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The Internet

Submission + - Google's Marissa Mayer on The Future of Search (readwriteweb.com)

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ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb writes: "The Searchnomics 2007 conference was held today and the highlight was a keynote at the very end, by Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience at Google. Mayer's presentation was titled The Future of Search, in which she covered eight areas Google is focusing on now and in the near future. Mayer covered a variety of topics, including Automated Translation, Google Book Search, 1-800-GOOG-411, Universal Search, and more."
The Internet

Submission + - Google's Udi Manber - Search is a Hard Problem (readwriteweb.com)

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ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb writes: "Udi Manber, Google's VP of Engineering, gave a brief 15 minute presentation at the Supernova conference in San Francisco today, entitled 'Search is a Hard Problem'. He laid out three reasons why this is the case:
  • Scale and diversity are almost beyond comprehension
  • Expectations and needs will continue to grow
  • 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before


Also, Manber revealed new Google search functionality which is not live yet — but will be soon. Google is going to start trying additional queries based on certain user queries. For example, the query "How much does it cost for an exhaust system" will pull up results from "cost of an exhaust system." Beyond just removing certain general words, they are also interpreting the question as part of the model."
The Internet

Submission + - Open Source Economics Driving Web 2.0 Innovation (readwriteweb.com)

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ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb writes: "Jitendra Gupta looks how the open source model is interacting with our market driven economic system. He writes that the open source movement has become a powerful value creator; that it has created an interesting and somewhat egalitarian wealth distribution mechanism, where on one hand it has made it hard for one stakeholder to extract inordinate rents, and on the other hand it has created the right incentives for a lot of people to participate in, and have a stake in, its success. Indeed, were it not for the LAMP stack, startup costs would have been a lot higher then they are today — and we would not be seeing the amount of innovation we are seeing from web 2.0 startups."
The Internet

Submission + - Technology and Terrorism: Are we being too naive? (readwriteweb.com)

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ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb writes: "Are web tools like Google Earth, social networks like LinkedIn, and photo-sharing sites like Flickr being used against us by terrorists? Today we learned of a terrorist plot targeting the JFK international airport in New York. Luckily this attack was prevented and three out of the four terrorists are already in custody. But during a CNN report, a curious fact was revealed — terrorists have used Google Earth to get access to aerial views of airport facilities. Obviously it would be ridiculous to argue that tools like Google Earth should not be built because terrorists might use them. Yet, after hearing this on CNN one cannot help but wonder: what other seemingly innocent software technologies are we building that can be used to harm us?"
The Internet

Submission + - Semantic Search: An Antidote for Poor Relevancy

Submitted by
ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb writes: "Dr. Riza C. Berkan, Founder and CEO of hakia.com, writes on Read/WriteWeb about semantic search:

"How satisfied search engine users are today is an on-going debate. However, there is wide consensus, from a scientific viewpoint on the competency of the current search engines: They are half-way to the target and there is huge room for improvement. Semantic search is now under the magnifying glass and the question is 'can semantic search be an antidote for poor relevancy?'""

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