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Looking for Answers in the Age of Search

Posted by timothy on from the wrong-answers-are-the-best-kind dept.

prostoalex writes "James Fallows, in a New York Times article, notices that search engines are getting pretty good at providing information for simple keyword-based queries. However, when it comes to the actual information, such as finding the necessary data and statistics, they're not doing a great job. The article talks about the NSA- and CIA-sponsored Aquaint project that aims to deliver answers to questions that might be expressed with a variety of keywords, and need to be 'understood' by the search engine before providing the answer."

2 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Looking for Answers... by rah1420 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...like the Semantic Web?

    No, I don't know why it's being relaunched. My guess is that it's probably one of the answers that we are looking for in the age of search that didn't quite cut it. But isn't that what all these different meta-searches are talking about? The ability to get semantic meaning imbued into the web?

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
  2. What I would like to see by houghi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    is the ability to filter out certain types of sites. Like the sites that are webinterfaces to Usenet or sites that sell stuff.

    When I now look for a digital camera, I get hunderds of sites trying to sell me one, then a lot of sites that talk about it till I get to the makers homepage. an example The page I am looking for is this one
    Vivisimo makes it a bit easier, but not completely.

    A9 also failed to produce the correct page.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.