Powerset Launches!

Powerset, which provides a new relationship with web data via innovative interfaces and natural language processing, launched this evening. Take a look at this video:

I'll write more later, but for now, check out other posts I've made on Powerset and NLP. I'll try to keep abreast of the commentary as it comes in. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for Fernando to pounce.

Update: ok, some comments. A couple of things that people are going to get hung up on. Firstly, writers seem to be referring to the technology as context or contextual search - why not call it NLP. Not sure where that is coming from. Secondly (actually, this is more important) pundits are going to write about the wikipedia-only issue. They're not getting it. 90% of search results come from a tiny fraction of web pages due to the huge redundancy on the web and the differences between searcher needs and author/publisher intents. The task isn't to always search that huge set, but to get the answers to the user.

Comments

[Angus]

Interesting, but I'm still not convinced Natural Language brings that much to the table. At least not yet.

My Example:
http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=Where+is+the+tallest+mountain+in+the+world%3F&x=0&y=0
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Where+is+the+tallest+mountain+in+the+world

Google 1, PowerSet 0. Maybe someone can find me a similar query (not in the demo materials) which displays the power here...

[Kevin Burton]

Yes.... but to get the answers to the user you need a large enough corpus. Search has a long tail.....

[FD]

90% of micro-averaged coverage is very different from 90% of macro-averaged coverage by query is even more different from 90% of macro-averaged coverage by individual.