Robert Scoble launches Building43.com
Robert Scoble, a very renowned technology blogger recently started a brand new project called - building43, which is an online community for all Internet enthusiasts.
What is Building43?
The main objective of Building43 is to help businesses use modern technology and social sites to increase their online exposure and revenue. Now I am hearing a lot of people ask on Friendfeed, how building43 is any different from a traditional tech blog?
Well, based on my initial analysis I found that Building43’s whole focus is more on practical business & tech advice rather than covering tech news like what Techcrunch and Slashdot does. So I believe Building43 has touched a completely different niche and it would be an understatement if we just call it a blog! Its more like an community of similar minded people wanting to become successful on the web and Building43 is sort of trying to be the platform for that.
Now I’m not saying that this concept is new or ground breaking, probably there are handful of other sites that does the same thing - I just don’t know. But why does it matter anyway?! There has always been a handful of ‘everything’ on the web and thats why today we have more options & diversity of the content.
So Kudos to Scoble for starting this wonderful project! The site currently has quite a number of video interviews of some impressive interviewees including Google’s VP of Search - Marissa Mayer, Facebook’s CEO - Mark Zuckerberg, Principal with Union Square Venture - Fred Wilson and many more! Other than the videos, the site also has some blog posts from famous web entrepreneur like Guy Kawasaki and Scoble himself.
They are clearly going to add more and more content as the community grows. Currently they have a dedicated community page where they are showing the building43 twitter & friendfeed feeds.
They are asking the community to share their valuable content via video, blog posts, podcasts, friendfeed comments and tweets. If you are interested to be a part of Building43 in any way, just drop them an email.
To learn more about Building43 just check out their website - www.building43.com
Learn.... Share.... Repeat....
wolframalpha The latest search engine
www.wolframalpha.com/
Some might say that Mathematica and A New Kind of Science are ambitious projects.
But in recent years I’ve been hard at work on a still more ambitious project—called WolframAlpha.
And I’m excited to say that in just two months it’s going to be going live:
Mathematica has been a great success in very broadly handling all kinds of formal technical systems and knowledge.
But what about everything else? What about all other systematic knowledge? All the methods and models, and data, that exists?
Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d quickly be able to handle all these kinds of things.
And that one would be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer.
But it didn’t work out that way. Computers have been able to do many remarkable and unexpected things. But not that.
I’d always thought, though, that eventually it should be possible. And a few years ago, I realized that I was finally in a position to try to do it.
I had two crucial ingredients: Mathematica and NKS. With Mathematica, I had a symbolic language to represent anything—as well as the algorithmic power to do any kind of computation. And with NKS, I had a paradigm for understanding how all sorts of complexity could arise from simple rules.
But what about all the actual knowledge that we as humans have accumulated?
A lot of it is now on the web—in billions of pages of text. And with search engines, we can very efficiently search for specific terms and phrases in that text.
But we can’t compute from that. And in effect, we can only answer questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things up, but we can’t figure anything new out.
So how can we deal with that? Well, some people have thought the way forward must be to somehow automatically understand the natural language that exists on the web. Perhaps getting the web semantically tagged to make that easier.
But armed with Mathematica and NKS I realized there’s another way: explicitly implement methods and models, as algorithms, and explicitly curate all data so that it is immediately computable.
It’s not easy to do this. Every different kind of method and model—and data—has its own special features and character. But with a mixture of Mathematica and NKS automation, and a lot of human experts, I’m happy to say that we’ve gotten a very long way.
But, OK. Let’s say we succeed in creating a system that knows a lot, and can figure a lot out. How can we interact with it?
The way humans normally communicate is through natural language. And when one’s dealing with the whole spectrum of knowledge, I think that’s the only realistic option for communicating with computers too.
Of course, getting computers to deal with natural language has turned out to be incredibly difficult. And for example we’re still very far away from having computers systematically understand large volumes of natural language text on the web.
But if one’s already made knowledge computable, one doesn’t need to do that kind of natural language understanding.
All one needs to be able to do is to take questions people ask in natural language, and represent them in a precise form that fits into the computations one can do.
Of course, even that has never been done in any generality. And it’s made more difficult by the fact that one doesn’t just want to handle a language like English: one also wants to be able to handle all the shorthand notations that people in every possible field use.
I wasn’t at all sure it was going to work. But I’m happy to say that with a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs, we’re actually managing to make it work.
Pulling all of this together to create a true computational knowledge engine is a very difficult task.
It’s certainly the most complex project I’ve ever undertaken. Involving far more kinds of expertise—and more moving parts—than I’ve ever had to assemble before.
And—like Mathematica, or NKS—the project will never be finished.
But I’m happy to say that we’ve almost reached the point where we feel we can expose the first part of it.
It’s going to be a website: www.wolframalpha.com. With one simple input field that gives access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms.
We’re all working very hard right now to get WolframAlpha ready to go live.
I think it’s going to be pretty exciting. A new paradigm for using computers and the web.
That almost gets us to what people thought computers would be able to do 50 years ago!
www.wolframalpha.com/
Regards,
Harish Thyagarajan
Systems Administrator
www.eresourceerp.com
stay ahead of your competitors
Some might say that Mathematica and A New Kind of Science are ambitious projects.
But in recent years I’ve been hard at work on a still more ambitious project—called WolframAlpha.
And I’m excited to say that in just two months it’s going to be going live:
Mathematica has been a great success in very broadly handling all kinds of formal technical systems and knowledge.
But what about everything else? What about all other systematic knowledge? All the methods and models, and data, that exists?
Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d quickly be able to handle all these kinds of things.
And that one would be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer.
But it didn’t work out that way. Computers have been able to do many remarkable and unexpected things. But not that.
I’d always thought, though, that eventually it should be possible. And a few years ago, I realized that I was finally in a position to try to do it.
I had two crucial ingredients: Mathematica and NKS. With Mathematica, I had a symbolic language to represent anything—as well as the algorithmic power to do any kind of computation. And with NKS, I had a paradigm for understanding how all sorts of complexity could arise from simple rules.
But what about all the actual knowledge that we as humans have accumulated?
A lot of it is now on the web—in billions of pages of text. And with search engines, we can very efficiently search for specific terms and phrases in that text.
But we can’t compute from that. And in effect, we can only answer questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things up, but we can’t figure anything new out.
So how can we deal with that? Well, some people have thought the way forward must be to somehow automatically understand the natural language that exists on the web. Perhaps getting the web semantically tagged to make that easier.
But armed with Mathematica and NKS I realized there’s another way: explicitly implement methods and models, as algorithms, and explicitly curate all data so that it is immediately computable.
It’s not easy to do this. Every different kind of method and model—and data—has its own special features and character. But with a mixture of Mathematica and NKS automation, and a lot of human experts, I’m happy to say that we’ve gotten a very long way.
But, OK. Let’s say we succeed in creating a system that knows a lot, and can figure a lot out. How can we interact with it?
The way humans normally communicate is through natural language. And when one’s dealing with the whole spectrum of knowledge, I think that’s the only realistic option for communicating with computers too.
Of course, getting computers to deal with natural language has turned out to be incredibly difficult. And for example we’re still very far away from having computers systematically understand large volumes of natural language text on the web.
But if one’s already made knowledge computable, one doesn’t need to do that kind of natural language understanding.
All one needs to be able to do is to take questions people ask in natural language, and represent them in a precise form that fits into the computations one can do.
Of course, even that has never been done in any generality. And it’s made more difficult by the fact that one doesn’t just want to handle a language like English: one also wants to be able to handle all the shorthand notations that people in every possible field use.
I wasn’t at all sure it was going to work. But I’m happy to say that with a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs, we’re actually managing to make it work.
Pulling all of this together to create a true computational knowledge engine is a very difficult task.
It’s certainly the most complex project I’ve ever undertaken. Involving far more kinds of expertise—and more moving parts—than I’ve ever had to assemble before.
And—like Mathematica, or NKS—the project will never be finished.
But I’m happy to say that we’ve almost reached the point where we feel we can expose the first part of it.
It’s going to be a website: www.wolframalpha.com. With one simple input field that gives access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms.
We’re all working very hard right now to get WolframAlpha ready to go live.
I think it’s going to be pretty exciting. A new paradigm for using computers and the web.
That almost gets us to what people thought computers would be able to do 50 years ago!
www.wolframalpha.com/
Regards,
Harish Thyagarajan
Systems Administrator
www.eresourceerp.com
stay ahead of your competitors
Google Rolls Out Google Squared
Google releases Google Squared,
An application for structuring results data into easy-to-read tables. A number of search engines, including the much-publicized Wolfram Alpha, have already been experimenting in this space. Google finds itself adding more features to its lineup in the face of increased search competition from companies such as Microsoft, which recently released its own new search engine, Bing.
Google released Google Squared, its application for ordering search results into a spreadsheet-like "square," on June 4.
The application seems designed to join a broader move in search toward presenting structured data in response to a query, instead of the traditional page of blue hyperlinks. Indeed, other search engines have crowded into the space: Wolfram Alpha, the specialized search engine that made its debut on May 18, earned a great deal of media attention for its structuring of results into easy-to-read tables.
Google has been integrating an increasing number of tools into its core search offerings in order to better maintain its market-share lead over Yahoo and Microsoft, which launched Bing, a new search engine, on June 1.
Google had previously announced Google Squared at its annual Searchology event on May 12, along with a selection of other upcoming search products, including Google Search Options and a Google Android application called Sky Map.
Marissa Mayer, vice president of Search and User Experience for Google, introduced Google Squared at Searchology by saying that it would take "unstructured information and present it in a structured way." The subsequent demo showed that a search for "small dogs" would create a table listing information such as size and breeds. At the event, Mayer suggested that the application would roll out at the beginning of June.
The widely released version of Google Squared varies little from the original demo.
"Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet," Alex Komoroske, associate product manager for Google Squared, said in a June 3 corporate blog posting accompanying the release. "If you search for [roller coasters], Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed."
However, the user might need to engage in a little back-and-forth to nail the result they’re looking for.
"This technology is by no means perfect," Komoroske cautioned. "That’s why we designed Google Squared to be conversational, enabling you to respond to the initial result and get a better answer."
To that end, Google Squared also allows rows and columns to be added or removed, and then responds dynamically to those changes by suggesting additional rows and columns to add that will potentially refine a search.
Released under the umbrella of Google Labs, Google Squared can be found here.
Google maintains its lead in the search-engine arena with 64.2 percent of the U.S. core search-engine market in April 2009, according to a ComScore report, while Yahoo held second place at 20.4 percent, and Microsoft came in third with 8.2 percent.
http://www.google.com/squared
An application for structuring results data into easy-to-read tables. A number of search engines, including the much-publicized Wolfram Alpha, have already been experimenting in this space. Google finds itself adding more features to its lineup in the face of increased search competition from companies such as Microsoft, which recently released its own new search engine, Bing.
Google released Google Squared, its application for ordering search results into a spreadsheet-like "square," on June 4.
The application seems designed to join a broader move in search toward presenting structured data in response to a query, instead of the traditional page of blue hyperlinks. Indeed, other search engines have crowded into the space: Wolfram Alpha, the specialized search engine that made its debut on May 18, earned a great deal of media attention for its structuring of results into easy-to-read tables.
Google has been integrating an increasing number of tools into its core search offerings in order to better maintain its market-share lead over Yahoo and Microsoft, which launched Bing, a new search engine, on June 1.
Google had previously announced Google Squared at its annual Searchology event on May 12, along with a selection of other upcoming search products, including Google Search Options and a Google Android application called Sky Map.
Marissa Mayer, vice president of Search and User Experience for Google, introduced Google Squared at Searchology by saying that it would take "unstructured information and present it in a structured way." The subsequent demo showed that a search for "small dogs" would create a table listing information such as size and breeds. At the event, Mayer suggested that the application would roll out at the beginning of June.
The widely released version of Google Squared varies little from the original demo.
"Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet," Alex Komoroske, associate product manager for Google Squared, said in a June 3 corporate blog posting accompanying the release. "If you search for [roller coasters], Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed."
However, the user might need to engage in a little back-and-forth to nail the result they’re looking for.
"This technology is by no means perfect," Komoroske cautioned. "That’s why we designed Google Squared to be conversational, enabling you to respond to the initial result and get a better answer."
To that end, Google Squared also allows rows and columns to be added or removed, and then responds dynamically to those changes by suggesting additional rows and columns to add that will potentially refine a search.
Released under the umbrella of Google Labs, Google Squared can be found here.
Google maintains its lead in the search-engine arena with 64.2 percent of the U.S. core search-engine market in April 2009, according to a ComScore report, while Yahoo held second place at 20.4 percent, and Microsoft came in third with 8.2 percent.
http://www.google.com/squared
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)