So they were running into some load issues, but then again they’re not your traditional search engine.  Wolfram Research is the software company behind Mathematica.  Mathematica is to a mathematician as the utility belt is to batman.  Suffice it to say, it’s pretty amazing software.  It came as somewhat of a surprise that the company was launching a search engine.  They are quick to denounce themselves as a Google replacement.  Search results in Alpha present more thoughtful and curated responses — if it knows what you’re asking.

As seen in their visual gallery, Alpha can inundate you with information, but it’s subjective if those results are useful or not.  A great example is, “United States“.  The information is fascinating, but I’m a little thrown off by lines of info such as “local currency conversion: $1 = $1“.  So where does Alpha win?  The value added is Alpha’s ability to understand your question.  Compare the results of the search “literacy rate of the United States” in Alpha and Google.  Alpha definitely gives the feeling of instant gratification.  Unfortunately, Alpha doesn’t know about the “Indianapolis Museum of Art” but at least they know “how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop“.

Google is not sitting idly by.  Announcing Google Squared:

Ok, so it needs some work.  Both Google and Alpha are proceeding with the same assumption though: “People are becoming better searchers”.  Google Squared will be a search system very similar to Alpha.  More importantly, Squared is going to be driven from semantic information.  The Semantic Web has been promised to revolutionize information online for many years now.  It was what many thought would be Web 2.0. — It’s looking more like 3.5 now. — In a nutshell, web pages can add additional information to convey the meaning of the content.  Search engines could use this information to better understand and relay this information.  Google does a good job of sending you to the right place now, but it is up to you and web providers to make sure you find what you were looking for next.  In a few years you might search for “operating hours of the IMA” instead of digging up the information yourself.  Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared are the first pushes to this mindset change.

An early screenshot of what a Google Squared result might look like.

]]> http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2009/05/19/a-new-kind-of-search/feed/ 1 http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/11/18/news-from-the-capitol/ http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/11/18/news-from-the-capitol/#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:38:46 +0000 Ed http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/?p=1940

Yes, I was just in Washington DC, but this post isn’t going to be about national politics. A few of us recently returned from the Museum Computer Network conference – four days of workshops, presentations, and case studies on topics ranging from virtual machines to the semantic web. Since I totally forgot about having to blog upon our return, I’ll just share some of the bits I found interesting.

First off, Rob and I ran a workshop on building an exhibition site with Drupal. Anyone interested can download the slides on Slideshare. We gave a quick overview of the sites that we have built with Drupal so far, and then went through the process from installation to end product using the To Live Forever website as an example. We received very good feedback, and hopefully the particiants will go forth and create great websites.

Koven Smith of the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave a great talk on the inner workings of Semantic Web technology. I have heard a lot about the semantic web, but now I feel like I actually understand how it works. After this session my curiosity led me to pop in on the end of a discussion about copyright issues in virtual worlds… I’ll just say that the semantic web is more straightforward to me at the moment.

Youngjin Yoo, associate professor of Management Information Systems at Temple University, gave a great presentation making the case that innovation is a collaborative experience. In contrast to “change management”, in which a product is developed and a community is subsequently persuaded to use it, he argued that products must be designed with users in the loop. This is definitely part of good software engineering practice, where well informed use cases drive design.

We were also given an introduction to Ohana (the intranet system used by the Smithsonian) by Erin Weinman. Having created our own internal project management system, it was interesting to see how Ohana was designed to make use of MediaWiki. In fact, we have found that some Wiki-style form of document creation would be a great addition to our system, so we will be investigating this further.

Of course, there was much more that went on at the conference, but these are just a few of the things that stuck in my mind (as well as the half-day excursion I took to experience the National Mall for the first time.. my feet were killing me). Reading over my list, it is rather software development oriented, isn’t it? Well, keep your eyes peeled and I’m sure you’ll find other blogs covering MCN from another point of view. Or if you were there too, leave some comments!