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Founder of SocialToo Jesse Stay says the web is no longer open. He states that only a few large entities own the flow of information through both social and searchable web. DeWitt Clinton a Google software engineer responded with an eloquent description of what open means to him, and how even small budget businesses could construct a highly functional search engine (I keep bugging DeWitt and others about open semantic processing tools and interfaces).
Update: Some breaking news that’s fantasticThe Zemanta team (ala @Andraz) has crafted Galaxy, a relational connector between Zemanta and DBpedia + Freebase. This could save me a jump time from entities to connectors! Just heard about it from twitter, here’s the full blog post with all the cool details. Unfortunately there’s no API for such a connection, so we’ll have to do it ourselves anyway. At least I’m aware of the DBpedia and Freebase now.
What is Social Search?Google is known as the undisputed lead in web search. But the rise of social media sharing has lead to a large fraction of users bypassing standard search portals (no ad toll, or someone else gets the ad revenue). Our friends, colleagues and folks we respect have proved to be incredibly powerful super human filters (mortal portals, ca-ching another nickel Louis Gray).
(btw I love dumb pipes, I just don’t want to be one) The Social Web is the Mega BrainWith each article, video, or data sample we retain the option to filter out noise (by our own definition). We act as a voting node on the super web of information. The social web is made up of more than just the sites, software, and hardware connections. The social web contains the thinking, feeling people who make the web a valuable place to go for information, empathy, and life experiences. The web itself is a unstructured communication network between people. We generate and consume content. We sell, share or give away information, services and products. But there’s a disconnect between the data or information flowing within the web, and our ability to shape it into a view that’s acceptable or optimal for us as individuals. We all aren’t hard wired the same way to learn information. Continue reading »
Your Input Information Stream is Wide BandIn order to move past the limitation of our maximum effective information channel, we need the assistance of advanced tools. Current filters provide some aid but require our time to setup and regularly deploy. In addition our filters may be on keywords or tags that are never actually mentioned in an extremely relevant message. The challenge for developers is leveraging existing algorithms and database techniques to help us automatically sift through the ever increasing information wave. Continue reading »
Actionable vs. Interesting InformationThe distinguishing quality of actionable information is that it must be something we can act on in our immediate future. Action isn’t exclusively limited by:
It could be
Whoops!Pardon my haste, but when I originally made the video I was under the false impression that Microsoft had made a similar bid to last year’s offer and had purchased Yahoo. Thanks to Wade Dorrell (MSFT business intelligence program manager) for discovering the video before I wrote this post and correcting my false assumption. Seriously, thank you Wade. Now back to my tactics rant. Microsoft is wagering that the combined research departments of their own R&D and Yahoo! will be able to compete with Google’s US search monopoly. Yahoo!’s early site directories were a great way to find new content. I’ll always have fond memories of Yahoo! in my early years of web discovery, but now it appears the business is headed in a contraction direction (refocusing). Continue reading »
Internet Development LayersThe Internet is evolving in layers of applications. New programs and businesses reside on top of multiple web functional layers, as well as providing APIs to external, potentially higher order applications. One sharp example Semanta has a high functionality API. Their interface has available effective semantic tools to extract meta data from natural written language. I’d like to fulfill a user need to have real time search information based on thoughts they express within social media. This could facilitate discovery of others who are interested in discussing similar topics. The long term goal I have for a business I’m working to startup (along with some sharp friends) is to create the ultimate web based virtual assistant. Continue reading » |
