Powerset Opens Up For Beta Trials
Imagine typing a question to a computer and getting an answer - somewhat like HAL in 2001:A Space Oddessy, but that is what Powerset has set out to do. Its technology, licensed from PARC and developed further, would read a sentence to extract its meaning and build a semantic index of facts based on the structure of the sentence, thus allowing search using conversational speech instead of just keywords.
Current search engines use various features to rank results - Google for instance ranks pages by what keywords or credible inbound links lead to them, etc.
Powerset is initially providing a showcasing of part of its technology on signing up at the Powerset Labs. Contributions from the Powerset Labs community will go into the final launch of Powerset, expected to be sometime in 2008.
Powerset Labs currently features two technology demonstrations:
- Use Cases shows how natural language queries can find more relevant information than keyword searches [eg].
- Powermouse, lets users see how Powerset technology breaks down a user search into its grammatical parts, then reveals the underlying links to data to see how it arrives at particular results [eg].
Check the Powerset Blog for updates.
Related reads:
The future of Search
Are Google’s days numbered?
Filed under: Emerging Tech, Ideas & Innovations, News