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Powerset Searches the Wikipedia with Natural Language
Posted by Gina Trapani at 3:08 PM on May 12, 2008
Instead of putting the onus on you to choose the best keyword, just-launched semantic search engine Powerset can find the answers you seek on the Wikipedia using natural language. Type things like "what is a life hack" or "paintings by Salvador Dali" and Powerset extracts those answers from Wikipedia and lays them out on an attractive page. CNET reports:
Powerset's natural language search technology is based on patents licensed exclusively from PARC and its own proprietary indexing. Powerset's engine has read 2.5 million Wikipedia pages and extracted "meaning" from the sentences, creating a navigation and semantic layer on top of the popular Web encyclopaedia.In my tests, Powerset was slow to respond (no doubt suffering from launch overload), but you can check out a video of Powerset in action after the jump.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Gonzie
Posted 5:48 PM 12/5/08
better than wiki's own search, and now replaced in my Inquisitor box
Gonzie
Jordan117
Posted 6:08 PM 12/5/08
I prefer to search The Wikipedia using The Google. It's the easiest way to find stuff on the entire Internets.
:P
Jordan117
Headlam
Posted 6:54 PM 12/5/08
Natural language searches like those work in Google as well - in fact, doing a search for 'what is a life hack' without the quotes returns a link to the Wikipedia entry! :)
Headlam
ICEBreaker
Posted 1:39 AM 13/5/08
Wikipedia's search engine is next to useless, with no tolerance for incorrectly spelt words. I use Google to search the Wikipedia domain instead. Click on the link below to see how it is structured.
[www.google.com]
Not sure how natural language searching is useful for search engines. It is just the same as keyword searching, but with the addition of the words "what when where how" inserted. This isn't the first time it's been done. Is this any different from AskJeeves.com? I suppose this is useful for the computer illiterate who cannot phrase a question into keywords, such as children or the elderly. But then, these guys wouldn't be reading LifeHacker anyway.
ICEBreaker
SeanHelmer
Posted 6:59 AM 13/5/08
There's a great article today about natural language searches and Powerset. Powerset doesn't actually do a natural language search by "reading" the web, instead it just uses stats to "guess" at it. Hakia actually "reads" the websites, and not just wikipedia, any site. Check out the article: http://www.centernetworks.com/powerset-hakia -- I shall pass this way but once. Therefore, any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.
SeanHelmer
rlee
Posted 12:24 PM 13/5/08
"patents licensed exclusively from PARC"
I suspect the author meant to say "Xerox PARC". And their NLP technologies are used in Inxight's (now part of SAP) and Basis Technology's products, so that would imply PowerSet is indeed not using NLP.
rlee
Elder
Posted 5:16 AM 14/5/08
Since Xerox xpun out the Palo Alto Research Center several years ago, the Center has been known as PARC.
Powerset has obtained exclusive licenses for the Xerox Linguistic Environoment (XLE) Natural Language Technology developed by the PARC Natural Language Theory and Technology group. The XLE is an implementation of Lexical/Functional Grammar (LFG). Grammars for many languages can be handled by the XLE parser and semantic analysis system.
The NLP used in Insight(SAP) and Basis is an older Xerox technology that uses "shallow methods" based on Finite State Machines.
Elder