A new natural language search engine is launched as Powerset. In this site natural language search has two characteristic. First of all, you can enter keywords like you would with any other search engine. But Powerset can also handle phrases and questions. But Powerset’s semantic tools go far beyond that. As an example, if you search for “paintings by Dali,” the search engine will understand that you are looking for paintings, and if it can find some images, it will put them at the the top of the page.  Right now Powerset searches exactly one site. You can still find a ton of useful information because this site is Wikipedia. But you’re going to have more luck with queries like “who shot Lincoln?” than “when will the 3G iPhone be released.”  Powerset will bring up a sidebar tool that lets you view either an outline of the article or “Factz,” that are typically some of the key points in an article when you click through to read a Wikipedia article.  If you click on a fact, you’ll be taken immediately to the relevant part of the Wikipedia article. It works quite well as an advanced search tool for a single site like Wikipedia.
[via GigaOm]

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Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 12:33 pm | by Kur-nia-one |