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Kosmix: I’m Impressed

One of the recurring objections to exploratory search is that it can’t work for the web. For example, some folks at Microsoft Research presented a poster at HCIR ’08 explaining what they see as daunting challenges to implement faceted search for the web. I’ve often plugged Duck Duck Go as an successful example of exploratory […]

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Social Utility, +/- 25%

I like Google… I’ve been a regular Google user since the day I first discovered its existence in 1999. Indeed, I’ve consistently found Google to be the most useful service on the web. That’s not love, but it’s a very strong +1. Moreover, I’d say that my preference for Google is an informed one. I’ve […]

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Exploring Nuggetize

I’ve been exchanging emails with Dhiti co-founder Bharath Mohan about Nuggetize, an intriguing interface that surfaces “nuggets” from a site to reduce the user’s cost of exploring a document collection. Specifically Nuggetize targets research scenarios where users are likely to assemble a substantial reading list before diving into it. You can try Nuggetize on the […]

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Search User Interfaces and Data Quality

One of the many things I’ve enjoyed in my first few weeks of working at Google is the opportunity to talk with many people who care about user interfaces and think about HCIR. Indeed, some of the folks working on “more and better search refinements” are just steps away from my desk. Very cool! But […]

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Google Is Sharpening Its Squares

As some of you may remember, I’m excited about Google Squared, a project I see as a great first step toward exploratory search at a web scale. Yes, I know that Duck Duck Go, Kosmix and others are already taking on this challenge, but it makes a difference to see Google throw its weight behind […]

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T2: Judgment Day for Twine?

Nova Spivack, CEO and founder of Radar Networks, just released a preview (see above) announcing Twine 2.0, a semantic search engine to be released later this year. As Erick Schonfeld points out on TechCrunch, Twine hasn’t managed to attract broad adoption. I tried it briefly when it came out, and I have to confess that […]

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Warming Up To Cuil

It wasn’t so long ago that Cuil launched and I offered a pretty cold appraisal. Of course, I wasn’t the only one to be underwhelmed after they under-delivered on their pre-launch hype. You’d think start-ups would have figured out by now how to better manage expectations. After playing with the site for a couple of […]

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Google Offers “More And Better Search Refinements”

Fresh news, hot from the Official Google Blog: Starting today, we’re deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search […]