Indiana University Dumps Google for ChaCha

theodp writes "Come Monday, no more Indiana University searches will be powered by computer-driven Google. Only by people-powered ChaCha. The move was announced by new IU President Michael McRobbie, who until recently sat on ChaCha's Board of Directors (5-29 SEC filing, PDF). IU will draft hundreds of librarians and IT employees to be ChaCha Guides for the university's websites, although a FAQ accompanying IU's press release tells librarians not to expect any checks for their efforts from ChaCha, which IU notes is backed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Compaq founder Rod Canion."

Comments

AskJeeves2?

[pipingguy]

Does ChaCha have its own engine or does it rely on all the other ones? The "personal service" feature will die-off if enough people try to use it.

Re:AskJeeves2?

[ivan256]

I'm imagining a bunch of "guides" searching Google for you instead of letting you do it yourself.

Seriously though, who knows? Maybe enough people suck at searching to make this service worthwhile, but I don't see how it could ever be profitable. Unless they somehow think they can get away without paying anybody.

Re:AskJeeves2?

[rben]

What strikes me is the incredible hubris of the guy. He's abusing his position at the University for personal gain. He's drafting University employees to work for a venture that pays him money and pays them nothing. Must be nice. I wonder if the University gets anything at all in return?

Re:AskJeeves2?

[STrinity]

Or worse, it'll be Digg, with the search returning the most popular page tagged with the keywords you're searching for.

Big news ?

[2.7182]

If they were forcing people to not use google search, that would be news. But who cares about this ?

Re:Big news ?

[irritating environme]

Um, maybe because public employees are being forced to donate labor toward a private company the university president has glaring conflict-of-interest ties with?

Other than that...

Re:Big news ?

[E 99]

Um, maybe because public employees are being forced to donate labor toward a private company the university president has glaring conflict-of-interest ties with?

How does using this software to provide help to students and faculty constitute donating labor to a private company? How does having formerly served on the board of the company constitute a conflict of interest, glaring or otherwise?

Re:Big news ?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're getting paid to do their jobs, just like always. No one is being forced to donate anything. If they don't like their jobs they can quit.

With all the high-profile waste of taxpayer money and conflicts of interest (Halliburton anyone?) it's unbelievable that this would qualify as news.

Re:Big news ?

[dangitman]

How does using this software to provide help to students and faculty constitute donating labor to a private company?

Because it won't help students, it's just a ploy to keep a lame company afloat. If anything, it will hurt students and staff, as it takes tech support employees away from doing real work.

Re:Big news ?

[pthor1231]

Because I assure you he still has some sort of profit-sharing mechanism in place as an Ex-Board of Directors Member. Those people don't just leave and see nothing else from the company, especially when they leave, take a position as the head of a university, and then strong-arm the company he just left from into said university.

Re:Big news ?

[E 99]

It's impossible that he served on the board and made the deal with the company because he believes in the product?

Re:Big news ?

[UbuntuDupe]

How does using this software to provide help to students and faculty constitute donating labor to a private company? The summary says, "IU will draft hundreds of librarians and IT employees to be ChaCha Guides for the university's websites, although a FAQ accompanying IU's press release tells librarians not to expect any checks for their efforts from ChaCha"

Basically, university staff will have to devote time (for which the university pays them) to do things to ChaCha's benefit, and ChaCha will not compensate them. I know, it wasn't immediately obvious from the summary, because whoever wrote it either:

a) is old enough to associate ALL transfers of money with checks, and therefore uses them interchangeably despite the fact that the world has moved on, or

b) is trying to sound folksy by using the metonym "check" to refer to ANY kind of monetary payment.

I hate people who do that, with a passion, whichever set they belong to.

Re:Big news ?

[pthor1231]

That's fine, but what is not fine is him making decisions in a position of power at IU that have a direct financial effect on a company he still likely receives payment in some form from. That is about as close to conflict of interest as you can get.

Re:Big news ?

[theshowmecanuck]

Or maybe people should go back to the root of the word and spell it 'cheque' (like everywhere else outside of the U.S.A.) instead of spelling foe-net-ti-clee. :)

Re:Big news ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think they were just using "checks" as a shortening of "paychecks". I hope that clarifies your 139-word essay on this triviality.

Re:Big news ?

[E 99]

The summary says, "IU will draft hundreds of librarians and IT employees to be ChaCha Guides for the university's websites, although a FAQ accompanying IU's press release tells librarians not to expect any checks for their efforts from ChaCha"

Basically, university staff will have to devote time (for which the university pays them) to do things to ChaCha's benefit, and ChaCha will not compensate them.

In the article ChaCha says they'd be happy to pay them, as they pay their other "guides". They're not getting paid by ChaCha because they're doing what is already their job, just using the ChaCha software to do it. i.e., providing information to students, faculty, and the public about the school.

Re:Big news ?

[E 99]

That's fine, but what is not fine is him making decisions in a position of power at IU that have a direct financial effect on a company he still likely receives payment in some form from. That is about as close to conflict of interest as you can get.

Sure, but where do you get the information that he receives payment from the company?

Re:Big news ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, university staff will have to devote time (for which the university pays them)....

1) If they're being paid then they're not "donating" anything.

2) If ChaCha is paying anyone it should be the university, NOT the individual librarians (who are already getting paid).

Re:Big news ?

[Anonymous Coward]

UbuntuDupe
is old enough to associate ALL transfers of money with checks, and therefore uses them interchangeably despite the fact that the world has moved on, or

Gee, bet you're lots of fun at parties. Don't have an aneurysm, but I still refer to my paycheck as my paycheck even though it's been transferred electronically for my entire working life. Oh noeesss!111!!

Re:Big news ?

[pthor1231]

Because no one leaves the Board of a Directors of a company that they think is going to be successful and does a HUGE favor like this, and receives nothing in the end. Since they are not a publicly traded company, their financials don't have to be disclosed either, so no one has any way of verifying this without some sort of official investigation. Even without direct proof, it is still a huge conflict of interest in mine, and many other people's opinions.

Re:Big news ?

[vux984]

How does using this software to provide help to students and faculty constitute donating labor to a private company?

He as much as said his staff would be working on behalf of chacha but not to expect any payment from them for it.

How does having formerly served on the board of the company constitute a conflict of interest, glaring or otherwise?

He likely still has substantial stock options or even outright stock.

The fact that he was on the board until just recently doesn't PROVE he has a conflict of interest, but there are plenty of red flags here, enough to warrant an investigation and an independent review of whether or not this move really benefits the university and students.

Re:Big news ?

[TapeCutter]

"It's impossible that he served on the board and made the deal with the company because he believes in the product?"

In his position "the right thing to do" is excuse himself from the deal making process regardless of what he thinks about the company or it's products.

Re:Big news ?

[E 99]

Because no one leaves the Board of a Directors of a company that they think is going to be successful and does a HUGE favor like this, and receives nothing in the end. Since they are not a publicly traded company, their financials don't have to be disclosed either, so no one has any way of verifying this without some sort of official investigation. Even without direct proof, it is still a huge conflict of interest in mine, and many other people's opinions.

It benefits (arguably) both parties. Framing it as a favor to the company is prejudging what's going on. There's nothing in the actual FACTS presented that represents a conflict of interest. You (and many other people) may wish to presume that there is a conflict of interest, and hence corruption, involved; but it's still nothing more than presumption. As a matter of principle, I choose to presume innocence until there is evidence of guilt; as that is the presumption that I wish others to make when viewing my actions.

Re:Big news ?

[tsm_sf]

Because no one leaves the Board of a Directors of a company that they think is going to be successful and does a HUGE favor like this, and receives nothing in the end. [SNIP] Even without direct proof[...]

You can't make a blanket statement like that and then back it up with "and I have no proof". It makes you look foolish.

Re:Big news ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you naive or just fucking stupid?

Why would a university give up Google for some mediocre "people-powered" search engine for any reason other than this person's own gain? If this person had no interest in Cha-cha, then he would of picked the best search engine for the job. Cha-cha sure as hell isn't that search engine.

Re:Big news ?

[Danse]

There's nothing in the actual FACTS presented that represents a conflict of interest. You (and many other people) may wish to presume that there is a conflict of interest, and hence corruption, involved; but it's still nothing more than presumption. Yeah, because corrupt individuals always just come out and tell you that they're corrupt. Happens all the time on your planet I'm sure.

As a matter of principle, I choose to presume innocence until there is evidence of guilt; as that is the presumption that I wish others to make when viewing my actions. Good luck with that.

Re:Big news ?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What's your problem?

Did someone tell you to expect a check but didn't warn you that you had to deposit it with a bank in order to use it?

Besides, you are a fine one to be bitching that the meaning of a word has changed due to popular usage.

Re:Big news ?

[pthor1231]

Right, because we should only speak out about something we think looks a bit fishy when we have proof that it is fishy. I don't have to have proof to say that it looks wrong when the Director of the Board of Directors of a company leaves, obtains a powerful position somewhere else, and then strong arms his old company in. It just looks wrong.

Re:Big news ?

[rtb61]

Of course there a no red flags when countless public organisation promote, and feed private data to google. After all to be google "not evil" all public organisations should actively support the rightful market leader to ensure that google maintains it market dominance and all public organisations should do everything they can to feed the googlites even more private information.

Especially questionable university search queries where known misfits and malcontents search for deviant and anti-authority ideas like freedom and democracy and it is well known that the even more seditious anti-profit crowd congregates at university campuses. All must worship the google and confess all your deviant searches to the google and keep and spread the immortal google cookie to all corners of the universe, all hail the google's profits.

Re:Big news ?

[vux984]

No. Personally I'm not much enamored with google and other than search and maps I actively avoid the company. I don't use gmail, or their IM client, or read their News, or use Google Documents or Calender or their blogger, or myspace. I don't WANT any single entity to have that much information about me or anyone else. I value my privacy.

But that's not the point here.

When someone shows up, fresh from the board of a company - ESPECIALLY a small startup, and suddenly he's driving a substantial contract to that startup there is reasonable cause for suspicion of conflict of interest.

Re:Big news ?

[Skater]

Or perhaps he was using it in the sense of "paycheck"? It's pretty common to drop the "pay" from "paycheck".

Re:Big news ?

[KwKSilver]

I think flagrant corruption is the term we're looking for.

Re:Big news ?

[UbuntuDupe]

I don't get a paycheck. I just get a salary. The money is electronically transferred. No check is involved.

Re:Big news ?

[springbox]

It's electronically transfered to my checking account though. I'm confused why there's such anger over using the word "check" in this way.

Re:Big news ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate people who do that, with a passion, whichever set they belong to.

I find people who form such extreme opinions about other people over such insignificant trifles quite distasteful. Almost without exception, these sniveling little jerk offs turn out to be insecure floppy ducklings who overcompensate for their social ineptitude with punctilious nitpicking to salve their fragile egos. Maybe, just maybe, people don't 'misunderstand' you because they are all so stupid; they just don't like your company because you are such an tiresome know-it-all. Put down the dictionary and go enjoy the sunshine. Try to be nice, and people might even be nice back. You can keep telling yourself and others that you don't care about that, but you do. I'd rank a little honesty much higher than grammatical sensibility, wouldn't you?

Re:Big news ?

[UbuntuDupe]

It's electronically transfered to my checking account though.

So all electronic transfers to your checking account are "checks"? A transfer from savings to checking is a "check"?

I'm confused why there's such anger over using the word "check" in this way

There isn't, it's just me. Although one does sound quaint when one uses the term "check" this way. That is all.

Re:Big news ?

[slas6654]

Are you truly an idiot or do you work for the relevant parties (ChaCha or the IU president)?

Re:Big news ?

[E 99]

Are you truly an idiot or do you work for the relevant parties (ChaCha or the IU president)?

Neither an idiot nor an employee of ChaCha or IU, but not a cynic either.

Re:Big news ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only to you. This usage of check is long established and most everyone who uses it does not picture a physical scrap of paper with an order to make payment. Instead, they have sense of the exchange of money to the worker.

I bet you still call a car a car, even though it is light years different from the auto-mobile carriage that the name derived from. How quaint.

Maybe if you were able to understand that words and their usages have an etymology, you wouldn't have these problems with trying to set yourself up as "with it" to others in an attempt to convince them, and yourself, that you are in some way more refined or intellectually elevated over them because of the linguistic habits. Because that's clearly the root behavior you are engaging in right now. Don't feel bad... it is a very ape thing to do. Which is also quaint.

Re:Big news ?

[hey!]

Well, librarians are professionals. If you want to advance in the profession, you even have to get an advanced degree.

Of course these days its kind of a quaint notion, but professionals are not mere wage slaves. They are supposed to have a high degree of specialized knowledge, and therefore work autonomously. A manager (supposedly) cannot tell a doctor that a patient cannot be diagnosed with cancer because the HMO has too many cancer diagnoses this quarter. On top of that a professional has special responsibilities, to the people he or she serves, and to the profession a whole.

Here is an example that applies to this case: librarians have a special professional responsibility to safeguard the intellectual freedom of library users. Suppose somebody wants to look up information on "back alley" abortion methods. It is the duty of the librarian to help that person, even if his or her personal ethics are against it. It is also the duty of the librarian not to disclose the fact that the person is seeking this information.

Now we here are sophisticated to know that one of the economic foundations of the search engine business is profiling users. Does this software adequately guard the user's privacy? For that matter does it protect the professional independence of the librarian? It's one thing for a librarian to make a service available to library users, or even to help them use that service, but participating in the service raises serious ethical issues. Even if the service is adequate from a privacy standpoint, if it is not the best way in the librarian's professional opinion to serve the client, it poses a dilemma: their professional duty is to assist the user in finding information, to the best of their abilities.

Conflict of interest is all too easy to miss, because most of us don't understand very much about other people's jobs, but this kind of thing poses many conflicts of interest for the librarians. In fact, the ALA code of ethics specifically says: "We do not advance private interests at the expense of library users, colleagues, or our employing institutions."

A professional owns his work in a way that an ordinary employee does not. There isn't a clear line beyond which management intervention rises to interference, but just because there is no clear line between night and day doesn't mean there is no difference.

Re:Big news ?

[poopdeville]

So what? A mere conflict of interests doesn't imply that any wrongdoings have occurred. He did disclose this conflict of interests to the Indiana University trustees. It's up to their charter to determine whether or not he gets a vote on the matter. Is it so hard to believe he presented the board a great deal, and they decided to accept?

Re:Big news ?

[poopdeville]

I'm a cynic, but I'm with you. A mere conflict of interest does not imply that wrongdoings have occurred. The Board of Trustees was obviously aware of this "conflict of interests" (more like a tempest in a teacup), as they hired the guy. Unless there's evidence that he strong-armed the trustees, there's absolutely no reason to think he didn't just present a good deal to the trustees, who then decided to take it for its merits.

Re:Big news ?

[Fizzl]

Jesus! Why are you so adamantly defending the asshat?
The product is crap. No-one in their right mind would switch to it unless they have something to gain from it.

Re:Big news ?

[MarkAyen]

Righto! Ordinarily, ChaCha "guides" are paid. McRobbie has dedicated hundreds (if not thousands) of university personnel as unpaid labor for ChaCha. If he is not receiving direct compensation for dramatically increasing ChaCha's effective staff, then at the very least he's still misappropriating university resources to enrich a private company.

Even if he hasn't done anything illegal, this thing doesn't pass the sniff test. It stinks to high heaven.

Re:Big news ?

[Mr. Slippery]

I don't get a paycheck. I just get a salary. The money is electronically transferred. No check is involved.

Colliqually, regardless of how the money is transfered you still get a "paycheck", and your attempted pedantry is simply annoying. And if you want to get pedantic, the question of whether you are salaried or hourly is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand.

And yes, many of us still get actual paper checks - my employer is too small for direct deposist to be practical.

If we understand that a check is simply a document requesting your bank to give the payee the designated amount, then a check need not be a paper document, and an EFT request can rightly be called a "check".

What an amazing coincidence.

[Spazntwich]

For the former president of a company to be so prescient so as to recognize ChaCha's innate superiority to the number one worldwide search engine.

I honestly didn't know anyone used ChaCha for anything besides screwing with the people. There have been epic forum threads based on ChaCha.

Re:What an amazing coincidence.

[rm999]

Seriously, it seems like a major conflict of interest. Why is the president of the University making decisions like this anyway?

Re:What an amazing coincidence.

[KillerCow]

Seriously, it seems like a major conflict of interest. Why is the president of the University making decisions like this anyway?

Presidents are only good for making decisions that have conflicts of interest to promote cronyism. You get into those positions because you have ties to important people.

Take a look at U.Waterloo.

Hello Mr. Lazaridis. Yes, you dropped out of our school, but thanks for that 100 Million dollars. How would you like to be our chancellor? You would? Great! What's that? You're company is having space issues? Please take one of our buildings!

Re:What an amazing coincidence.

[macdaddy]

Prior to this thread I hadn't even heard of ChaCha.

Come again?

[weak*]

Indiana University Dumps Google for ChaCha You're right, most of Indiana does smell like a dump.

Re:Come again?

[Smeagel]

Ever been to Bloomington? It's a pretty beautiful place. Most of the cities in the US (NYC especially) were built out of Limestone from the surrounding quarries. Beautiful limestone hills, tons of wildlife, lakes, trees, fields, flowers etc.. It also has amazing culture, the #2 music school in the country (behind Juilliard), very good and diverse restaurants, very diverse population. The Dalai Lama's brother actually lives in Bloomington, and the Dalai Lama visits every few years (this year is one of those years). I've lived in the bay area, traveled to most of the lower 48, and currently live in Manhattan - and even with that perspective Bloomington is one of my favorite places I've been. You can continue to hate though if you like....

Re:Come again?

[schnikies79]

I'll take Indiana over 95% of the rest of the USA. It's a beautiful place to live, especially in the south. Rolling hills, forests, lakes, caves, wildlife, it beats the city any day.

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still USA though.

For a really nice place to live, look across the borders or overseas :)

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed another great Bloomington feature: Hot babes all the hell over the place.

Re:Come again?

[FSWKU]

I'll take Indiana over 95% of the rest of the USA. It's a beautiful place to live, especially in the south.

You've obviously never been in the New Albany/Clarksville area...

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smeagel's boss is probably also a Purdue grad.

Re:Come again?

[slas6654]

I'll take Indiana over 95% of the rest of the USA. It's a beautiful place to live, especially in the south. Rolling hills, forests, lakes, caves, wildlife, it beats the city any day.

...incredibly sheepish and naive population...

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent must have been a Purdue grad. Purdue is in Lafayette?

Obligatory thedailywtf link

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears ChaCha is Very Quality

It reminds me of one of failed DotBomb era projects.

Re:Obligatory thedailywtf link

[porkThreeWays]

There was a dot-bomb that did exactly this. The name slips me right now, but in high school me and my friends would spend all our forced library research time wasting these people's time. My favorite questions to ask were about refining gribble. It almost sounds like something real so they'd waste a lot of time looking for it. That's probably why they stopped the service. After reading about this service you know what the first thing I did was? I went to chacha.com and wasted about 10 minutes asking silly questions that sounded real.

As long as the internet allows retards like me to waste these people's time, these services will never last.

Re:Obligatory thedailywtf link

[feed_me_cereal]

unfortunately this is just par for the course for McRobbie. He's also the one responsible for bringing our university Peoplesoft...

Re:Obligatory thedailywtf link

[kersten78]

I'll gladly corroborate thedailywtf experience. Out of curiosity, I asked, "do chacha guides use google?" Here is the ensuing madness, complete with chacha's policy of discretionary censorship:

Status: Connecting ...
Status: Looking for a guide ...
Ring: ...
Status: Connected to guide: Kim(15654)
Kim(15654): Welcome to ChaCha!
You: hi kim
You: i'm curious how chacha works. do you (guides) just run a google search and then forward me the results?
You: are you there?
You: hello?
Transfer: You are being transferred to another guide who can help you search even better!
Status: Looking for a guide ...
Status: Connected to guide: Jeremy(27194)
Jeremy(27194): Welcome to ChaCha!
Jeremy(27194): Hi there I will be helping you with your search.
Jeremy(27194): Would you care to tell me a bit more about your topic?
You: I just asked Kim(15654), "i'm curious how chacha works. do you (guides) just run a google search and then forward me the results?"
You: my original search was "do chacha guides use google"
Jeremy(27194): we use whatever we need to use, many guides use a various amount of links from every where
You: ok. just curious. i've seen that indiana university is using chacha rather than google for their default search engine. so i'm guessing the chacha engine (with guides, etc) can be integrated into pages, has the ability to search locally, etc?
You: ie. how do you handle domain specific search. does chacha support common advanced search keywords?
Jeremy(27194): Im not sure what your asking in your last reply?
Jeremy(27194): we can search whatever you like, as long as its content is not of offending nature
Jeremy(27194): Is there anything else on this topic I can find for you today?
You: who decides which content is offensive in nature?
Jeremy(27194): I do
You: so chacha is a search engine / censorship engine?
Jeremy(27194): If you do not have a valid search I must terminate the session.
You: thanks. While I feel a tinge guilty for harassing Jeremy with a clearly pointless search, it serves to show just how pointless/inefficient the system is. I can't believe anyone (especially a major university) would advocate such a shitty search system without some sort of vested interest.

sponsored links

[timmarhy]

chacha mixes sponsored links, see ADVERTISMENTS, in with valid matches. they can fuck off and die.

anyone else notice that the format is exactly like googles?

Re:sponsored links

[Anonymous Coward]

With the exception that google retains your search terms in the box with javascript disabled

Re:sponsored links

[AmberBlackCat]

I personally think placing the sponsored links above the most relevant links is just as bad, if not worse.

Re:sponsored links

[KillaBeave]

For example... searching for "Indiana University" on ChaCha yeilds this as it's first search result. Indiana universities Indiana Universities Get your degree today. Get info. Sponsored By http://www.collegesurfing.com/ Irony is dead and my alma mater killed it.

Re:sponsored links

[KillaBeave]

D'oh! I forgot to preview and check the spacing.

Indiana universities
Indiana Universities Get your degree today. Get info.
Sponsored By http://www.collegesurfing.com/

That's the first result when searching for "Indiana University" on ChaCha.

Google's first result? The Indiana University homepage, www.indiana.edu

yep. ChaCha is the suck... no conflict of interest at play here. I'm sad for the future of my alma mater with someone like this at the helm.

Who cares? Are you fucking joking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell do you think cares?

Why?

[yogurtforthesoul]

Why would you dump Google for a Latin American dance? I'd go with the Tango.

Re:Why?

[sqrt(2)]

What does a Gnome icon theme have to do with Latin American dances or search engines? Now I'm thoroughly confused.

Re:Why?

[morgan_greywolf]

What does a Gnome icon theme have to do with Latin American dances or search engines?

The same thing that network file systems have to do with Samba, I think.

Re:why?

[bigbigbison]

IU's guides could be asked to locate a building on campus", (use a campus map)

IU's campus is fairly big and there are some minor buildings that aren't even on the map. I have showed my students on a map where our department building is and still had them call me on their cell phone when they got lost coming to see me there. (Of course last year they tore down all the buildings around ours which made it easier to find -- if you could find your way through the maze of construction fences.) But I agree, that is a pretty dumb example. They should just make the map better.

"find a book in one of the university's libraries" (use a library web page)or

I am assuming that he meant help on searching for a book that covers a topic rather than where a book is physically located (although there are something like 6 libraries on campus so maybe he is just really concerned about getting directions?). Regardless, the IU library already offers instant messaging or chat with a librarian so I can only assume that the Chacha deal is just an extension of this.

"solve a question about Windows Vista (use Microsoft s knowledge base)".

This is another situation where I'm assuming it would be about IU specific settings or even things like viruses or network outages. However, IU already has a really good knowledge base as well as tech support chat so I would assume that the ChaCha deal is, again, just an extension of that.

IU is really trying to be seen as a high tech school. Two years ago they were named the university with the best wireless (which of course doesn't exist in our department's building...) and they have a fairly highly ranked supercomputer. I would assume this is part of some attempt to make IU seem Web2.0 or something.

You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[Anonymous Coward]

So the IU President, who sits on the board of Cha Cha, has financial ties, and is using the state univerisity's assets and employees as resources for Cha Cha? WTF!?
This is just such an amazingly stupid idea. I guess if you don't understand the math behind Google's pagerank then you might be unimformed enough to buy into the idea that people can "guide" you through billions of pieces of data...that are constantly changing.

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[Locutus]

It does look like a conflict of interest here but I guess there's none at IU with the balls to go up against the new IU President. Next thing you know, he's going to force everyone to use Windows Vista along with Microsoft Office 2007. Oh, and collect a nice check from Microsoft to go along with his check(s) from ChaCha.

LoB

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised. He becomes president, and immediately the Unix Systems Support Group is disbanded, gutted, and all Indiana University campuses now have only two Local Support Provider Support staff that know Unix (both with sketchy know-how).

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[wicka]

Yeah, I highly doubt that. IU has Macs all over the place. Their tech store obviously caters more to the Mac crowd. This post is just another fantastic example of morons on /. pulling shit out of their ass and managing to bash Microsoft along with it.

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[Locutus]

It seems that McRobbie has been at IU for some time now. He even implemented a plan in 2000 to replace all IU computers every 3 years.

http://chronicle.com/free/2000/11/2000112901t.htm

Doesn't that seem like a short cycle. Their reasoning is that the warranty for the PC is 3 years so therefore, a 3 year replacement cycle... Silly me for thinking that just because the warranty is up doesn't mean you should throw it out. I wonder if Microsoft's Software Assurance isn't involved here since that too is a 3 year cycle.

The good news is that he's been at IU for a while and didn't just come over from being on ChaCha's board. Still, seems like he might have financial ties to ChaCha and therefore have a conflict of interest.

LoB

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[Locutus]

yes, I found that he's been at IU for over 7 years and didn't just jump into the IU Presidents position from the board at ChaCha. And you're right, I was just shooting from the hip since there wasn't enough info in the article to determine otherwise.

BTW, it's just too easy to bash Microsoft and besides, they deserve every bit of it they get. That's a fact and not opinion. :-/

LoB

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're right, I was just shooting from the hip since there wasn't enough info in the article to determine otherwise.

U R TEH DECIDER

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[zymano]

This can work for top sites that specialize in your topic.

your right about ranking a billion pages.

Google is being spammed on some topics.

Yes the IU president looks corrupt but we all learn from Congress and our government.

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[TapeCutter]

I wouldn't read much into the three year thing, that's pretty much standard all over the western world. Over here in Australia it's got more to do with the 3yr depretiation of PC's for tax purposes than the 3mth - 1yr warranties.

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[bigbigbison]

We aren't "forced" to use it but we can download Office for "free" and Vista Business costs $15 and Ultimate cost something like $20 or $25 at the bookstore.

I'm certain that Microsoft doesn't give IU faculty and students such a discount purely out of love. I would be willing to bet that we pay for it in one way or another.

By the time most people graduate they have been getting MS products legally for free or very cheap for so long they haven't tried anything else and just automatically keep using MS products.

Re:You can't spell "corruption" without IU

[Locutus]

and to think that they were found guilty of anti-competitive tactics based on anti-trust laws yet still allowed to make sweetheart deals like those. Yes, let's rebuild Iraq just like America... :-/

LoB

"People powered"?

[iminplaya]

Wouldn't it be better just to give out a phone number to connect you to the "next available operator"? At least have the site play some nice Muzak while you wait for the results. Interrupting with the occasional "All our operators are currently occupied. Your call will be answered in the order received. Please hold."

"Paid guides"
I can see where this will lead. Nothing like a little "commission" to influence said "guide".

And I think Bezos should let what's left of his hair grow out, get a perm, and dye it bright red.

And quickly!

[khasim]

IU's guides could be asked to locate a building on campus, find a book in one of the university's libraries or solve a question about Windows Vista.

Hmmmm, free tech support! And we all know how well people doing tech support are treated.

Students, faculty and the public could ask the IU guides questions, said Brad Wheeler, IU's vice president for information technology. But he isn't worried about them getting overwhelmed. "If it ever became a huge problem, we can gate it," he said.

So, they stick a bunch of people with tech support responsibilities ... and when that bogs down they restrict the number of calls to them.

And yes, that is what will happen.

The only way this will survive is when the "support" people start telling their "customers" to purchase 3rd party software and such from companies that have purchased "ad time" on those "support" people.

"Hello, I'm running Windows Vista and it won't boot up."
"Have you tried the extreme refreshment of Mountain Dew? Many people who use Windows Vista prefer Mountain Dew."
"Will that help me fix Vista?"
"It might. It couldn't hurt. May I also recommend some Dominoes Pizza?"
"Thanks, I'm not hungry."
"Dominoes Pizza is having a special offer today on pepperoni pizzas."
"Okay, I'll order some pizza. How about my Vista problem?"
"Symantec sells a wide range of software products designed to facilitate and enrich your Vista experience."
click

Re:And quickly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would guess the point is that people aren't doing the tech support. The search engine does the tech support, but the results are populated by humans. It won't take long for all the common queries to have authoritative answers. I don't know how they keep things up to date though.

Re:And quickly!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a IU resident, I'll have you know we'll be signing up Papa John's, not Domino's. Hmph.

KooL, Its Abt Time to Dump EVIL Google :)

[Tech.Luver]

KooL. Its really about time to dump EVIL google.

Fanbois(people that can NOT think independently & just like to follow herds/charismatic cult leader) ur hatemails are welcome. This applies to ONLY those who are.

Re:KooL, Its Abt Time to Dump EVIL Google :)

[tomhudson]

At least google gets the answer to the most important question in the world right. It IS "42"!

Re:KooL, Its Abt Time to Dump EVIL Google :)

[LnxAddct]

Don't forget the number of horns on a unicorn.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Who cares? Are you fucking joking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, not him. Or myself...or anyone I know.

Interesting Concepts

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the pleasure to interview with ChaCha early this year, my general feeling is that they certainly have potential to shake things up in the search engine market (No this is not a paid spot, I did not take the job).

As you might suspect I am under a NDA about their technology and can not comment specifically. I will say that everyone I met there at the "Yellow House" has a vision to grow ChaCha into a powerful player in the market. From what I could tell the work environment at ChaCha is everything one might imagine of what I would call a Web 2.5 company, a very relaxed work place conveying an environment of productivity, creativity, and professionalism. Ultimately I choose to pursue a different career path; it was a tough decision that I may grow to regret in the next couple years. I look forward to seeing the technologies in the development pipeline come to fruition.

The final assessment (at least mine) and perhaps the reason for this post is to point out that ChaCha's technology is nothing to laugh at. Their vision for the future of search could--and has been--called revolutionary. I wouldn't be so quick to discount them as some of the /.ers above have.

Re:Interesting Concepts

[pthor1231]

What exactly is revolutionary about their "vision" of search? They have guided searches? Great, so I can get someone who probably is dumber than I am to search the web for me, and then give the results back to me. Not to mention their non-guided searches have sponsored for money links sprinkled in with the results, only indicated by the "Sponspored by" in front of the URL. To top that bag of shit off, a guy that used to sit on the Board of Directors is using his new position to muscle ChaCha's way into a new area. Talk about conflict of interest.

Re:Interesting Concepts

[tkiesel]

Shill 2.0

Mix in just enough equivocation and try to hit that magic balance between healthy skepticism and mindless sycophancy.

Working hard to try and fly beneath the bullshit detectors out there. But you overplayed it, I think, with:

Ultimately I choose to pursue a different career path; it was a tough decision that I may grow to regret in the next couple years. I look forward to seeing the technologies in the development pipeline come to fruition.

Re:Interesting Concepts

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not just about the people powered search. Everyone focuses on that, and all in all it is what they want people to focus on. I think the more interesting part is the ranking system that is in use. Again I said I could not talk about it and will not. Suffice it say that they are not just using meta crawlers. Other technologies for ranking is at play.

Re:Interesting Concepts

[pthor1231]

No, that doesn't suffice for me, and I'm willing to bet all the other /.'ers that are belittling this company. They have no signs that tell you that they are working on this new bad ass searching technology, and try to get people to focus on this gimmick of "guided" searches. In the mean time, they are simply copying google's format, and even worse, deceptively placing sponsored ads in the results.

I was a ChaCha guide...

[sykopomp]

Only thing ChaCha is really useful over Google is for the 'epic lulz'. Messing with ChaCha guides is amazing, and I bet the university will stop using ChaCha guided searches when a bunch of students start asking for pictures of lemonparty. Hint: they couldn't actually ban someone from the service last I checked. ;)

Re:I was a ChaCha guide...

[Anonymous Coward]

We even got people on the inside working as Chacha guides eventually. It's been a while since I've seen a chacha thread now that I think about it.

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm puzzled by the benefits of this. IU, like other large establishments, sets up web pages and other tools so that instead of needing to have humans answer questions, computers can index things.
This article cites the benefits of having a human guide such as

"IU's guides could be asked to locate a building on campus", (use a campus map)

"find a book in one of the university's libraries" (use a library web page)or

"solve a question about Windows Vista (use Microsoft s knowledge base)".

Then IU does the asinine thing of replacing search results compiled by google appliances with human filtered ones. How much revenue does this give to cha-cha?

Woo hoo, the Orange Catholic Search Engine!

[zippthorne]

It's like I always say, "Why can't the world be more like a Frank Herbert novel."

Well actually, not always. But once, in my head, while typing. I didn't give much thought to punctuation, though.

Re:Woo hoo, the Orange Catholic Search Engine!

[Jerf]

Suddenly, I want a "This site is powered by MENTATS " badge for my website. (It's a terrible strain on their wrists to put out the pages live like that, but they're very highly trained.)

ChaCha

[Anonymous Coward]

can suck it! Try to be a bit more original. Creating new search engines is quite old and besides, Google works just fine.

They could save a ton of money.

[ScrewMaster]

Come Monday, no more Indiana University searches will be powered by computer-driven Google. Only by people-powered ChaCha.

If they took a page (ahem!) out of Google's book and used pigeons instead.

Re:They could save a ton of money.

[Zantetsuken]

Hell, I thought you were going to tell 'em to switch to Geico...

ChaCha founder sure has a huge ego

[Anonymous Coward]

All this guy does is come up with amazing ideas and create successful companies around them. Ever heard of voice mail? Well, when Scott was only 25, his company Boston Technology invented the system used by nearly all the telephone companies around the globe. He started Escient, later transformed into Gracenote, which led the development of music recognition technology. He also founded IndyRobotics, which built one of the world's premier self-driving vehicles. And now he's created ChaCha. What's next for Scott? We can only imagine.

Obligatory Beavis AND Butthead quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Beavis: Diarrhea, ChaChaCha
Butthead: Diarrhea, ChaChaCha
Daria: You guys seriously need to get a life.

How does it differ from downloading term papers?

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Seriously though, who knows? Maybe enough people suck at searching to make this service worthwhile

Given that much of modern intellectual life has degenerated into seeing who can come up with the best Google searches [or PubMed searches, or arXiv searches, or whatever], how does hiring someone to do your searching for you differ from hiring someone to write your term papers for you?

Cha Cha Ching

[phalse phace]

for ChaCha

Yahoo - again after ?? a decade

[no-body]

Wasn't this how Yahoo started - people searching for good information on the Internet and making it available on web pages.

Me thinks, this ChaCha may become a very big yawn after a short while && AI search optimization may be the future. Google and M$ apparently are knitting on it.
Seems ChaCha already has a bottleneck with CPU acquisition:

Please note, due to the thousands of applications we receive each week, we will respond to you as quickly as we can, but please be patient as we search for outstanding individuals to join our growing community!

Puffing up egos: "Outstanding individuals"....pffff!

IN.gov also uses cha cha

[Chapium]

Indiana's government website also uses Cha Cha. Coincidence? I think not. http://ingov.chacha.com/search/query?query_text=

Re:IN.gov also uses cha cha

[wicka]

ChaCha is based in Indiana (Carmel, to be exact). It's just the a state government's natural prejudice towards putting money back into the state economy. That could be one of the reasons IU has switched to it, given that it's a public university. By the way, I use IU's Google search quite often, and it sucks. Badly. You can't find anything you're looking for. Perhaps it's the nature of the information their site has, but they probably think that ChaCha will work better.

Re:IN.gov also uses cha cha

[macs4all]

I call shennanigans.

I use the state.in.gov site quite frequently, and noticed for the first time last week that the former search was replaced with "Powered by Cha Cha". Things don't happen that fast without someone pushing them. And I guarantee that IU's Board and the Indiana Technology Department (or whatever it is called) are far-enough apart in their NORMAL decision-making process, that this should NOT have happened so close together, time-wise.

No, there is back-room dealing going on here, for sure. And Indiana has a long, long, LONG history of deep-seated corruption and cronyism.

So, what is YOUR connection to Cha Cha?

Re:IN.gov also uses cha cha

[springbox]

That's weird because my university uses Google for searching their site and it actually works quite well.

Re:IN.gov also uses cha cha

[wicka]

"No, there is back-room dealing going on here, for sure. And Indiana has a long, long, LONG history of deep-seated corruption and cronyism. So, what is YOUR connection to Cha Cha?" Two of the most ignorant statements ever put to text...

Re:IN.gov also uses cha cha

[macs4all]

Actually, that was two statements and one question; so who's "ignorant" now?

However, please forgive my early-morning lack of sentence composition. I thought that most people reading my first statement (regarding back-room dealing) would recognize the tone as a SARCASTIC one. As for the other two (one is a question, not a statement), I think they stand as valid:

1. Indiana has a long history of deep-seated corruption and cronyism.

2. What is YOUR connection to Cha Cha?

BTW, I believe that the question begs an answer; so what is it?

Re:IN.gov also uses cha cha

[wicka]

I'm 18 and I go to IU, you ridiculous motherfucker.

Re:IN.gov also uses cha cha

[macs4all]

Ah, 18. That explains your incredible lack of wit.

For the record, I am neither ridiculous, nor have I ever fucked anyone's mother.

By the way, you might notice that what IU's president did was a DIRECT violation of Indiana Law AND IU Personnel policies.

NOW who's being ridiculous?

Re:IN.gov also uses cha cha

[wicka]

You're not ridiculous? You tried to imply I was a secret ChaCha agent because I posted an opinion that was counter to and far more well informed than yours. You're not just ridiculous, you're borderline insane.

meanwhile on an obscure website at the end of the

[martin-boundary]

Googlebotter: It's people. IU Search is made out of people. They're making their index out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding them like cattle for links. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!

Slashdotter: I promise, bottie, I promise. I'll tell the geeks.

Googlebotter: You tell everybody. Listen to me, Slashdotter. You've gotta tell them! IU search is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!

Re:Yahoo - again after ?? a decade

[bigbigbison]

Yahoo was a directory, like a yellow pages. Chacha is search combined with chat. If you can't find something you will talk to a real person.

Why something like ChaCha will never thrive

[Z0mb1eman]

http://xkcd.net/155/

Link should speak for itself.

Re:Why something like ChaCha will never thrive

[Mode_Locrian]

That's a hilarious comic--thanks for the link.

Re:Why something like ChaCha will never thrive

[springbox]

Good old AOL search parody. "how to tell if my neighbors are raptors." Classic.

ChaCha founder is an IU grad

[bigbigbison]

The only reason why IU is interested in ChaCha is because it was started by Scott A. Jones who is an IU grad (and also the founder of Gracenote).

The thought of making library and tech support people essentially chacha employees is a bit disturbing but students and faculty have been able to contact them through chat and instant messenger so perhaps it won't really make any difference as long as only IU people can contact them.

More proprietary shenanigans

[letchhausen]

Great, so some fucks at one shitheel company are trying to get it over the fucks at another shitheel company. Yawn. The only thing interesting here is the lack of ethics at IU.....

What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Former CEO of some defense company becomes Secretary of Defense and approves multi-billion dollar contract to that company?

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[schon]

how does hiring someone to do your searching for you differ from hiring someone to write your term papers for you? I'm pretty sure that nobody gets graded on how good their searches are. :)

I can't blame them...

[jambarama]

As a new IU student, let me say this can't hurt. This isn't too surprising to me, while google is great for getting valuable search results from gobs of pages, it really hasn't been designed or optimized to work with few pages. The IU results with the google search are so irrelevant they are worthless. This isn't a troll, I use google for web searches, but try it yourself here and search for course offerings, or course catalog, or list of courses. Garbage results mostly. I found the same was true of the BYU search--it was google and it was terrible.

The summary sounds like there is a conflict of interest for sure, so I can't say ChaCha was the right replacement (ads mixed with search results?!? sounds evil to me). But I can say a replacement/fix/something had to be done.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Anonymous Coward]

As some who does web development at a University with a Google Appliance, all I can say is blame the web developers. They're obviously not doing a good job naming pages, titling, linking, etc, so Google can pick up the clues to help people find things. It works great for us, and it can even be fine tuned so certain keywords can bring up certain pages automatically.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Culture20]

I've discovered the exact opposite to be true. I've been an IU student/staff member for more than a decade, and have only in the last couple weeks gotten ridiculous results in my searches. Searching UITS's site for certain information is impossible now. I'm lucky I can remember a lot of URLs if I think hard enough.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Creepy Crawler]

As speaking from Columbus next door, IUPUC has its head stuck up their asses when it comes to IU mandate.

Back in 2001, we had 350 MHz machines with 128 and 256 MB. They mandated us with a switch from NT4 (which worked great and kept games and crap off) to 2000. Slow-city. A year and a half later, we were mandated for XP. For the same FARKING machines.

They also had serious problems with Windows Messenger spam coming from within the IU network. Of course, the drop-dead easy solution of turning off Windows Messenger service was too above their comprehension to do.

Next, the uni uses ADS and Kerberos for auth. IUPUC auths with ads.iupui.edu over a T-1. Guess what happens when you flood the T-1? Nobody logs in. I tried to tell them, but they learned the hard way when a bunch of techies from the IU side kazaa-ed the T-1 down. Heads rolled, and they finally took my suggestion: dont disable local guest or admin. Just password them heavily in that authorized people could still use the doorstops... computers.

Pretty much, you end up with "If you cant do, teach. If you cant teach, work in IT."

Coming from a CompSci dropout. Chem is better by far.

And a side note: No wonder they fired the old IU president. Guess the old one wouldnt take kickbacks.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Creepy Crawler]

You know, something like a google search of:

site=uits.iu.edu searchterm

will work fairly well, as Google still indexes it. Just use the "advanced features", or hop on to searchlores.org and learn how to search properly.

20 hrs of searchlores from Fravia and company will teach you 99.9% more about information theory than any class at IU will ever teach. Hell, I was teaching the librarians at the Learning Center how to properly search. Yes... IU grads from the information theory school (or whatever they call it).

Re:I can't blame them...

[bigbigbison]

The last IU pres didn't get fired, he retired. ...which was announced right in the middle of a controversy over failing to find a new provost (I think that was the position) when everyone wanted the dean to get it and then the dean left to be president of another school. But the decision to retire wasn't related at all...

Re:I can't blame them...

[Creepy Crawler]

Heh heh heh.

He WAS fired. You should know that very public officals never get "fired", in that they are encouraged for retirement.

Trust me. According to many people in the know at IUPUC and IUB campuses, he was fired.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sighs...

Left-brain Slashdot types really, really, really, really don't get sarcasm, do they?

It's a little sad. The English language is this amazingly beautiful instrument that can be so full and rich. And they'd prefer everything to read like a user manual.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Culture20]

Thank you for your off topic response. I've been searching for information properly since before you used gopher junior.
My gripe is that the default search on IU's websites is no longer using google with a "site=". Instead, it's using ChaCha. It's causing me headaches because people keep phoning me for info that they used to be able to search for easily.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Creepy Crawler]

---Only if you are an idiot. Mandate means they won't support it. I have several NT4 machines still running as servers. Actually, I migrated 3 of these to a single server using virtual servers. A lot more secure than XP. I can lock out almost anything that is a problem. The only thing even exposed is Port 80 and 441 (?I forget...its the HTTPS port). The only thing exposed on the server is a port to SSH and command line. The machines are SERIOUSLY fast in this configuration.

Good thing I'm not an idiot. I stopped working for the uni after seeing how even the sys-ad was an imbecile (the new one is just as bad... but not a communist).

I use virtual servers for some testing purposes at home for older games.. of all things ;) All of them run nicely under Xen. Did I mention that it's free ;D

---I believe a good deal of those 350s came from my office though...sorry about that. IUPUC generally gets our hand me downs.

Yeah, they were beige boxes with 6 gig drives in them. Digital was the computer manufacturer. The machines were pretty much junk, but I did like the thumb-screw cases. They were nice to strip and fix.

---As for Messaging -- if you were a tech, you should have just done a group policy.

I worked on the purdue side. We had NO rights on the network, aside our user/pass. Couldnt even reset fucking passwords. And then we had the "weird-ass password jumble mandate". So much for my old 30 digit long numeric password.

---I hated IT though. I hated working with UITS. I hated working with Bloomington. IU is almost always happy with my suggestions and quick to enact them until they find out my main office is at IUPUI...and then it is stalling and blocking. I should use my @Indiana account as opposed to @IUPUI.

Obviously. IUB is full of elitist idiots. The uits mandatory disk for new students screwed up my gf's laptop in that she had to take it to their main hq. They reformatted it without backing up or even letting her know.

---Of all the regional campuses, Bloomington is the only one that I have problems with, and this isn't relegated to IT. I stopped being IT in 2003 (I manage a completely different area of my department after it was shown the staff who were in charge were incompetent...my suggestion firing them, the administrations suggestion was that I manage them and let attrition handle the dirty work...in 30 years). But the problems with BL go far beyond just the tech. I have legal agreements in place at almost all the state universities for information sharing and regional IUs, but not BL.

Its just sad. Im just a student and the way they treat everybody here at IUPUC is just horrible. I know most of the staff and profs, and they maintain that working for that administration just plainly sucks. Even the janitors are fed up with their crap (like theft of "mandatory parking" out of their paychecks).

---And regardless of what the others below say, the former president was fired and you are entirely correct. The last president was a honest man and he wanted to fix the problems with BL vs. EVERYONE ELSE. BL Faculty and Staff didn't like this and ganged up against him.

---BTW there are also quite a few of us kicking ass each and every day to make it a better place for students.

Im glad there is. I see them whenever I go to school. Good luck.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Creepy Crawler]

Boy. You sure sound like an elitist prick.

So, you work in IU administration?

Re:I can't blame them...

[Culture20]

Heck no, I'm a BOFH, baby. ;D

Re:I can't blame them...

[jambarama]

I'm not as young as you think. I'm not going to IU for undergrad, but for my 3rd degree--this time a law degree. So don't assume I'm in the 18-24 range, I'm not.

ChaCha still figuring out compensation

[Anonymous Coward]

However, Jones said ChaCha still is hashing out the compensation details. "We'd be happy to pay them. We pay our other guides. But who's getting paid? IU? The guides? Is it a bonus?" Come on that's obvious: Michael McRobbie, the IU president, is to person who'll get paid. I knew from friends in the IU PhD program that some parts of the life science department was taking money on the side to 'guide' research, but I'd never thought that this goes up all the way to the university president.

3 strikes

[Fletch]

I'd never heard of ChaCha. I just did a search for the first time and noticed that 1) sponsored results are inline and poorly marked (there's some suble green "sponsored by" text within an otherwise ordinary looking search result). That might have been forgiven, but 2) the sponsored results for this particular query weren't actually very relevant. Then, when I tried to click through a real result I found that 3) they use javascript for their result links, and it's implemented in such a way that I can't command-click on a result and open it in a new tab (it does open in a new tab, but the original tab loads the result page, too).

I won't be back.

Re:3 strikes

[edschurr]

Get Firefox, Greasemonkey, and change the page to your liking. If the service has any merit anyway, and you have the time...

Re:3 strikes

[Creepy Crawler]

Why bother? There's hundreds of search engines.

Try this link for a few engines to search with. And that is only the main search engines. You also have regional, compound, local and live to go through.

Re:3 strikes

[QuietObserver]

I performed a number of searches with both Cha-Cha and Google to see what came up, and I had varied responses. When I searched the phrase 'Ill Booten Gotty' without quotes, Google showed a M*A*S*H reference as the fourth result, the fifth being a secondary link to the same site, whereas Cha-Cha didn't find a M*A*S*H link until the seventeenth result, though I will admit the next was the nineteenth (there were no sponsored links that I could see, though many of the links seemed very irrelevant to my query).

I also performed a search for M*A*S*H character 'Sidney Freedman', again without quotes, for which both engines first gave me a M*A*S*H result, but Google gave me nine relevant results, none of which included duplicate entries, whereas Cha-Cha gave me eight relevant results, including two references to the same article (the only difference was one link included the title Dr before the name while the other didn't; Google's engine seems to have recognized that both files are identical, except that one of them is a redirected link). The thirteenth link Cha-Cha gave me seemed to have no relevance to my search parameters at all; it referred to another person with the first name Sidney, but showed no reference to Freedman search parameter, while Google's first thirty or more references all referred to people named Sidney Freedman or Sidney Friedman (the latter is an acceptable response to me, as the name is pronounced the same, and therefore Google's engine is simply trying to take all possibilities into account).

Finally, I looked up "White Hole" (including the quotes); Google, which performed its search much faster, found two references to the popular British sci-fi comedy series 'Red Dwarf', which had an episode with that title, among the first six, of which all of the others appeared to be relevant to astronomical theory behind white holes. Cha-Cha's results were similar in failure to the 'Ill Gotten Booty' search; the British series didn't appear until the nineteenth entry, and only three of the first six links pointed to the astronomical theory (two of the first six were ads, and they seemed completely irrelevant to my search criteria).

I'm not sure about the javascript link comment, however, as the main Wikipedia White Hole page, a reference to the astronomical theory, opened as an ordinary link would. Nevertheless, I don't see Cha-Cha as being even half as good as Google, and I don't know why anyone would go to their university's homepage to do research for their projects at school; maybe to the library homepage, but if I need to hunt for relevant internet documents, I just go directly to Google; I've never been particularly disappointed once I figured out what I needed to type in.

Clich here to report conflict of interest

[Animats]

To report a conflict of interest involving an employee of the State of Indiana, click here.

Relevant documents:

• Indiana University Conflict of Interest Policy
• Indiana Code, "Bribery, Conflict of Interest, and Official Misconduct"

Re:Clich here to report conflict of interest

[macs4all]

Thanks for researching the links!

Here is what I just posted to our (Indiana's) do-nothing "Inspector General":

See the article on Slashdot.org (link below), and keep in mind that, all of a sudden, as of only a week or so ago, I noticed that the www.in.gov site's searches were ALSO powered by the AD SPONSORED search engine, "Cha Cha". I believe that this is a violation of IC 35-44-1-1 et seq., as well as, in the case of the IU board, as a State Funded university, its Personnel policies against Conflict of Interest (which also cite the Indiana Code section IC 35-44-1-3).

I have also alerted members of the local media of this glaring Conflict of Interest; so you might not want to simply "bury" this issue, as you have a history of doing with so many that are brought to your office's attention.

Kind Regards,

See these web links for more information:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/05/013320 9

http://www.in.gov/legislative/ic/code/title35/ar44 /ch1.html

http://www.indiana.edu/~uhrs/policies/uwide/coi.ht m

And then I sent the same message to several local news outlets. Let's see what happens...

Re:Clich here to report conflict of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you sent this to the Herald Times, the University's PR outlet, I wouldn't expect them to even hint at any wrong doing.

Re:Clich here to report conflict of interest

[macs4all]

No, I sent it to several of the major news outlets in Indiana, as well as the IG's "hotline". How stupid do you think I am?

Re:Clich here to report conflict of interest

[photomonkey]

If Indiana is anything like Arizona, the president of the university is not a state employee, but rather an appointee of a Board of Regents or College of Deans. The Board of Regents here are a semi-private business, that does report to the governor and whose members are appointed by the governor, but maintains its own control over the university employees, including the president.

beat it. human guide is better than computer index

[z-j-y]

finally, we'll get the answer to the question, "what do women want?"

If I were a ChaCha guide...

[russotto]

I'd tell you to just F*(&'n Google it!

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[TapeCutter]

"I'm pretty sure that nobody gets graded on how good their searches are."

Contrary to popular opinion a respectable degree does not simply cram as many facts into your head as will fit. A university degree is supposed to give one the skills to find known answers to a question, any question!

Should Hold A Raffle

[kbsoftware]

Clearly there is a conflict of interest to just mention one of the problems with this move. So how long will Michael McRobbie remain IU president. We should hold a raffle, or maybe a contest I bet he's a goner by November of this year :)

No Guides!

[Chet Simpson]

I've been trying to search for the Chode Compressor for the last hour and not one "guide" had been available. Pretty useless if you ask me.

Chacha

[falconwolf]

I honestly didn't know anyone used ChaCha for anything besides screwing with the people. There have been epic forum threads based on ChaCha.

This is the first tyme I've heard of the Chacha SE, but now that I have I'll check it out, I frequently check out new SEs I hear about.

Falcon

Wikipedia guy is trying it also

[zymano]

The problem though with these ideas is that I don't want to help search engines when I don't get paid.

To be fair, it's two different search problems

[Xthlc]

Intranets and The Internet are two different beasts when it comes to search. Intranet pages are much more tightly controlled, the set of all pages is quite sparse, and the "importance" of a page doesn't necessarily correspond to its value as a search result. PageRank (even tuned for these conditions) just isn't as effective as it is on the public Internet; you want to tune search results for each organization based on how people actually use their intranet. I think the Google Search Appliance actually does this (refining the order of its results based on clickthroughs) but I'm unsure.

In my company (a very big and globe-spanning one), our intranet search is more-or-less useless. However, many people use an internal social bookmarking application. Searching this set of links is leaps and bounds more useful, and tends to return the result I'm looking for in the first half of the first page. A lot of these links are on obscure little pages hidden away on our massive intranet, which describe, say, how to fill out a massive form the right way, or how to hack around a particular quirk in our IT infrastructure. In other words, things that employees think are important, rather than things that management thinks are important.

Which is not to say that I think ChaCha at IU is a good thing. By all accounts this situation sounds like a terrible conflict of interest. However, I don't think that simply pointing Google at your organization's intranet is going to solve all your problems; instead, you want a smart blend of automated page ranking and social filtering to get around the problems caused by the (relatively) smaller sample set.

Cha-Cha is owned by Scott Jones

[Anonymous Coward]

aka... Gracenote...

Not Too Surprising

[Matty_]

Not too surprising to me being that ChaCha is based here in the Indianapolis area. I guess IU just likes to keep their searching local.

Google is fuckin fast!

[porkThreeWays]

I was thinking Chode Compressor was a new internet joke I hadn't heard of yet so I googled it. Two hours after your comment google has already indexed it and you are the proud owner of the top link for chode compressor. Congrats sir!

Re:Google is fuckin fast!

[Chet Simpson]

That's how Google is. It probably is the next big internet joke we just don't know it yet :D

The bigger picture

[sufijazz]

There are 2 elements to the bigger picture related to this story:
1. The overall quality of search still has a long way to go. Ask has tried to do some innovative things. Vivisimo is another great example. But even today it is difficult to get the specific information that you need. Search is in desperate need for a (r)evolution. Some geeks may not like the idea of The Algorithm being replaced by humans but think about it for a minute. What are all the huge indexes of search engines really worth? At the end of the day, even if Google finds 200,000 results for a query the users look at the first 4-5. Or maybe the top 10 results. How many users go beyond that? So eventually any search engine that displays good quality top 10 results is going to be a hit. Seems to me that people-powered sites like ChaCha and Wikia can do at least that.

2. Models like Wikia search engine and ChaCha and YouTube rely on user generated content. These sites have not sorted out the payment issue yet. The environment is ripe for a PayPal-like service to manage micropayments to users for all these sites. This service will tie up with all sites that want to compensate their users for content (or any other contribution). The users get a single account to manage these finances. This also makes the pot bigger for the user. The service can even create a virtual currency of their own.

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[Anonymous Coward]

A university degree is supposed to give one the skills to find known answers to a question, any question! What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[TapeCutter]

According to D.Adams 42 - but we are still checking the result.

pagerank ignorance

[pedantic bore]

I guess if you don't understand the math behind Google's pagerank then you might be unimformed enough to buy into the idea that people can "guide" you through billions of pieces of data...that are constantly changing.

I guess if you don't understand the math behind Google's pagerandk then you might be uninformed enough to not know that this is exactly what pagerank does!

People make decisions about what to link to what, and what to click on... and pagerank just observes and later regurgitates this info.

An answer to why people use it

[ds_job]

I came home the other night and the dog had eaten some foam packing from a parcel that had been delivered earlier that day. The girlfriend was very concerned about this to the point of phoning the vets (where she works) to check on out of hours availability.
I came in, looked at the foam and said "That's okay, it made from some kind of food stuff. Look when you put water on it, it kind of dissolves. She should be okay."
However, I had to prove it was safe and it is almost impossible to quickly use Google to get the answer (You get lots on packing for food stuffs not packing made from foodstuffs.)
ChaCha was the answer. I tried once, waited a bit and got someone who said it couldn't be fund and then clicked me off. But the second person was helpful, thorough and ultimately succeeded in finding a page which showed that you can get packaging made from cornstarch and the dog would not need surgery.
I could have been on Google for hours but ChaCha took all the pain out of it and did it quicker than I could. If ever I need something and can't face searching lists of search engines, reporting other search engines, reporting peoples web pages reporting the original search engine etc. etc. I go to ChaCha.

But as to how they get a business model out of it, I am none the wiser.

Re:An answer to why people use it

[Anonymous Coward]

it is almost impossible to quickly use Google to get the answer

depends on how you look, i found this in three words

http://www.google.com/search?q=edible+foam+packing

Re:An answer to why people use it

[ds_job]

That's the problem. You chose three words whereas I chose a slightly different three words.
Apparently these are called "peanuts" which I would never have guessed. I could have chosen Expanded or honeycomb instead of foam, and Foodstuff or food instead of edible and they would have given different answers. In fact, I did search for a while myself before I went to ChaCha and the first guide drew a blank and the second one finally got what I wanted. Having the human element is what helps this search engine because they can choose different phraseology to get different results and save me a spit load of time and energy.

Re:An answer to why people use it

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically, you had a serious question about your dog's health. You girlfriend said "lets ask a professional" You said "lets ask an IU librarian instead" And, when the first one said "I don't know" you just asked a second one. Fine, your way was cheaper. You get what you pay for, though.

Re:An answer to why people use it

[ds_job]

I'm not saying that I trust librarians over veterinarians (by the time I was involved, it was fairly obvious that the dog was not suffering any ill effects and we had been told to just monitor her progress. I was just placating my girlfriend) I am saying that I needed to find something on the internet that said either "foam packaging can be polystyrene or corn starch" or "Buy our packaging material. You may choose between polystyrene or cornstarch." When I was searching myself, I just got loads of links for plastic food cartons and chip wrappers and other stuff which matched my query but not what I wanted.
The Internet is not a substitute for professional advice, but just using Google without a very precise search term gives you too many unhelpful results. Using ChaCha helped me because they did the winnowing, they did the going down dead ends and I caught up on e-mail whilst they were doing it. They are like academic research assistants: They do the leg work and give you the stuff you need to know and not the stuff you don't.
But I think we have veered a little from swapping Google to ChaCha, so I will stop now.

So what is special about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to fuss about the hook up some university head is giving to the company...

But what exactly is special about the ChaChaCha service itself? If I need a "guide" for my searching, it's not much more effort going on IRC and finding someone who may know something in conjunction with being able to copy and paste links. Then you have the combined power of two people googling at once with a shared knowledge base. (And perhaps one is more skilled at searching or sorting out chaff to get the relevant information instead of useless spam sites.) And this is usually done for free 99% of the time. (Somebody in a chat full of lurkers feels satisfied for being useful on occasion, which is typically payment enough.)

And if you want to use a human powered search engine without the guide bit, there's always the Open Directory Project

Re:Yahoo - again after ?? a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

So how long before it gets outsourced to India?

So many levels

[QuietLagoon]

This is funny on so many levels:

Conflict of [former] interest.

Pushing mediocrity upon the poor people who visit the University's website.

The stunning incompetency of the search service.

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[pantherace]

I'll disagree, but not for the same reasons. If you have a reference which contains something you want, you'll need to search out where to find it. Be it at your local library (thankfully, the most common case), on the Internet (and then roll the die to see if it's one of the ones your university has paid for.), or via interlibrary loan. (And hope it gets to you by the end of the semester, sometimes it won't even more than a month after the request is submitted)

If there's some critical piece of information that you should have included in your term paper, you might (and, honestly, should) get marked down. As such, one might well argue that it's your search that's at fault.

In a paper that's actually submitted, you'd BETTER know the subject, including what other people have done, and you'd better find those papers before you try to publish.

Sounds abhorrent at every level

[smchris]

Perhaps the solution is to let the President work for Ca Ca full time?

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[Asmor]

Actually, my first semester of college I got stuck in a hybrid English course, which was half in-class and half online.

One of the things the professor tried to teach was how to effectively search, which I think is a fairly important skill.

Of course, that's about the only thing that I felt that class did well at... I dropped out of it after a couple weeks because I hated the professor and the curriculum and the fact that we were supposed to use some book he wrote about using the internet and it was obvious he knew only slightly more than average (which is to say, not very much at all) about it.

But I digress. I'll never understand why people have so much trouble using search engines and constructing an effective search statement, but I think it's quite possibly the single most important skill a person can learn. I think that it should be a part of high school curriculum, never mind college.

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[br14n420]

Contrary to popular opinion a respectable degree does not simply cram as many facts into your head as will fit. A university degree is supposed to give one the skills to find known answers to a question, any question! Well, it does teach an excellent lesson. If you are making $180k/yr, is it less expensive to sit there on the clock fishing through mountains of bullshit on Google, or sub out the work to a subordinate to do the work and come back with a nicely put together report? The answer is simply "yeah, you are going to save money having some monkey do the monkey work."

One could easily use the same logic to say that use of a secretary or executive assistant to do the things you don't have the time to deal with and still accomplish your primary objectives for the day.

I do think ChaCha is garbage, but I don't think it is cheating.

A final thought comes to mind that I didn't wedge in above: Today's students are a bit different than those of previous generations. I recall most students not having full-time jobs and getting far more than 4 hours of sleep a night between school/work/social activities back in my day. Anything to lessen the load and give a more accurate model of life in the professional world is a good thing.

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[bberens]

Well, it's 42 according to the Google Calculator so it must be true.

First part of a multi-part saga

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article, Later this month, IU will draft hundreds of librarians and information technology employees to be "credentialed" ChaCha guides for the university's Web sites.

This is only the beginning of watching a major failure at IU. Wait until the IU employees are told that they have to be chacha guides next month. This will require them to keep a window open on their desktop and I would bet that chacha guide ratings are somehow incorporated with their job performance ratings.

This results in IU employees being used to perform work for an outside company.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!

[Macgruder]

So what you're saying is, you blew the money-shot?

State of Indiana too

[nurb432]

They have moved to it as well, as ChaCha is a local Indiana company ( last i heard ).

chacha is fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Status: Connecting ...
Status: Looking for a guide ...
Status: Connected to guide: Melody(4627)
Melody(4627): Welcome to ChaCha!
Melody(4627): Hello!
You: hi there
Melody(4627): How can I help you?
You: im looking for images primarily for a school project
Melody(4627): Images of what?
You: latina sluts beastiality
You: im doing a report on polio
You: ahh nm
You: i just found www.lemonparty.org
You: great resource for students
You: thanks anyways melody
You: :)))))))
You: Thanks, I'm done.
Status: Session ended.

It is ad-laden, for example...

[JambisJubilee]

Yeah, looks like it's exactly like Google but with a ton of ads ("sponsored links") disguised as search results. Do the following searches for "stokes scattering":

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=stokes+scatte ring&btnG=Google+Search
http://search.chacha.com/search/query?query=stokes +scattering&search=ChaCha+Search&tid=&rid=&mode=we b&page_num=1

Notice something? All of Google's links are (surprise) about stokes scattering. Compare with some of ChaCha's results:
1. Dignified Ash Scattering. Burial at sea in MidAtlantic New Jersey Waters, Family owned/operated.
4. Stokes Ringtones. Download Complimentary Stokes Ringtones Instantly.
8. Stokes. Over 11 million pieces of china, crystal & silver - old & new.

Thanks but no thanks, ChaCha. This is really disgusting. Here's the seventh link from a search on "raman scattering":

7. Raman Scattering. Find and Compare prices on raman scattering at Smarter.com.

Yahoo! Directory

[oohshiny]

It's Yahoo! Directory all over again, but this time misusing university employees to do the work.

google clone

[jshriverWVU]

Did anyone else notice the chacha looks nearly identical to google. Will definitely try it out.

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[chimpo13]

And having the education to know when your monkey is feeding you bananas.

Dating...

[adyus]

Google heartbroken, quoted as saying IU just looking for rebound date.
 

The reason Google has nothing to fear.

[dswensen]

This won't fly for one very simple reason.

"I Googled it."

"I, uh... Cha-Cha'd... it."

I rest my case.

Is this April 1st? Some thoughts on ChaCha

[Acer500]

Wait... it's past April 1st... so this might actually be a real story.

ChaCha is a joke, they always direct you to Wikipedia whenever possible (I guess there's worse things), and refuse to answer some questions (I live in Uruguay so they're worthless for me).

My brother had a blog post on ChaCha http://mrhathouse.blogspot.com/2006/12/maybe-not-b rightest-idea-ive-ever.html

so let me quote:

" When they can't direct you to the most obviously generic site, they start the trial and error process which consists in linking you to the most random pages hoping one of them contains the information you were looking for.

Not the best use for your time, we all know that Google didn't become a verb by linking people to garbage."
If the IU website is so horrible to search, why not maintain a local search engine for the website only? Also, do they know you can filter Google searches to only include results from a certain webpage?

ChaCha is an Indiana Company

[Aaron M. Renn]

ChaCha is based in Indianapolis and is backed by Scott Jones, a local tech entrepreneur who made his fortune as one of the co-inventors of voice mail. Given the relatively small number of tech companies in Indiana and the desire of the state to diversify its economy away from manufacturing, it doesn't seem too unreasonable that the state government and a leading university would back a home grown company.

Just remember

[Trogre]

In Indiana no one can hear you ChaCha, Cha.

Really such a bad idea?

[baby_robots]

While no one can argue that google is a great tool for general web searches, the google-sponsored search within the main IU site is not really on the ball. Having access to a person familiar with the campus giving me a direct answer would be better than wading through pages of useless links to find any information at all. I'm not saying they should kill google altogether, but it would be nice to have a human alternative in aggravating situations when you just can't seem to find what you want.

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[schon]

A university degree is supposed to give one the skills to find known answers to a question Yes, but you don't get graded on these skills.

You get graded on how well you integrate the results and show that you understand them.

So who put their whowhodilly into this ChaCha?

[Bushido Hacks]

Who created it? Why does it look similar to an Ask.com?

If you are going to use something that looks similar to Ask.com, why not use it?

Conflict of Interest, anyone?

[gevantry]

So. A university president who is a public employee is going to force other public employees to donate time paid for by tax payers to enhance the profile of a private for-profit company that the university president has a board-of-directors interest (or former interest) in. Aside from the glaring conflict of interest, does anyone see a short tenure as university president in the cards for that over-educated idiot? Does anyone see lawsuits and possible criminal charges concerning misappropriation of State funds? Maybe the university president is spending too much time over at the bar enjoying happy hour.

Re:How does it differ from downloading term papers

[TapeCutter]

Why do you think Goggle products are still in Beta?

Question 1 in class this fall

[ICLKennyG]

Incoming L1 in the 2010 Law class at IU. Question one on Wednesday, August 22nd in my Ethics 101 class will be:

"What are the ethical implications of a former CEO of a floundering company taking a job at a new large institution and then mandating that it use the failing company's technology at a major increase in cost with negligible potential benefit and substantial increase in risk while still retaining stock in the previous company?"

So much for not being known as the smart ass at my new school.

How is this different than google answers

[salesgeek]

Does anyone know how Cha Cha is really different from other "guide" or answer services like Google Answers?

Sucks

[Chris whatever]

I dont know about anyone but other than the fact that it's not google it sucks, i tried searching some stuff and it does not understand "è" "é" it changes them so the search is fruitless.

If they insist on making it for just one language (english) it's bound to fail.

the only thing it had was the video search but hey! if you cant be better than google right there right now, you should not advertise

Don't we already have this?

[FishinDave]

I think it's been called USENET for a while now. Operates on the same principle as Santa Claus and Jesus: ask, and ye shall receive.

I used it recently to find a PC Card-format USB hub that wouldn't physically block the second slot on my notebook. Not only did I get a link to exactly such a product within 24 hours, but my "guide" sold me his card for ten bucks delivered, in contrast to the $70 to $90 that people have been paying for it on eBay lately.

It seems that ChaCha offers a compensation plan of sorts, so why would it be "unlikely" that IU's staff would not received any money? Who is scarfing that money?

Mahalo?

[Mangelwulf]

Wouldn't they do better to use Mahalo? Gives the same human guided search result for a particular keyword, but in a better, non ad filled way . . .

ChaCha = MLM = Pyramid Scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the whole reason the president of I.U. wants to use ChaCha is because he is involved in the pyramid scheme as a whole. Anyone can signup to be a ChaCha guide and then signup others to earn commissions off of their sales. Typical pyramid scheme deal where the ones at the top are bringing in all the loot. Total conflict of interest if you ask me.

IU and ChaCha Partnership Podcast

[justindk]

Here's a podcast (vodcast) of the press conference that explains the partnership in more detail. It's a little dry up until about 10:00 minutes (or 16:00 if you don't care about the genesis of ChaCha). https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/group/63494 4c1-c20e-4181-00bb-4a74f07be469/podcasts/IU%20and% 20Cha%20Cha%20Partnership%20Press%20Conference.m4v Enjoy!

Re:MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

I laughed so hard that I blew Johnnie Walker blue label through my nose. For those of you who don't know, it's $30 dollars per shot. Wow, it's thirty dollars dollars per shot? That's like 30 dollars squared!