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Haystack: A More Compelling View Of Your Data

Posted by timothy on from the filled-with-needles dept.

Peristaltic writes "MIT's Haystack project has released the source for it's "Universal Information Client", Haystack. In their words: 'Haystack looks into the use of artificial intelligence techniques for analyzing unstructured information and providing more accurate retrieval.' Unlike some attempts I've seen in the past to pull it all together on my desktop, Haystack shows some promise -- One of it's more useful features allows you to take the information you've been wallowing through, and have Haystack continually refine a 'dynamic hierarchy' until you get what you need. Haystack also performs some neat tricks such as combining Email, IM, web pages, etc. into a single inbox."

5 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Runtime overhead by PureFiction · · Score: 4, Informative
    Beware the load on your system if you wish to try this out. It eats RAM and CPU with gleeful abandon.

    From the system requirements:

    • - Pentium III 700mhz-based computer or better (Pentium 4 2ghz strongly recommended)
      - 12 megabytes of RAM (768 megabytes strongly recommended)

    s/strongly recommended/REQUIRED/
    1. Re:Runtime overhead by PureFiction · · Score: 4, Informative

      Arg, cut-n-paste errors. Should read 512M

      Please take note of the following system requirements for Haystack:

      * Pentium III 700mhz-based computer or better (Pentium 4 2ghz strongly recommended)
      * 512 megabytes of RAM (768 megabytes strongly recommended)
      * Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Linux (Linux build requires GTK+ 2.0 libraries)
      * At least 1 gigabyte of disk space (or more, as your repository grows)
      * Java 2 Development Kit (JDK) 1.4 or later note that JDK 1.4.1 does not work with Haystack; use JDK 1.4.1_02 instead)

  2. Re:Awesome Mozilla effect. by tuffy · · Score: 4, Informative
    This is the nifty bit of code that generates that effect:

    <div style="BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: fixed; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: url(images/cover.png); WIDTH: 520px; height:370px; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: no-repeat"></div>

    Fun with Cascading Style Sheets :) It might've been more effective, however, to stick the big image in an iframe so people can scroll around in it easier and have a look.

    --

    Ita erat quando hic adveni.

  3. I was a usability tester... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    for Haystack at LCS recently, and was not that impressed. It is designed to do certain kinds of tasks very well (e.g., editing things that are embedded in other types of information - the tests given were things like "edit this picture that's a part of this entry in your Outlook address book"). Unfortunately, at the expense of making these tasks as close to one-click as possible, other things (versatility the most, but also common sense design) have failed.

    I find it easy enough to edit information of the "My Documents" variety without worrying about how it is integrated into other information on my computer, and I'm sure other readers here do, as well.

    The best way to actually use this software would be in the case where John Q. has a specific task to do over and over again but isn't ready to tackle a batch process.

  4. Six Degrees by mblase · · Score: 5, Informative

    Six Degrees by Creo is another attempt to do this same sort of thing, except that it's commercial and it's been available for Mac OS X and Windows for several months.