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Browsing the Web, One Sentence at a Time

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the something-to-think-about dept.

rtmyers writes "A really simple yet radical idea: break web pages down into sentences, and then have the browser walk through sentences and do useful sentence-level things. This is the paradigm shift behind the product called Infowalker, which unfortunately is implemented as an IE toolbar, but would be fabulous as a feature built into Mozilla or Opera. Currently implemented features include sentence-level interfaces for TTS, translation, large-type display, and the funkiest of all, dynamic display of an image pulled off the web based on keywords extracted from each sentence -- hey, turn all your web pages into slide shows today! Then there's the feature to show an Amazon product related to the sentence you're reading -- which presumably is the revenue model behind the product, but turns out to also be surprisingly useful. This might not be for everyone, but it could just be the first real change in the browsing model since the earliest browsers starting throwing text up on the screen more than a decade ago. And apparently, Infowalker's architecture allows for pluggable third-party sentence-level "behaviors", with the potential for the development of a whole ecosystem of sentence-level functionality in browsers. And it seems Infowalker can also be controlled by strategically placed custom CSS tags within the HTML, raising the possibility of a new class of web pages especially tuned for this sentence-based approach."

8 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Another way to browse by titaniam · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you really want to browse the web, try this: The world's best Surf Engine IconSurf.com, where you surf the web using website icons. When you want to explore instead of doing targeted searches or visiting the same old sites, this is the way to do it. Shameless plug of my new toy, but it's pretty revolutionary as well. I'd appreciate any feedback, as the site is just a little over 1 week old.

    1. Re:Another way to browse by lonegd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Here's a far funkier way to browse the web.. JAVA GoogleBrowser ;)

      --
      Open Source PVR Hardware Database
  2. Right : by gowen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Because as this shows, breaking coherent paragraphs up into sentences and further mashing them into keywords, makes works far more accesible.

    Good precis is a skill, and a creative and demanding one at that. A computer will no more likely do a good summary of a lengthy text, than it could write a novel.

    --
    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  3. English? by Jin+Wicked · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it just me, or did all that make no sense what -so-ever?

    --
    My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
  4. Sounds familair... Like a GNOME or M$ project... by Rahga · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ever see dashboard? It takes information gathered during IRC, IM, web browsing, e-mail, and more, does a lot of backend cluepacket mojo, and returns a lot of useful information while you work. If "bug 1565" comes up during your work, it'll fetch information in dashboard about the bug without needing you to click on a bug link. Microsoft is working on the same thing, called "implicit query" or some such. Look at the Windows Longhorn screenshots so far... It looks like they are taking the classic IE information sidebar and altering it to work in this way.

  5. Sentences Have Context Too by bobej1977 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    A sentence, just like a word, derives part of its meaning from context.

    So far as I'm concerned, this just feeds into the "sound-bite" culture vortex that television has been sucking us into for the last 2 decades. Why do we feel the need to strip the nuance and subtlety from everything?

    This study seems to confirm what I've always thought about our soul-less Info-culture. I love technology, but we need to be careful that it doesn't strip away our humanity.

    --
    The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
  6. Surprise, Surprise... The Poster Wrote The Toolbar by thebus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I did a little digging into our poster "rtmyers."

    A google search on his email gave me this page, which reveals to us his name.

    http://mail.gnome.org/archives/balsa-list/2001-Mar ch/msg00098.html

    Then I looked up who registered NaturallyOpen.com at Register.com.

    WHOIS lookup on Register.com

    Surprise, Surprise... the same guy.

    He could have told us in the post that he wrote the thing.

  7. Re:Atomic view of content by starm_ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would look at the following technologies:
    WordNet is well known although not that powerfull.
    Common sense is really a beta but still its a big database.
    Cyc is really cool, but not all free. Look at cycL the language they developped.

    I think a simple thing like having integrated access to wikipedia articles or dictionny.com from the browser would be cool. Amazon I don't know.