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A Very New Searchable Collection of “Open” Images from the Netherland to Reuse, Remix, and Mashup

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Something very new from Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland.

Open Images is an open media platform that offers online access to a selection of audiovisual archive material to stimulate creative reuse.

As part of Images for the Future, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland are developing Open Images. [Our emphasis] The aim of this project is to offer online access to a selection of archive material to stimulate creative reuse. Reuse includes remixing of archive footage in new videos. Open Images also supports interlinking with other data sources (like Wikipedia), allowing the easy creation of mashups. Access to the content will be based on the Creative Commons model, which proposes a middle way to rights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights. The ‘open’ nature of the project is underscored by adapting open formats and using open source software for its infrastructure. Software resulting from Open Images will also be released under an open source license.

The Media Page

At the present time, 371 films are available. Look for images and audio to be added going forward. The database offers numerous ways to find what you’re looking for.

For example you can search by:
+ Keyword
+ User
+ Source
+ Length
+ Language
+ License.

You can refine results by the same criteria.

An API is also available (Documentation is in Dutch).

Source: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland
Hat Tip: AMIA News Briefs

Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, Multimedia Search, Search Tools, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Google Adds Page Previews Feature

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Over on Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz points out that Google has added a “page preview” feature that allows the searcher to see what a page looks like before clicking on the link.

Barry’s post includes screenshots. However, Google previews are easy to access (assuming they’re available). Run any Google Search expand the “Show Options” link right below the search box. At the very bottom of list you should spot “page previews.” Click the link and now, if available (at this point, page previews are not available for every page), a static image of the page should appear to the right of the title, snippet, and link.

The Search Engine Land post mentions that page previews are far from a new phenomenon.

Ask.com used to offer them and Clusty continues to provide previews. In fact, they were available even before Vivisimo’s meta search tool was rebranded as Clusty. We still think they are a very powerful tool. run a Clusty search, next to each result title notice the magnifying glass, click it and a live version (you can actually click the links) of the result is embedded directly into the results set. Click it again, and it’s gone.

Exalead continues to offer to page previews. It’s something they have been doing for years. First, you can add “previews” of your favorite pages on Exalead home page and each result also contains a preview image. Here’s an example.

Last Friday, we mentioned a new beta of a metasearch tool from the National Institutes of Health Library. This database from Web4Lib also provides the embedded page preview option.

As Barry Schwartz points there have been and continue to be several add-on tools that offer page previews/thumbnails. Two add-ons for Firefox that are still available Better Search and SearchPreview (works for Bing, Yahoo, and Google).

Finally, one tool we use all of the time is CoolPreviews. With it you can simply cursor over any link on any page and see the view the page in browser window. Since the page is live, all of the hyperlinks are active. CoolPreviews is free and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. We think if you try it, you’ll like it. (-:

UPDATE: We failed to mention that Bing offers video previews. Yes, video. Run a video search and place your cursor of a result. Approximately 30 seconds of the video will play (from various points within the clip) with audio. Clicking the speaker icon will mute the sound. Cool!

Hat Tip: Dan Giancaterino

Posted in Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »

Semantic Search: The European Research Project Named MESH (Part 1)

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

From the Report:

But while there is a phenomenal amount of content, most of it is not that easy to find. Sure, text content can be skimmed or glanced, but audiovisual content has to be viewed in linear time. We cannot easily search inside a film or audio recording for relevant information.

That is changing, and one European project has created the first integrated platform for semantic search that can return results based on the content and context of film and audio files, as well as text.

But European researchers in the MESH project have developed an integrated platform which they say, for the first time, can combine semantic search – or search by the meaning of the words – and a host of associated tools to deliver more relevant information, from a wide variety of sources that can be accessed from an individual user.

[Snip]

These technologies are becoming common in particular knowledge domains, and more are emerging every day, but most relate to the concepts behind text-based documents. The MESH platform sought to use semantic search for every type of media.

On the way, it created some cutting-edge technology. “Our automatic annotation for video, for example, is state of the art,” explains Pedro Concejero, coordinator of the MESH project.

“The annotation system is capable of identifying the general scene setting, such as whether a video is a studio shot or a shot recorded on location. With adequate training, it can also detect (within some error margins) the general topic of the video, such as a scene about an earthquake or a flood. It can also find a number of salient objects within the scene, such as persons or fire, but cannot yet identify consistently objects with great variations in shape or aspect.”

One of the major challenges of the project was a product of its own success: It annotated too much information!

Much More fiin the Complete Report.

We will post Part II as soon as it become available.

See Also: MESH Project Home Page
Several videos are available.

Source: ICT Results

Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Multimedia Search, Search News, Semantic Search, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Google News Drops “Text Version” Option

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

From the Post:

Google News has dropped the “Text Version” feature sometime over the past week or so. A Google News Help thread has some complaints dating back to October 22nd. More in the full post including a comment from Google

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Posted in News Search, Search Tools | No Comments »

Quick and Efficient: Review the News from Multiple Sources with Newsy (Beta)

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

Here’s an idea we haven’t seen before. We were a skeptical at first but after a short time we can say we like what Newsy is up to. The current version of the service has been available since April, 2009 when it was relaunched. The Newsy iPhone app launched a couple of weeks ago.

The idea is as simple and and fresh. We’ve not seen anything similar available for free. Basically, take stories in the news and then bring together multiple video (and sometimes text-based) news reports from a number of sources and place them all on a single location. It’s not only a great way to see how a news story is reported but viewing the same story from different news organizations can potentially turn up facts from one source that the other source does not report on. By the way, the company likes to think to think of themselves as “news analyzer” and not a news aggregator. We think both phrases can work together Whatever you call Newsy there is plenty of value here.

Newsy can be useful in many situations. One potential use is helping to teach critical information skills by reviewing what is and is not reported on in a news story and how it’s reported. For example, how much time does each source give to the story.

But wait, there’s more. In addition to aggregating news reports on the same story, Newsy produces their OWN original video content summarizing the material from each source into a single report. For those who don’t want to view each source video one at a time, here’s a way to learn what each one is reporting in just a minute or two.

You can keyword search Newsy (you’re searching metadata) or browse by one of seven categories:

+ World
+ Economy
+ U.S.
+ Politics
+ Tech/Sci
+ Environment
+ Culture

You can also sort results by:

+ Most Popular
+ Most Recent
+ Most Commented
+ Highest Rated
+ Editor’s Picks

Let’s review how Newsy works:

1] Find a story, search or browse
We searched for “Obama” and got back 10 results.

2] Select the story; We chose “Obama Gives Donors Access to White House” from October 29, 2009 with a video summary that runs about three minutes.

3] After clicking the play we were taken to this page.

5] Immediately, Newsy’s own video summary begins playing.

6] Above the video box (which can be embedded on any web page) notice the direct links to the various news sources used in the summary.

7] In this case the sources are:

+ Fox News
+ The Hill (Text-Based)
+ CNN
+ The Washington Times
+ CBS
+ The Washington Post

A good and well-balanced selection of sources. If you click on any of them, a new window opens and the “source” video (or text) begins playing. Text sources link directly to the article. No more going all over the web to find the content.

Quick Hits

+ Newsy does not offer its services for every news story. That’s minor when you sit back and review what we think is real value in what they offer. Hopefully, they’ll be able to cover more in the future.

+ An iPhone version of Newsy is also available. It’s a free app. Here’s a link to get Newsy iPhone (via the iTunes App Store).

+ If you register for the site you can comment on any story.

+ A text transcript of each Newsy original summary is available. You’ll find it below the summary video box.

+ You can share reports using direct links to many social networks or e-mail a link to the selected story.

+ An RSS feed of stories is available as well as the Newsy blog.1

We hope that Newsy continues to offer a wide variety sources and a well-balanced set of sources for each story it covers. One thing we would love to see is a source list (we’re guessing the Newsy uses more sources than listed on this page) and perhaps the expansion of this page about how news stories are selected. Another page about the news source selection process would be useful. Finally, we would be very happy if you could view stories by source. In other words, show me all of the stories that use video from MSNBC, BBC, CBS, etc.

You can learn more about the company this STLToday article. For example, they are based in Columbia, MO and have a staff (as of a few weeks ago) of 19.

Many Thanks to Charles Knight over at AltSearchEngines for letting us know about Newsy.
Yesterday, Charles ran a post about Newsy focusing on the success of their iPhone app.

Posted in Media, News Search, Search News | No Comments »

NIH Library Begins Beta Test of Metasearch Tool

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Think metasearch with the beta release of the NIH Library AllPlus Search Demo.

In a single search click you’re able to retrieve results from PubMed, MedlinePlus, and the NIH Library Catalog. You can also personalize the search by selecting which databases you want to search. Look for the “select sources” box located directly next to the search button. To the left of the search box is a drop down menu where you can select searches limited to keywords, title, or author.

After you click search and before the results appear you’ll see each database being tapped with the number of records retrieved.

Here’s are search results for H1N1

Results pages contain a great deal of info and appear a bit busy making it a small challenge to actually find the search results. But that’s why this is a beta.

+ At the top of the results page is “Explore and Discover” offers related terms that are hyperlinked.

+ Below “Explore and Discover” are the numerical totals of how many results were retrieved by the engine

+ In the left margin are what appears to be dynamically generated categories that allow you to focus your search and potentially find relationships that could not be seen reviewing one result at a time. Categories can be sorted by topics, source, or topics graph. Selecting the topics graph opens a new window and provides (we think? Topics Graph did not work when we tried it) a visualized view of the categories).

+ In the middle column are the actual search results with the database source listed below the snippet. At the top of the results column a drop down menu let’s you sort results by relevance or date. What does date mean? The day the page was created? The day the page was first crawled? The date it was last updated? The date the page was last crawled? You’ll also notice a magnifying glass icon next to the title of each result. Click it and a box will appear with the actual page you want to view. In other words, you never leave the results page.

+ The third column contains hypertext links to other databases (Worldcat.org; USA.gov; PubMed Central and many others) and the number of results they contain for your search term. Click and run the search in the selected database. So, in reality, AllPlus Search allows you to quickly find results from more than three databases. Results from Ask, Google, and Yahoo are also available here.

Finally, for our H1N1 search you’ll find images (from Google Images) in the fourth column.
,
At this point, we were unable to find any search documentation or help pages.

This is an early beta that we will check often for changes and updates. Many of the issues are aesthetic rather than technical.

We’ve learned that the technology that powers AllPlus search comes from HealthMash (federated search and clustering) from WebLib. It also utilizes the new HealthMash Knowledge Base. This technology, also from WebLib, powers the “Explore and Discover” related terms at the top of all results pages.

Here’s a January, 2009 interview that Hope Lehman from AltSearchEngines did with Weblib CEO, Endre Jofoldi.

Access the NIH Library AllPlus Search Demo

Source: NIH Library Blog
Hat Tip: Charles Knight, AltSearchEngines

UPDATE: The All-Plus search beta now allows you to decide via links on the home page which type of data or format your looking for before entering search terms and clicking search.

+ Basic Search
+ News
+ Video Evidence-based Medicine
+ Academic Web
+ Alternative Medicine
+ Animal Studies
+ Drugs and Chemicals
+ Search Engines (Lets the searcher quickly identify the number of results in each database), somewhat similar to DIALINDEX (File 411)
+ Images
+ Consumer Health

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Resources, Search Tools | No Comments »

Google’s Enhanced Music Service; Real Estate Listings on Google Maps

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

We said yesterday in our post about Google Navigation Mobile, that it seems lately a day doesn’t go by with something new or enhanced from Google. Today is no different. Matt McGee from Search Engine Land tells us about a new layer in Google Maps containing real estate listings and the emusic service that launched last night.

First, real estate listings are now more visible in Google Maps with the new real estate “layer”. To access the listings, click the “More” button at the top of a map (near the satellite imagery or terrain maps buttons) and select real estate. Immediately, the listings become visible on the map. Click any red “pin” and you’ll see the address, get driving directions, etc. Click the “more info” link to see all the information about the property. Here’s a view of properties for the Zip Code 90210. Now you can zoom in and out and move the around the maps like you’ve always done.

Also, note the listings located on the left side of the page. Here, you can find basic info about each property and find a link to click and get all the available info. You can also refine your results here by:

+ Price Range
+ Listing Type
+ Number of Bedrooms
+ Number of Bathrooms
+ Area Range (in Square Feet)

It’s possible to only search to real estate listings by selecting “Real Estate” in the drop down menu located next to the search box at the top of the page.

Next, Matt introduces the new, improved, and enhanced Google Music Search. Google has offered a music “one box” located at the top of a results page for since December, 2005. Here’s an article that Gary wrote about music search at that time.

This is a major enhancement to the music search.

Matt writes:

According to today’s announcement [this story and news release are from late Wednesday afternoon], searches for the name of an artist, album, or song will show the new OneBox in Google’s main search results.* If you search for an artist or album name, the OneBox will include a set of four songs that are chosen algorithmically by the partner music site*, not by Google. Each song will be linked to an audio clip that will play in a Flash-based pop-up window provided by the partner site. In some cases, the partner may provide one full play of the song before defaulting to a 30-second preview.

Matt points out that the rumors about Google selling music are not true (at least for now).

Google’s RJ Pittman told us today that, while some of their music partners have a commerce element, the focus of Google’s new music search is information, not selling digital songs. In fact, there’s no commercial arrangement at all, we’re told, between Google and the music partner sites included in this launch.

Finally, the article correctly notes that Yahoo Music has been available for years and they
continue to offer music info and the ability to preview music/watch videos, link to the official site, get lyrics, photos, videos, etc. from a box at the top of web pages when a group or solo artist triggers the database.

He also points out (this is cool) that in some cases, if you enter song lyrics into the search box, youll get back the song info as a “one box” result. Here’s an example.

Speaking of song lyrics, a few weeks ago we posted about a searchable song lyric service, LyricWiki, being acquired by Wikia, an online community of wikis and content hubs that was started by Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales.

* Partners include: MySpace, Pandora, Lala, imeem, and Rhapsody.

Source: Search Engine Land

Posted in Information Industry, Multimedia Search, Search Tools, Web Search | No Comments »

Let the Music (and Video) Play! Blinkx Launches Music Video Search Engine

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

From an ITVT Article:

Video search engine company, blinkx, on Tuesday announced blinkx Music, a new service for finding and watching music videos online. According to the company, the service functions as a “single online gateway” that provides access to music videos in every genre, and features a “huge and varied constellation of artists.” blinkx claims to have indexed over 33,000 hours of music video from over 10,000 artists.

According to the company, users can search blinkx Music’s index by artist, album, genre or song, or simply browse the top tunes of the moment.

Access blinkx Music

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »

How to Search and Find Images on NASAimages.org

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

On Sunday, we posted that NASAimages.org had added a bunch of new imagery from several NASA sources.

Yesterday, a helpful guide to searching and finding with NASAimages.org was made available on the site’s blog.

The post includes discussions of:

+ Simple Keyword Searching

+ Advanced Search

+ Narrowing Search Results

+ Browsing

Don’t forget that NASAimages.org also contains video material.

NASAimages.org is made available via a partnership between NASA and the Internet Archive. More about the project here.

Sources: NASAimages.org Blog

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Science, Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »

Searching for Donors: NOZA Partners with DonorTrends & Free Databases from NOZA

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

From the Announcement:

“NOZA is excited to partner with DonorTrends because of their combination of fundraising expertise and state-of-the-art technology. Until now screening with NOZA has been limited to proximity matching which is useful but lacks the precision that fundraisers want. The DonorTrends service closes that gap and the clients that have used it are enjoying results not previously possible” said Craig Harris, Founder & CEO of NOZA.

DonorTrends is marketing the new service under the brand NOZA@Home to highlight that the information includes millions of givers at their home address

Source: DonorTrends

See Also: NOZA Offers Two Databases For Free. One Requires Registration and the Other Does Not

1) Search for Charitable Foundation Grants (Search Box on Home Page) ||| Registration Here
At the moment, the database contains over 1.3 million donation records from charitable foundations.

2) 990-PF Tax Returns
Tax returns from private foundations. You do not need to register to use this database and access the content it holds. This document (PDF) provides an intro to the 990-PF form. This database has listings for over 107,000 private foundations and 679,000 tax returns.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Search Tools | No Comments »

Ready Reference: U.K.: Telephone Lookup Databases

Friday, October 16th, 2009

The first online database allows users to find area codes in the U.K.

Three options are available:

1) Enter an Area Code and See The Area it Covers

2) Enter an Area and See What Area Codes are Available

3) See a List of All Area Codes

The second database allow users determine the mobile broadband coverage for a specific postal code by selecting a carrier and then entering a postal code.

Access the UK Area Code Database

Access the Mobile Broadband Database

Source: Ofcom

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Reference Tools, Resources, Search Tools | No Comments »

Blog Search: Technorati Relaunches With New Look and Features

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Let’s hope the new Technorati is better than the old one. (-:

From a TechCrunch Post:

Technorati relaunched its site tonight, changing and adding key features. Most notable is an expanded and fresher top 100 blogs list, and a new feature that lets authors post their content directly to the site.

Here’s a Look at What’s New or Updated. The complete article has the details.

+ Top 100 Blogs:

+ Publish Directly To Technorati

+ Search

Technorati is changing search to give much more weight towards authority and relevance over recency. For highly queried terms like “iPhone,” this cuts out a lot of noise and helps people find quality/definitive content more quickly. Users can also choose to search for blogs relevant to the query or posts elevant to the query, depending on what they are looking for.

+ Topical Content:

Access the Complete Article

Access the Technorati Web Site

Source: TechCrunch

Posted in Search News, Search Tools | No Comments »

Free! Live Concert Recordings on Your Computer and Now Your iPhone

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

From the Article:

Wolfgang’s Vault is an online archive containing hundreds of high-quality concert recordings, mostly from big classic-rock artists like The Who and U2, but with a few newer artists, such as The Walkmen, thrown in as well. (Here’s a complete list of performers whose recordings are available on the service.) Last month, Wolfgang released an updated version of its much-lauded free iPhone application, Concert Vault, which gives you access to these amazing shows directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Access Wolfgang’s Vault

Access Concert Vault App for iPhone and iTouch (It’s a Free App)

Source: News.com

Posted in Arts and Humanities, Search Tools, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

GSA is Designing the Next Generation of USA.GOV

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

From the Article:
This text report includes a five minute audio component. You can listen online or download as an MP3 file.

From the Article:

In recent years, the web portal, USA.GOV has become one of the most popular destinations in the federal government’s web presence. But now, the site’s managers are plotting the “next generation” of the site, at a time when social collaboration tools are reshaping the way that people use the World Wide Web.

David McClure, associate administrator with the Office of Citizen Services at General Services Administration, says the key is to re-think away from a mere “web portal” to a more up-to-date view of USA.GOV:

GSA is thought of as the execution arm of many policies that come out of government. (USA.GOV) is wildly successful. It’s one of the top 25 websites in the country. You can go this website, and citizens can find information about virtually everything in government. Over 100 million government webpages, searchable within 1/4 of a second. You’re looking at more than 15 million pageviews per month. This is an enoromous openness and transparency factor for government. We know that 40% of people who come to USA.GOV search for something. The strategy behind USA.GOV has been redirection, getting you where you want to go. I think we’re changing that, I think we want to move away from redirection to getting citizens to services and providing excellent service as soon as possible.

Source: Federal News Radio
Hat Tip: P.W.

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Information Industry, Portals, Search Tools | No Comments »

An Introduction to Factual

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

In a Search Engine Land post titled “Factual: Parting The Curtains Of The Invisible Web, Chris Sherman* introduces a database named Factual.

Here are a few points from the complete article:

1) Factual is a self-described “open data repository.” Like Wolfram Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine” that launched earlier this year, Factual seeks to create order from chaos by allowing anyone to share and mash open data on any subject, structuring information in database-like tables.

2) Unlike Wolfram Alpha, which is a closed system with data “curated” by employees, Factual has adopted a Wikipedia-like model which allows anyone to create, structure or even edit data in Factual tables. [Company founder Gil] Elbaz hopes this open model [they have about 10,000 tables as of today] will encourage community participation, enabling Factual to grow rapidly and enjoy widespread adoption.

3) As good as Google is at understanding open web content, it struggles to access this “deep” or “invisible” web content, largely because Google can’t easily interact with the user interfaces of databases. (Google is experimenting with structured data, most notably with Google Squared and Fusion Tables, but these are Google Labs projects and don’t appear to be major initiatives for mainstream search.)

4) Factual is allowing registered users to edit data, but rather than adopting Wikipedia’s “edit and replace” model, Factual lets people add information to a table without overwriting or deleting existing data. It then uses a consensus-based model to settle on the most authoritative facts to display. Elbaz says this makes it difficult to impossible for a charlatan to corrupt data with incorrect entries.

5) Search results, however, are very different [vs. Google and other engines}. Because Factual is searching data, you’re presented with the name of data tables, along with the fields in the table. You can sort results by relevance, table name, last updated, author, views, rows or user rating. Once you click through on a result, the table is displayed very much like an Excel spreadsheet.

The article goes on to provide more background, explain Factual result sets, discuss how to create your own tables and mashups.

Make sure to read the complete article.

Access the Factual Web Site.

Source: Search Engine Land

* In 2001 Chris Sherman co-authored a book titled, The Invisible Web, with ResourceShelf’s Gary Price.

Posted in Search News, Search Tools, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »

Transparent Semantic Search Technology Comes to LexisNexis Patent Searching

Monday, October 12th, 2009

From the Announcement:

LexisNexis today announced the availability of transparent semantic search technology for its full complement of intellectual property (IP) research products – enabling users to find the most precise and relevant patent search results.

Through a development alliance with Dallas-based Pure Discovery, LexisNexis has become the first provider of legal information services to integrate the power of semantic search technology with familiar Boolean search technology, giving the user greater control over the patent research process via a simple, streamlined user interface that matches their typical daily workflow.

[Snip]

The new semantic search solution from LexisNexis and Pure Discovery, however, overcomes such challenges to accomplish four breakthrough objectives in online search:

Transparency: Each query is enhanced by the machine intelligence and shown to the user for their complete understanding and engagement. Increased control: Not only is the semantic search transparent, but users are in control with the ability to add, delete, increase or decrease the importance of all query words (concepts) in a unique visual query interface called a “querycloud.”

Fully federated: While LexisNexis maintains one of the largest full-text patent and non-patent literature databases in the world, its semantic search platform can associate semantic searches to virtually any index, whether it resides internally or on the web.

Scalability: The LexisNexis index includes semantic intelligence from more than 10 million full-text patent documents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s patent index, as well as Elsevier journal articles and other documents.

[Snip]

The new technology is now available through the patent research and retrieval service LexisNexis® TotalPatent™ and the automated patent application and analysis product LexisNexis PatentOptimizer. In addition, the functionality is also available through lexis.com.

Source: LN (via Business Wire)

See Also: Learn More About Pure Discovery

Posted in Information Industry, Intellectual Property, Legal, Resources, Search News, Semantic Search | No Comments »

The eScience Revolution: Rensselaer Researchers to Create Semantic Web Platforms for Massive Scientific Collaboration

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

From an ACM TechNews Summary

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Web researchers have embarked on the Tetherless World Research Constellation, a project they say will create Semantic Web technology enabling scientists, educators, and people worldwide to access data on various topics in a single place, opening up a new scale of scientific data compilation and sharing. The effort is funded by a $1.1 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Semantic-based Web technologies would enable a computer to supply its own underlying meaning to words and offer links to vast numbers of related sites and other content without human intervention. “With semantics, we can bridge the gap between the question that someone wants to ask in their limited scientific vocabulary and the extreme complexity of the underlying data,” says RPI professor Deborah McGuinness.

Access the Complete Article (via Rensselaer News, Includes Chart)

Posted in Science, Semantic Search, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Semantic Search: Spanish Scientists Develop the First Intelligent Financial Search Engine

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

From the ACM TechNews Summary:

Researchers from Carlos III University of Madrid (UCM3), the University of Murcia, and the Business Institute have jointly created SONAR, a new search engine that examines financial news using semantic technology. The researchers say the program offers a more limited Web search based on specific terms. SONAR also can use logic to link news, prices, and share valuations. The search engine gathers information from Internet and intranet sources, compiles the data in an archive according to category, and then retrieves the information for individual searches. SONAR uses both an interference engine and a natural language processor, which prevents the search results from being too broad and disorganized. The researchers say that because SONAR analyzes a wealth of financial data in a short amount of time, it will prove a useful tool for industry professionals. UC3M’s Juan Miguel Gomez Berbis says that SONAR “will be especially useful to the finance departments of banks and saving banks or to add to an existing search engine added value over its competitors.” The researchers are adding more features to the program and have been asked to develop other industry-specific search engines, such as ones on transportation or biotechnology.

Much More in this Announcement from Carlos III University of Madrid

Posted in Business and Economics, Information Science, Search News, Search Tools, Semantic Search | No Comments »