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Google Delivering Factual Answers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the delphi's-oracle-jealous dept.

nam37 wrote in about a Macworld article which reads: "Google Inc. on Thursday began delivering factual answers for some queries at the top of its results page, to save users from having to navigate over to other sites and look for the information. For example, if a user enters the query 'Portugal population,' Google returns the answer -- 10.5 million -- along with a link to the Web page where the information came from, which in this case is the population page of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook. The query 'who is Jane Fonda?' triggers the answer '... is an Academy Award winning American actress, model, writer, producer, activist and philanthropist' and provides the link to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia's entry for the actress. A small percentage of queries currently trigger these factual answers, but the service, called Google Q&A, is in its early stages, said Peter Norvig, Google's director of search quality."

2 of 424 comments (clear)

  1. Factual Answers? by squall14716 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Wow, is this in fact the first post?

    I guess not.

  2. Why does the porridge bird lay his egg in the air? by Velox_SwiftFox · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    WELCOME (TO THE FUTURE)
    BOZOS!

    I. FOUR DEFINITIONS

    BOZO: A man; fellow; guy; esp. a large, rough man or one with more brawn than brains. 1934: "Drive the heap, bozo!" Chandler, Finger Man. From Sp. dial. "boso" (from "vosotros") - you (pl.) which resembles a direct address.

    DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SLANG by Wentworth and Flexner, 1960

    BUS: A circuit in a mixing board which carries signals from one or more inputs to any output or set of outputs.

    AUDIO CRAFT by Randy Thom, 1982

    BARNY or BARNEY: In the English circus, a fight. The closest American equivalent is clem.

    CLEM: Its most common meaning is that of a general fight or riot between town hoodlums who attack shows and the circus or carnival employees. As an interjection, clem has replaced Hey rube as a battle cry for a forthcoming fight.

    THE LANGUAGE OF AMERICAN POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT by Don B. Wilmeth, 1981

    II. SOME FANCY RHETORIC

    THEME OF FAIR IS SCIENCE

    An epic theme! ... Science discovers, genius invents, industry applies, and man adapts himself to, or is molded by, new things ... Individuals, groups, entire races of men fall into step with the slow or swift movement of the march of science and industry ... "The Fair," wrote an observer, "considered as an electrical exposition only, would be well worth the attention of the world ... It is barely within the compass of any man's mind to conceive of what the future has in store for us."

    Official Guide To A Century of Progress Exposition, 1933

    "THE WORLD OF TOMORROW MUST BE BUILT WITH THE TOOLS OF TODAY."

    This is the gospel we feel you will be compelled to preach as you return thoughtfully from the Fair to your various destinations, filled, yes, and perhaps even overcome by the simple grandeur of what you have seen, every bit of which tells you that a glorious future is at hand, that a new day, one in which mankind at last realizes the tremendous necessity for close cooperation, is dawning, and that science and industry will both serve you and in return demand your service, both simple and complex.

    Views of The New York World'S Fair, 1939

    III. ON THE BUS AGAIN

    "Garrison Keillor ... world's tallest radio humorist ... was drawn to the Eastern part of the U.S., he said. In the meantime Denmark, where he was 'just another bozo on the bus,' would be his home."

    TIME, June 29, 1987

    We were on tour, three-dimensionally staging Clem's assault on Dr. Memory and "the breaking of the 'Resident'," while the Nixon-Agnew Presidency was collapsing in showers of TV confetti in hotel rooms coast-to-coast. It was the spring of 1974. We had written BOZOS three years before and now borrowed its general form and "second act" for the touring show, called ANYTOWN USA - A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH FIRESIGN WORLD.

    The first act of ANYTOWN, like side one of BOZOS, was shaped as a series of dioramic, holographic, disneylandish carnival rides. On stage we performed favorite chunks from our first three albums, leading into the intermission with our famous parody (by Phil Proctor's Ralph Spoilsport) of Molly Bloom's "yes I will yes" erotic fantasy from James Joyce's ULYSSES. On the album, the main ride had been drawn from images suggested by Norman Bel Geddes' 1939 "Futurama" - an audio trip through the idyllic, plexiglassed, Art Deco City of the (1960) Future, fantasized in model form as a smog-free and regularly-intersected paradise for the internal combustion engine - and the 1933 H(W)all of Science building, which visitors entered "to marvel at the interpretations of science it offers."

    Incidentally, the 1933 Chicago Fair also gave us both the "Bozo" (a fire-breathing dragon of a roller-coaster which "takes us for a ride in the manner of Jonah") and the "Bus" (a miniature Greyhound for carting visitors between the exhibit buildings) of the title, as well as such key suggestions as