DEMO Trend: The Smarter Web (Part 2)
Part Two of a Two-Part Series. Part one can be found here.
At this month's DEMO 09 conference, one of the most apparent trends was the emergence of several new intelligent web services. In this transitional period between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 (or whatever it is that comes next), the tools of the future are just now being revealed. Although at first glance some of these services and applications may seem somewhat incomplete, in many cases they actually represent years' worth of work to have reached the point they're at now. These are no simple Web 2.0 applications; these are highly complex and intelligent tools of tomorrow's smarter web.
Yesterday, we examined a handful of services which represent this emerging class of intelligent services and today we'll look at a couple more.
A.I.-Powered Shopping (Gazaro)
Gazaro is a new service that lets you make what they call "personal sales fliers." Instead of sifting through the local paper to find the latest deals, you just tell Gazaro what sorts of products you're interested in. The service then scours the web for the best deals and presents its findings in a clean, easy-to-read interface. But Gazaro isn't simply a price comparison engine. It's a really smart one.
Gazaro knows that a "camera" is a "camera" or that an "LCD" is an "LCD." It's not doing simple keyword matching, it really understands the difference. In other words, you'll never get results for a camera lens or camera accessories when you're searching for just a camera because Gazaro knows those are not the same things.
The reason it can differentiate between items is because it's powered by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) on the back end. In this case, "A.I." is no buzzword - the company was incubated by Apption Software who had developed A.I. technology for use in the enterprise. They realized that the same technology could deliver value in a consumer application as well, and from there came Gazaro.
When Gazaro goes out and crawls the internet, it compares the items it finds to the items it already knows in order to determine what exactly the new items are. If it encounters something it doesn't know, it makes an educated guess using its A.I. "brain." And the more it crawls, the more it learns.
After identifying what an item is, Gazaro then determines if the item found is actually a good deal. How good of a deal it is or not is represented with the "Gazaro Deal Score." These deal ratings are based on Gazaro's knowledge of historical prices, how often an item goes on sale, what other retailers are selling it for now and what they've sold it for in the past. All that analysis is done using the A.I. technology in order to rate the deal on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best deal.
To the consumer using the system, the complexity of what the A.I. is doing is all hidden behind the scenes. The end user only sees a simple interface where they can enter in the items they're shopping for and then find the best prices. Gazaro can also alert users to new sales and deals using email, RSS, or Twitter. At the moment, Gazaro is for consumer electronics shopping only, but in time the system could expand and learn more product categories.
Understanding Intentions (Primal Fusion)
Another company of interest is Primal Fusion whose new "thought networking" service is a semantic technology platform designed to help you research the subjects that interest you. Unfortunately, "thought networking" is a buzzword-sounding phrase that doesn't really convey what the system does. Primal Fusion essentially is an alternative to doing traditional web searches when you want to learn about a particular topic.
Once signed up for the Primal Fusion service, you enter in your topic in the search box provided and you'll see a tag cloud of words appear which are relevant to the word you initially searched on. You can either select those words by checking them or you can click on the individual words to further drill down into a more specific aspect of the original topic.
In the example they demonstrated today, a student researching climate change might see a tag cloud featuring words and phrases like "pollution," "co2," "greenhouse gases," etc. In addition, the service can also return relevant photos to your topic from sites like Flickr.
Initially, Primal Fusion searches Wikipedia to deliver the tag cloud, but once you have your specific interests checkmarked you can then change a drop-down box to search the web instead. This web searching is done courtesy of a Yahoo BOSS integration and it's here where Primal Fusion one-ups a normal search engine. Instead of just returning the top 5 or 10 results on the original keyword, it sifts through all the results found and returns only those relevant to your specific interests - even if those results would have been pages deep on a normal search query. Whatever Primal Fusion retrieves can then be extracted to a web page, document, or RSS feed. At the moment, Primal Fusion only extracts to web pages - files and feeds will come later. The web pages created by the service are public sites representing your research around a particular topic and are filled with links and images relevant to your query.
Because Primal Fusion comes off as somewhat of a confusing mind-mapping tool, many folks will probably miss the point: Primal Fusion is infrastructure, not an application. The way it understands the relationships between words and phrases and how it can then extract the most relevant search results based on that understanding is what's most important about the company's technology.
Remember: This Is Only the Beginning
If you go out and try most of the services we've profiled in this series, you might walk away feeling a bit disappointed. You'll probably be thinking of all the things the service doesn't do but that you wished it could. Or perhaps you'll find the UI unappealing or the recommendations provided somewhat incomplete. However, It's important to understand that many of these services aren't ready for mainstream use just yet. Instead, they represent the beginnings of tomorrow's web - a web that better understands the data it contains. And by better understanding itself, the new intelligent web of the future can then better understand and serve you.
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I should point out that in my Gazaro screenshot the Griffin case was not something the system knew about yet. I offered to train the service by marking similar items.
I've never heard of Primal Fusion before reading this post, but I REALLY like this idea. I wonder what Google will do if something like this really takes off?
Angela
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I agree that a lot of these services are not ready for prime time, but I think they are promising. Twine still seems to be the leader at this point as far as semantic interest based search aggregation. That having been said, at this point its still a lot more accurate to search for topics in google and them add the favorable results to your rss reader
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Thanks for the feedback on Primal Fusion, Sarah. Your point about mainstream is well-taken; these are very early days for these apps. Even if your readers aren't ready to jump in immediately, stay tuned!
RE: thought networking as buzzword, check out our introduction to the concept here: http://corp.primalfusion.com/blog/?p=17. In our DEMO app, Yahoo was doing the searching; our role is what happens before the search (in dynamically building the thought network for each user) and after (in launching software agents over your thought network to automate activities such as search or building websites).
I'll post details on our blog in the coming weeks and months for those interested in the infrastructure.
To the consumer using the system, the complexity of what the A.I. is doing is all hidden behind the scenes. The end user only sees a simple interface where they can enter in the items they're shopping for and then find the best prices.
This indeed will be a breakthrough.
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I've never heard of Primal Fusion before reading this post, but I REALLY like this idea. I wonder what Google will do if something like this really takes off?Automated Forex
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I love the concept behind Gazaro. Everyone wants to save time and money and what better way than to have your own "smart shopper." I love it! I think many shoppers will find this useful once they expand out of just electronics.
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The Tribal Fusions seems very advanced. It's much like the Sony video/documentary where they stated that by 2010, the normal home computer will be much smarter than any human.
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I wonder when Gazaro will take my favorite Ed Hardy Discount Clothing store into consideration...
Hmm, wow, I really like the idea of Gazaro. How come it hasn't been made into a bigger project yet? A giant like Google, Yahoo or MSN could take it and make it gigantic!
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Web 2.0 is a great concept in search engine optimisation, it plays an important role. acai berry
Wow. This stuff really sounds cool. I especially like the service that Gazaro offers. This will definitely change the way people shop on the web.
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Web 2.0 is the new era in Internet history. Now most of the things are converting into web 2.0.
I've never heard of Primal Fusion before reading this post, but I REALLY like this idea. I wonder what Google will do if something like this really takes off?
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It sounds so complicated but yet still so useful.. I'm going to wait and see the hype become real then we'll all see how good it is.
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That having been said, at this point its still a lot more accurate to search for topics in google and them add the favorable results to your rss reader.....
This seems very complex but very exciting, i am waiting this to become real. I just cannot seem to wait though.
This web searching is done courtesy of a Yahoo BOSS integration and it's here where Primal Fusion one-ups a normal search engine. Instead of just returning the top 5 or 10 results on the original keyword....
Sounds quite useful. It will be interesting to see them evolve.
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hmmm...,
could be interesting
I was thinkin about this topic
thanks for the post.
Hi, interesting post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for blogging. I will probably be coming back to your site. Keep up the good work
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I have heard about Gazaro first time. Thanks for sharing this tool with us. Actually i was looking for this type of tool. I am going to test it. See how it works. Thanks
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Damn this sounds sweet! I just tried Gazaro and it seems to be running on an amazing algorithm. I wish I could code something like that. I can see that website being a huge success. I am just getting started with website create. This is my first website here bad credit loans not even sure if that link will work, lol.
I predict that if this technology takes off and it becomes a true competitor to google, that google will buy them off and make them all millionaires. Google has a very smart strategy of not letting anyone get too far ahead of them.
I just bookmarked this page and will check in about 6 months to see if my prediction comes to fruition. Google Rules!
Gazaro is great, I've been using it since the first week it was put online. Web 3.0 surely seems to be more interesting than we imagined.
Now, with the coming of HTML 5 I'm really geting excited. We will see in 1 years time what are the capabilities.
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could be interesting
I was thinkin about this topic
thanks for the post.
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The Gazaro - power shopping at it's finest! Can't wait to see it in action and how it will impact the merchant's business.
To the consumer using the system, the complexity of what the A.I. is doing is all hidden behind the scenes.
I love the concept behind Gazaro
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I'm not big on sales ads in newspapers.But, if I can get what I'm "looking" for in a clean manor I am game.
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I wonder what Google will do if something like this really takes off?
Thanks for sharing this tool .;)
Mike
Me personally, I think Google will either buy them, or come up with something even better.
Nonetheless Gazaro is an inspiring website to many devs.
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Sounds like a great idea, but how feasible is this ?
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It is amazing to see all of these new developments coming out. The chase for Googles dominance is on and I think it is only a matter of time before someone catches them.
The shopping search features are really cool and it is about time an engine started to filter out irrelevant results rather than focusing on the highest ranking.
The experience needs to be put back onto the user, not the marketer.
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Gazaro will make definitely make the product and product related searches very modern and intelligent. i Like the idea of artificial intelligence into a website. Great
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I've never heard of Primal Fusion before reading this post, but I REALLY like this idea. I wonder what Google will do if something like this really takes off?
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this post has made me comptily excited about web 3.0 . It seems you have done a lot of research before writing .Thanks for this great post will surly mention it to mu users @ my wifi technology blog
Excellent post Sarah. I have to admit I have never done any work with these apps but your post certainly got my curiosity into over drive. Will definitely check these apps out.
I just love web 2.0 and this part looks very appealing to me.. I want to learn more abt it now..
I never heard of Primal Fusion before either. There are a lot of awesome web 2.0 stuff out there that a lot of people don't know about I guess.
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AI is an interesting topic (Even more so than LSI), but one must feed the data set CONTEXT to perform a search that returns valid results.
Let me give you an example using our site "Recumbent Bicycle Source". This is a real dilemma for us because our target visitor is really the person who rides outside on the road.
When a user searches for Recumbent Bike are they looking for a stationary exercise bike or are they looking for a road bike that reclines in a recumbent position? Without CONTEXT this is impossible to determine, as artificial intelligence has to have a data set to work from it can't read minds. BTW Gazaro returned no results for my search so I couldn't validate what I just said within the context of their service.
I'v never heard about it , until i read this post
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I love the concept behind Gazaro. Everyone wants to save time and money and what better way than to have your own "smart shopper." I love it!
I think many shoppers will find this useful once they expand out of just electronics.
The Gazaro sounds like a really great tool. Wonder is this kind of thing will take over the search experience. Althought this seems to be more focused to shopping for products which is not always what people search for.
Unique concept. I like it
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I love the idea. this will be a very helpful tool. thanks
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Very cool web 2.0 stuff. This is the first I have heard of Primal Fusion also, it looks like great technology for sure.
-Sally
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I really enjoy reading your article. Keep it up the good work.
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