<nettime> search engines on the move

[geert lovink <geert@desk.nl>]

Dear nettimers,

I am not sure how many of you are following the search engine 'market'.  
It is for sure that it is finally uncool to use Google, for a long list  
of reasons, so people are starting to look for alternatives, which, as  
we know in the case of Microsoft, is easier said than done... Next  
weekend there is a critical search engine event at the Jan van Eijck  
Academy in Maastricht, maybe the debates there will focus on  
alternatives. Through personal contacts I somehow found out about  
Powerset (I am not a professional search engine watcher...). Powerset,  
still in demo mode, is based on semantics and claims to be able to  
'understand' the question you ask their search engine. Is anyone else  
also interested in this topic?

Regards, Geert

http:// www.janvaneyck.nl (the event doesn't seem to have its own URL  
or website)

--

Dear Powerlabbers,

This is an exciting time for Powerset Labs!  We announced at  
TechCrunch40 that we've begun the process of releasing Powerset Labs to  
the public.  About 100 close friends and family of Powerset have been  
using Labs for about a week now and Powerset will be inviting  
additional users into Labs based on the order you signed up.  We've  
been overwhelmed with the demand to try out our technology, so we're  
letting people into the community slowly to make sure that everyone  
gets a great experience and that the community builds organically.  In  
fact, we've already begun to implement ideas from our first 100 users,  
which will help to improve the site when you get your invite! We'll get  
you your invite as soon as we can.

In addition to announcing the grand opening of Powerset Labs, we've  
also shown off the first two technology demos that we're releasing:  
Powermouse and Use Cases.  Though these demos are not full blown search  
applications, they are windows into our natural language technology.  
Unlike other search engines that index keywords, Powerset does a deep  
linguistic analysis on every sentence it reads.  We extract and index  
facts about each sentence in each page, making our index the first  
truly robust semantic index of the web. You can read more about these  
applications in our blog post  
(http://blog.powerset.com/2007/9/17/powerset-launches-powerset-labs-at- 
techcrunch40).

Normally we'd send out an announcement like this to our Powerset Labs  
list first, but we couldn't do so this time because of a press embargo  
with TechCrunch40.

Oh, and you might have noticed that we're now calling it "Powerset  
Labs."  We decided on this change because a lot of people (including  
people at Powerset) were confusing Powerset with Powerlabs.  Go ahead  
and think of "Powerlabs" as a shortened version of "Powerset Labs."

We look forward to getting you your invite code for Powerset Labs soon  
so keep your eye on your inbox!

Cheers!

Mark Johnson
Powerset Labs Product Manager
w: http://www.powerset.com
b: http://deliberateambiguity.typepad.com
e: mark@powerset.com
yahoo: philosophygeek
aim: threnody7

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