answer to how Helioid benefits users is that Helioid represents information and information navigation in a more efficient manner. This gets a complex when looking at how each individual uses the internet and searches for information, but still the core is the same. A current issue with web search, as Google’s Marissa Mayer explains, is that it is undeveloped and not advanced, “Think of it like biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s: it’s a new science where we make big and exciting breakthroughs all the time.”
Continue Reading...In early December Microsoft Live Labs released Thumbtack, which is said to: “[use] machine learning and natural language techniques to understand the information you give it.” Looking through the interface one notices some interesting tools. Such as a gadget that creates plots based on attributes of the items you collect and a “Layout Gadget” that I assume creates layouts but currently appears to only work with IE7. Intelligent parsing of information, on demand analysis, visualization, there are great ideas here. The unaccomplished obstacle is how to allow users access to these in an intuitive and simple fashion.
Continue Reading...Google recently released their new SearchWiki feature which allows users, who are logged into a Google account, to rearrange search results (by clicking on arrows that move them up or down one slot), remove results from the returned list, and comment on results (all comments are made public). More information is in this Google blog article.
It’s encouraging to see Google taking user responses into account. It has always been our opinion that this is something sadly missing from the mainstream search world. Google also states that the results’ movements, removals, and comments will not be used as input to their search algorithms. Well, at least not yet.
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