A while back, I wrote about a super-powered cloud-based search, Algolia. I loved it while I was able to use it, but my trial expired and the price tag was abit steep for a personal blog. I reverted to Dave's Wordpress Live Search, which did a great job, but didn't have all the bells and whistles of Algolia. Today, I received an email from the Algolia team announcing Algolia … [Read more...]
Driving Relevance: A 3-pronged Approach
I've been involved with an initiative to transform search and information discovery at a company for a while now. We're trying some really groundbreaking things, but it ultimately comes down to getting the right information to the user when the ask for it, and we tend to call this relevance. Relevance is a tricky thing because, to a large degree, it is contextual. There are … [Read more...]
Algolia: Super-powered Search In The Cloud Made Simple
The other day, a colleague alerted me to an article on techcrunch about a new cloud-based search service, Algolia. Algolia will index your site and then provide an API to integrate search into your site with millisecond response times. The promised effect is not unlike OS X's Spotlight, including thumbnails and categorized results. I decided to check it out on this blog. I … [Read more...]
Your Enterprise Search Sucks (& 4 Steps To Make It Suck Less)
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Go ahead, say it: "Our search sucks." Research shows that almost 2/3 of people are dissatisfied with their enterprise search options. That's a troubling number - more troubling when you consider that, as knowledge workers, our biggest expenditure of time is related to finding and consuming relevant information. There … [Read more...]
Google Knowledge Graph: Clustering On Crack
One of the big problems with most search technology is that it still functions in a Web 1.0 way. For instance, you type in your search term and hit enter; when results come back, you scan for what you want and if it you can't find it, you enter a new search term and hit enter again. It's kind of like Battleship - you take a shot where you think something is and then find out if … [Read more...]
Google Instant Search: Backing into semantics
What It Is Google recently released its Google Instant search product. It is basically a recommendation engine on steroids. The way it works is that, as you type, search terms are recommended; starting with the first letter. For instance, typing "W" will present you with the weather forecast based on your geographic location. That's because it assumes the word you are … [Read more...]
WolframAlpha update
So, WolframAlpha has been out a while now and I've had several chances to use it. Occasionally, I've used it when I needed it. It always takes a while for a tool to take root in my psyche. Occasionally, a tool proves itself so useful that it takes root quickly (like Google, back in the day). WolframAlpha has proven itself to be that useful. The power is that you ask a … [Read more...]