Friday, May 11, 2007
Ringtone/Mobile Game Retailer Playphone Does Big Round
PlayPhone strikes us as another startup whose core strength is not technology but deal making. The company has done deals on the content side to bring in famous name brands and then gone out to do the distribution deals.
PlayPhone.com drives traffic to its own destination site and powers mobile destinations for SEGA, ABC, Bandai, Lycos and RealNetworks. Regarding a recent Bandai deal, PlayPhone and Bandai expect to sell 100K units of their pre-paid Tamagotchi phone within 12 months of its July launch in the US.
PlayPhone has secured $18.75M in Series C funding led by Scale Venture Partners and joined by existing investors, Cardinal Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures. The startups says the funding will allow PlayPhone to expand into additional international markets this year.
B and C List VCs Sucking Wind
“It’s been almost a decade,” said Eric Doppstadt, director of private equity for the Ford Foundation, which invests in venture capital firms. “I find it shocking that an asset class that has provided so little payback continues to attract so much capital.”
Read - Some Unrest Is Bubbling Beneath the Top Tier (NY Times)
Odd iPod Patent Shows Dual Screens, Rear Touchscreen
The Interweb is all a'flutter about an odd iPod patent filed by Apple that describes a device with screens on both the front and the back of the player. An amalgam of Sprint's UpStage and the iPhone, this patent describes an interface in which a rear touchscreen accepts input and reflects that input on the front screen. Confused yet?
It works like this. Because a Nano-sized device would be too small to allow for a real front touch interface, the rear touchscreen would sense your finger position and show a cursor where your finger or thumb would be on the front screen. This frees up front real estate and could potentially allow for an onscreen keyboard and other goodies. Possible? Yes. Will it happen soon? Probably not.
This is all pie-in-the-sky conjecture, but it does show a potential design for a future Nano-sized iPhone and makes for great Apple rumor-mongering.
Bypass Flickr Ban in Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia
"We apologize the site [Flickr.com] you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates."
That's the message you're likely to see when trying to access Flickr pictures from certain gulf countries like UAE and Iran because the administration has blocked the photo sharing site from citizens for various cultural and religious reasons.
To unblock Flickr in UAE, Iran, China or any other country, you may try the standard proxy route but there's a much better option developed by an Iranian photographer who's an ardent Flickr fan himself.
Hamed Saber has released an Access Flickr extension for Firefox that will let you circumvent the internet filters of any country where the site is banned.
The Access Flickr extension for Firefox substitutes the HTTP header parameters before sending a request to Flickr and therefore fools the government filters. This extension is only for accessing Flickr.com, it won't work for other sites like YouTube or Orkut.
Download Access Flickr | Hamed Saber on Flickr
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Clever AACS t-shirt hack
ThinkGeek has a great take on the AACS number censorship thing -- they've made a t-shirt that shows all the hex values in sequence leading up to the AACS key, a blank line labelled [redacted] and then all the numbers following from it. Link (Thanks, David!)
Guruza.com - Pay Someone to Answer Your Question
Guruza is creating an ask-answer marketplace that allows you to chat with experts until you get an answer to your question. After you get a satisfactory answer, you pay them an agreed-upon fee (usually $5 or $10). In looking at the most recent questions/answers, some questions are serious and get a serious response with the requested fee, while others just go unanswered. It is an interesting comparison with Jyve.com, which was less upfront about the fee part of the equation and thus received many more ridiculous and perverse questions. I also prefer the layout and functionality of this site, as compared to Jyve. They have a good Q&A section, as well as good graphics.
In their own words:
Guruza is a marketplace that brings together people seeking knowledge with those who can provide it. You don't pay unless you get the answer you are looking for.
Go ahead and try it out-it only takes a minute to get started! Just enter a question into the box below, decide on how much you offer to have it answered, and submit to Guruza."
Why it might be a killer:
There must be a market for paying "experts" to answer random questions out there, and if there is, this site definitely answers the call. It is well designed, explained and managed.
Some questions:
What is that market for paying so-called "experts" online? Are these guys making a profit?
kinda like the failed Google Answers -- never made it to critical mass.
Solid freeform fabrication: DIY, on the cheap, and made of pure sugar
In February we gave a sneak preview of our project to construct a home-built three dimensional fabricator. Our design goals were (1) a low cost design leveraging recycled components (2) large printable volume emphasized over high resolution, and (3) ability to use low-cost printing media including granulated sugar. We are extremely pleased to be able to report that it has been a success: Our three dimensional fabricator is now fully operational and we have used it to print several large, low-resolution, objects out of pure sugar.
The general idea of our build process-- that of stacking solid two-dimensional printed layers-- is actually common to most solid freeform fabrication methods. Our machine employs what we believe is a fairly novel low-cost technology to accomplish this: selective hot air sintering and melting (SHASAM).
The printing process begins with a bed of a granular printing media that has a fairly low melting point. Using a narrow, directed, low-velocity beam of hot air, we selectively fuse together the print media, forming a two-dimensional image out of the fused grains. We then lower the bed by a small amount, add a thin flat layer of media to the top of the bed, and selectively fuse the media in the new layer, forming a two dimensional image that is also fused to any overlapping fused areas in the layer below. By repeating this process, a three-dimensional object is slowly built up. At the end of the build, the bed is raised to its original position, disinterring the fabricated model, while unused media is reclaimed for use in building the next object.
Our process is very much like a low-cost version of Selective Laser Sintering, or Selective Laser Melting, which are commercial processes used for plastic and direct metal printing. Rather than using a high-power CO2 or YAG laser ($5k and up), we use hot air created with the help of a $10 heating element.
Trading off a laser for a heat gun gives us lower resolution but at much lower cost, and is typical of our approach to 3D fabrication. We have taken a very different approach from most other fab projects (e.g., Fab@Home and RepRap) in that we have a comparatively large printable volume, but less need for precision and high resolution. Our fabricator is not designed for prototyping machine parts; it's designed for fun, for large-scale 3D illustration, for sculpting, architectural models, and other applications where resolution isn't the only important factor. We estimate the total cost to build a machine with similar capability to be in the neighborhood of $500. Realistically, the cost of any project like this is not a fixed number, and since recycled components are involved, the actual cost could range up or down by a factor of two depending on how resourceful the builder is.
There are a number of different print media that may be suitable for use with SHASAM fabrication: many types of plastics and waxes have low melting points and are available in granular or powder form. Beyond that, there are a number of interesting foods-- chocolate chips come to mind-- that can be used with the process However, one of the most interesting possibilities is using table sugar.
Granulated Sugar: low cost print media
The price of sugar compares quite favorably to the polycaprolactone (a low melting point polyester) used by the reprap project which costs about $4.00 a pound. As it turns out, even $4.00 per pound is quite inexpensive compared to the media for many other solid freeform fabrication systems.
Beyond just lowering the media cost of a given fabricated object, using a low-cost medium can be leveraged to make large-volume printing both practical and economical. Our fabricator has a maximum printable volume of 24 x 13.5 x 9 inches (61 x 34 x 23 cm)-- 2916 cubic inches, or 1.7 cubic feet, and holds a little more than 100 pounds of sugar, which costs about $37 retail.
For a fun exercise, look up how much it would cost to make a similar model on a prototyping industry standard $20,000 Dimension ABS 3D printer-- if it could print objects anywhere near that big. (Hint: it's more than $0.93.)
Mechanics and Electronics
The big idea of the mechanical system is that we take a hot air gun and move it around a bed of sugar, selectively fusing a set of points before lowering the bed of sugar and adding a new layer.
Our hot air gun is based upon the design of a hot air rework station. However, we have heavily modified it, and learned how to make an equivalent system inexpensively. The heater design now essentially consists of a 500 W, $10 air heating element and a small air pump-- a $5 aquarium air pump works well. At a minimum, use of the heater element requires a housing to be constructed, the air pump and a control system that can provide a the chosen amount of power to the heating element. We have seen that the element can be driven directly from 120 V, with duty cycle controlled by an inexpensive digital relay. The heater element is hardly new technology; it's the baby sister of the one in your hair dryer. None the less, it's well designed and quite suitable for this application.
The original head was not designed to operate at both high temperature and low air flow; it tends to overheat easily. One improvement that we made that has been hugely beneficial is to mount a cooling fan right next to this structure, keeping it cool on the outside while in use.
The X and Y axis motion control systems are based on belt drives and quadrature-encoded motors recycled from two old HP plotters, a large one and a small one. This is one of those places that your resourcefulness can save you a lot of money: The number of old-generation inkjets and plotters out there is truly stunning-- go find a couple, and make them do something useful again.
In order to control the quadrature-encoded motors that came on our printer parts, we designed custom digital servo circuits that cost about $10 each to build. The circuits are based around a high-power analog output stage and an AVR microcontroller that accept position commands. The position commands are sent using a higher precision version of standard hobby servo PWM control code, where the position command is encoded in the width of a positive pulse between one and two milliseconds long. We will be writing up and releasing the hardware design as well as the source code (under the GPL) for these servo controllers in the near future.
The hot air gun is mounted to the belt-driven carriage on the Y axis of the printer. The Y-axis belt-drive system is mounted, on one end, to a linear bearing that slides along a steel rail. That bearing is pushed by the belt-driven carriage on the X axis, through a rubber band low-cost flexible rubber coupling. The other end of the Y-axis belt-drive system is supported by a free-rolling rubber wheel from the hardware store.
Here you can see the model as drawn in Sketchup, and the base that we constructed from that model. If you want to take a closer look, you can download the model here. (144 kB ZIP archive of sketchup .skp document)
Besides the three motion axes, there is also a heater controller that is used to control the power delivered to the hot air heating element. Together, the four controllers (X,Y,Z, Temperature) require four axes of computer control.
Canvas Liner
Wrapped around the wooden base is a flexible canvas liner that prevents sugar from leaking out in strange places and assists in recovering unused media. Canvas is a good choice for this application because it is strong, durable, woven tightly enough to contain granular media like sugar, and washable. We got ours at a fabric store for $7/yard, in 60-inch width, and we needed about five yards. If you're trying to save costs, you might be able to do better elsewhere, e.g., buying canvas drop cloths intended for painting.
Software
There are several different layers to the software needed to control a three-dimensional fabricator, and they are implemented in our system with a variety of different techniques. We begin with a 3D model generated in (or imported into) POV-Ray, and then render the POV-Ray image as a set of two-dimensional bitmaps of slices through the image. The bitmaps are generated in such a way that they directly represent which points will, or will not, have the printing medium fused. We then take the bitmaps and use them to "draw" with our hot air gun at all of the black points on the bitmap.
Here is one of our 3D models, along with one of the generated 2D bitmap slices through that object:
Operating the 3D fabricator requires precision motion control in three directions, which is potentially difficult. Computer control and interface are provide through a MAKE Controller. Presently we are using an old student version of LabVIEW to control the MAKE Controller-- reading in a 2D bitmap, parsing it into a simple rastered toolpath, and converting that to position commands, sent to the MAKE Controller using UDP packets. Labview is, of course, not free software, and any suggestions about open-source solutions that would do the job nicely are welcome. (PD and Processing seem like possible directions, but we'd like to hear what you think in the comments.)
While the Make Controller has many remarkable capabilities, we are hardly taking advantage of them here; it is strictly acting as a computer-controlled device to output four servo-motor control code signals. Budget conscious builders may want to instead consider using a dedicated servo controller, like this Micro Serial Servo Controller, from Pololu, a precision 8-channel servo interface starting at $17.95.
Making things with the fabricator
Now that we've got all our parts together, let's fab some sugar objects. The effective horizontal resolution of our fabricator is presently limited to around 2 mm by the very one-point-oh design of our hot air nozzles, but can in principle be made much higher even while using granulated sugar as the print medium. The resolution is determined by a number of factors, including the air nozzle size, the air temperature and flow rate, and (obviously) the position step size in the three directions. Printing at a higher resolution takes longer, so we have actually been operating it in a low-resolution mode in order to produce some sample objects-- quickly-- before the Maker Faire. All of the objects on this page were made with pixel (well, voxel) size 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.7 mm (10 x 10 x 9 DPI), where the 3D models have been properly quantized to account for the larger vertical step size. Even at this low resolution setting, the total number of printable points in our fabricator is over 2.6 megavoxels.
Finally, here is a group of three objects that we've made out of pure sugar: A little dodecahedron, the toroidal coil, and the twenty-inch-long wood screw
So how does it taste?
Like praline, no doubt.
While our process has incredible potential for making interesting food, we are still in the early stages of prototyping and we have not yet worked with the sugar under conditions that could be construed as proper food handling procedures. We are instead at this point treating the sugar as a relatively safe (but not edible) industrial chemical and prototyping medium. There is no fundamental obstacle to food-safe 3D fabrication-- however we still need to carefully audit the system and make sure, for example, that the air pump for the hot air does not contain any substances that could contaminate food.
See it at the Maker Faire
Our completed fabricator will make its public debut next week at the 2007 Bay Area Maker Faire. (Our Maker Faire program entry is here.) We will be bringing the machine itself and some of our fabricated sugar objects. We've decided to spend our time at the faire showing off the printer and its parts, rather than actually using it to fabricate objects. One reason is safety; we have discovered that the First Law of Laboratory Work (Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass) holds true for molten hot sugar as well.
We made the sign from recycled and scrap acrylic for a total cost of about $20, cutting out the letters and segments on a laser cutter before cementing them in place.
We will continue to document the CandyFab 4000 as time goes on. In the mean time, you can find more pictures of the system in this flickr photoset.
Vonage Appeal Cites Supreme Court Patent Ruling
A new Verizon appeal cites a Supreme Court decision that may make it easier to invalidate patent claims.
Caron Carlson, Network World
Thursday, May 10, 2007 10:00 AM PDT
In its appeal of a jury verdict in the patent infringement case brought against it by Verizon, Vonage has turned to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that some analysts see as making it easier to invalidate patent claims.
In a brief filed May 9 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Vonage argued that the March jury verdict relied on a standard of analysis that the Supreme Court has since rejected. The jury found that Vonage's service infringed three patents, and the VoIP provider was ordered to pay US$58 million in damages. Vonage asked the appeals court to rule Verizon's patent claims invalid or to at least order a new trial.
Vonage's argument rests on a decision by the Supreme Court in late April in KSR International vs. Teleflex. In that decision, the Supreme Court looked at the standard for determining whether a patent claim is obvious. It ruled that courts should consider whether an alleged improvement to an invention is more than just the predictable use of existing elements. If, for example, at the time of an invention there was a known problem with an obvious solution, a patent claim may not be valid.
Rather than using this functional approach to determine whether Verizon's patent claims were obvious, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia instructed the jury to use a more rigid standard.
"The District Court's erroneous jury instruction on the wrong standard for [obviousness], thus, materially prejudiced Vonage's ability to present its invalidity case, and is strong grounds for vacating the validity finding," Vonage told the appeals court on May 9.
Verizon's patent claims are invalid because they are based on combinations of predictable elements that already exist, Vonage argued. In other words, it would have been obvious to try the solutions in the patent claims.
"Under KSR, [experts] would have found it obvious to try uniting the VocalTec Iphone software on the Harvard wireless laptops talking to the Internet wirelessly," Vonage said about one of the patents. About another patent, it said that experts "would have found it obvious to try using routing control records, or other similar table lookups, to perform the conditional analysis translation . . . "
Verizon is scheduled to file its brief with the appeals court May 23, and Vonage's reply is due May 30. The court is scheduled to hear arguments June 25.
While the appeal is pending, Vonage is permitted to continue signing up new customers, and the company remains determined to increase its business.
The Appeal of User Generated Gaming
As user-created content becomes an integral part of the gaming ecosystem, MTV Networks is getting in on the action
Nickelodeon MTVN Kids and Family Group recently made a series of announcements relating to Shockwave.com and AddictingGames. These two online gaming destinations have experienced major growth of late; during 2006 AddictingGames saw its unique users grow 100 percent, while Shockwave.com grew its users by nearly 50 percent. AddictingGames had 21.3 million unique visitors and 343 million page views in March, while Shockwave.com garnered 19.7 million unique visitors and almost 117 million page views.
"We bought [AddictingGames] from a small team in Canada when it was about the third of the size of what it is now," detailed Dave Williams, the newly named Senior Vice President across both AddictingGames and Shockwave. "It started as a series of links to their favorite sites, then it evolved into a directory before we eventually bought it out. We realized it was much more like a conventional media site, as in users were treating the games like videos, playing things once [and] then looking for new ones. We enhanced it and added our own resources and now they're over 1000 developers.
"Shockwave.com has been around for a very long time. It was originally built as a multimedia showcase for all the stuff you can do with Adobe Shockwave. Since then, we've built in all sorts of technologies for games. The site features something for everyone, with puzzle and casual games that really appeal to the women 30+ group and other games for early teens. It has helped build up brands for advertisers, which is very appealing to third-parties. Our daily project and photo sharing results in an amazing amount of sharing that you can't do in any other medium. We're also probably more focused than anyone to try and get [casual games] to work for advertisers."
In yet another sign of the web 2.0/game 3.0 phenomenon, one of the new features of the site is a game upload feature. User-created content is bound to have an increasingly profound effect on this industry. Already, the company has received 200 new game submissions in the past month, empowered by a game sponsorship program, which pays developers of popular games for integration on AddictingGames and provides them with enhanced distribution and marketing.
"One of the challenges for lightweight casual games is that there isn't much of a business model for them," explained Williams. "We worked on solutions for our two different sites. On AddictingGames, we offer to sponsor a creator's game with our brand and that helps create traffic for the site because it might be distributed to other websites. On Shockwave, there's a royalty pool that's based upon the amount of revenue received. I think this is going to drive content going forward because we're willing to pay for their games. We have multiple options for users, but advertising is at least as important as something like subscriptions for us. A couple other sites have mentioned something like this, but I think we've been making more from ad sales than anyone else.
"I think what we're seeing from AddictingGames... is that a lot of these users know Flash, whether for their job or from their school. They're having fun with it and getting their games published using our method. Really, it is a site that is born off its users and it is very much part of the heart of the site."
The announcement also touched on new integrated advertising deals with Nissan and HP. "Shockwave has been known for game customization for advertisers; we helped build some of the original advergames. At the same time, our sphere of online games lend themselves to user generated content. We get dozens of submissions of content users want to see. We try and reconcile these two factors with advertiser sponsored games. It demonstrates a way that we can integrate user content with advertiser needs."
"The Shockwave Mother's Day photo sponsorship offers a more engaging user experience than could be provided through a standard ad banner buy," said Steve Kerho, Director, Media & Interactive Marketing, Nissan North America. "It demonstrates an understanding of how to reach the Quest target through leveraging the strengths of the Shockwave brand, since 65% of Shockwave users share photos with others."
"HP consumer PCs are the preferred choice for casual gamers worldwide," said Tracey Trachta, worldwide director of consumer advertising, Personal Systems Group, HP. "We're excited to be working with Shockwave because they offer us a unique vehicle to reach both parents and children in a safe, casual gaming environment."
"Games like this have been sort of under the radar for something that could be the basis of a business. We have the resources and we can afford to invest more... I think it's going to be a great thing for the consumer," added Williams.
Provided by GameDAILY—Your daily dose of gaming
Investors Pour Funding Into ProVina Whose 2006 WinePod Sold Out
WinePod is a wireless web-connected device that allows wine snobs to mix their own wines. The price is $3,500 per unit plus shipping. WinePod is a 2-foot tall insulated metal egg with a 2-ton metal press and automatic temperature control that ferments your wine. It can take from a few months to a year or more for your wine to distill. Your batch should yield about 6 cases. Your dashboard tells you to adjust pH or temperature, add water, etc. Clearly there is no practical reason to own won but so many people these days are showy with their wine collections, this is the state of the art in keeping up with the Joneses.
Tibco Ponies Up $195M For Analytics' Spotfire
Analysis: The New Math - How Did MySpace Value PhotoBucket
With that in mind, we think the discussions over the valuation of PhotoBucket and other big deals are somewhat important. If the deal is officially confirmed at $300M, that is 50x trailing revenue and over $17 per monthly unique visitor.
Mike Arrington calls the $300M (with earnout) that MySpace paid for PhotoBucket a steal. His logic is that: + Google paid $1.65B for YouTube. By the time the deal closed, the Google stock was worth nearly $1.8B. MySpace paid 1/5 of that. YouTube had little revenue, while PhotoBuckets projects it will make $25M in 2007. Photobucket has 80% of the visitors that YouTube had when it was acquired. + MySpace got a discount when it cut off PhotoBucket's users before the deal to show who wears the pants.
+ In a more recent post, he hedges, however, that PhotoBucket and MySpace might have 100% user overlap, so for $250M its gets no new users.
+ Valleywag accuses TechCrunch of being a shill for PhotoBucket's iBankers Lehman Brothers. We don't have any way of assessing this information.
Henry Blodget takes the case even further, arguing that PhotoBucket could barely give itself away, a dramatic statement he agrees.
Counterpoint is Microsoft's Don Dodge who instructs Blodget and Arrington to come to their senses:
"At some point the end user of all these free services is the same user and they can't be monetized any further no matter how many new services are added. Advertisers will eventually figure this out. Ad rates will drop. Revenues will drop...and stock prices will drop. It is all about the stock price. No one cares about real revenues and earnings as long as the stock price is high.When stock prices drop everyone along the chain starts to rethink their assumptions about value and ROI. The changes ripple all the way back up the food chain. The individual stockholders get more conservative and move out of bubble stocks. The Internet companies stop acquiring because their stock price has deflated. The entrepreneurs stop agreeing to acquisitions because the rewards are less. The VCs stop funding new startups because the risk/reward ratio doesn't work.
We have seen this before. It was the nuclear winter that lasted from 2000 to 2003. It is amazing how quickly we forget. As I always say "fear is temporary...greed is permanent"
HipMojo joins the naysers arguing that PhotoBucket is no YouTube. His point here is that Photobucket is just a utility and does not command attention.
(Over) Counting Widgets
I got an email from a friend the other day.
"Did you see that Clearspring has served 3bn widgets in the past five months?"
I hadn't actually seen that news, but here is the press release my friend was referring to. It's clearly an impressive number and Clearspring is doing some great things in the widget market.
But before we start putting Clearsping in McDonalds territory (billions served), let's get something straight. Serving widgets generates huge numbers quickly.
All you need to do is look at Photobucket, Slide, and RockYou's numbers for their photo/slideshow widgets to see how powerful the widget model is. I don't have access to the actual numbers for these three photo widget services and I'd prefer not to print the rumors I've heard, but I'd venture a guess that their numbers for widgets served each day will make Clearspring's 3bn number look tiny.
I do know the numbers for FeedBurner's widgets and they are well north of what Clearspring is serving. But this post is not about whose you know what is bigger than whose.
It's about the challenge of understanding what is what in the widget market.
Max Levchin, Slide's founder and CEO, is one of the most thoughtful people in the widget market and I've had some conversations with him about the challenges of measuring widgets. He's frustrated that there isn't good third party data on the widget market. I've also talked to the team at comScore about this issue because it's starting to become an issue everyone is paying attention to and there just isn't good data yet.
You can get unique visitor counts from comScore on widgets like Photobucket, Slide, and RockYou, but what does it mean? Here is the comScore data on the photo widget sector (the top three players).
Are those 18mm uniques that are attributed to Photobucket being seen on Photobucket.com? Or are those 18mm uniques the number of people that are being exposed to the Photobucket widget wherever it is being embedded (MySpace, Beebo, etc). I don't know the answer to that simple question, but it's an important one.
And what's the right number to look at? Should Photobucket get credit for having an audience that sees its widget on other services pages? When that page includes five to ten other widgets? Or should it just get credit for those who interact with the widget in some way?
The bottom line is we need better numbers on widgets, we need some standards, and we need them now.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
17 ways to beat Google - Search innovations and who is doing them
Nitin Karandikar sent me a link to his post on "Top 17 Search Innovations outside of Google" which reviews 17 different approaches to web search innovation. He also lists some of the companies leading the way in each area. Web search is a very popular topic for writers and bloggers. Charles Knight maintains a list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines and updates it monthly.
Web search is big business. Microsoft's Live Search is third in market share with about 10% of all web searches and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. It is no wonder that VCs and entrepreneurs are investing lots of time and money to discover The Next Big Thing in search.
Of all the approaches described by Nitin and listed by Charles Knight, I think three are promising; Natural Language Processing, Local Search, and Cell Phone Voice Search.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been around for a while. The idea is to get users to ask questions in conversational style, and then parse that question using NLP techniques to divine meaning and context. The problem is that most users only enter two words in a search...sometimes three words. No matter how sophisticated your NLP technology is you aren't going to gain a lot more context from two or three words. The real secret power of NLP is realized by applying it to the search index...not the search term. Meaning, analyze all the web pages in the index with the NLP and add lots of meta tags, meaning, and context to the index. Then when search queries come in you can match the keywords to the much richer index. Powerset is doing some ground breaking work in this area.
Local Search is a huge market. The easy part of local search has already been done. The big search engines have developed crawlers to crawl all web pages, parse and extract local identifying information, and cross reference it to other online data. The problem is that over 50% of small local businesses don't have web sites. A great local search experience requires that ALL local businesses are included and that the index be updated regularly. CitySquares Online is a Boston based startup attacking this problem.
Cell phone voice based search is an obvious opportunity, but very hard to do. It requires great voice recognition technology, a well organized local search index, a high quality voice response system, and special screen rendering technology to display the results on the cell phone screen. Parts of the technology exist today, but no one has combined all the pieces into a great user experience. This is a huge opportunity with no clear leader.
OK, now back to Nitin's list of 17 search innovation areas. Please go to his site to get more detail on each one. Unless you are a search geek like me you may find this stuff boring, but here are the categories;
- Natural Language Processing
- Personalization
- Vertical Search
- Multimedia Search
- Restricted Data Sources
- Domain Specific Search
- Parametric Search
- Social network filtering
- Human directed search
- Semantic search
- Discovery linked search
- Classification, Tags, Clustering approaches
- Results visualization
- Results refinement and filters
- Specialized search platforms
- Related searches
- Search agents
What do you think? Who will be the next Google? Which approach to search will provide the most value? Place your bets and you could be the next search billionaire.
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