Lately there's been a swirl of buzz about Powerset, a stealth natural language processing search engine. Last week they released their first "Query of the week". Today we discovered that Powerset is launching Powerlabs (screenshot below), plus we got our hands on a second query. Here are the screenshots, neither of which has been seen before elsewhere:
A screenshot of the Powerlabs interface [Ed: does that dashboard really have the P-word in its menu?!]
The second Powersets query to be released
The Powerlabs program will take the Web community inside Powerset's development as an ongoing feedback and information portal, for groups of people who Co-founder Steve Newcomb terms "Powerlabbers".
Powerset is one of the most anticipated startups of 2007, but so little has really been revealed from behind their doors, and news coverage of the company essentially came to a standstill back in March. Powerset is a Silicon Valley company that received $12.5 million in series A funding back in November of 2006. The company founders - CEO Barney Pell, COO Steve Newcomb and Product Architect Lorenzo Thione - envision utilizing breakthrough technologies to provide more intuitive searches via natural language. The goal and end point are not dissimilar from those of Hakia and some others, but the technology and "middleware" will be vastly different, as we shall see. Hopefully our coverage of the Powerlabs program will enable us to differentiate Powerset from other search endeavors.
Powerlabs has been established to inform the Web 2.0 community and to gain feedback during the intermediate and subsequent stages of the engine's development. Powerset is following the track of other extraordinary startups in that they are working incrementally, meticulously and with feedback generated by the Internet community. A small group of people will test drive elements as they come online and the numbers of Powerlabbers will increase as scalability permits.
The big news today is that "it is on it's way"; and we will bring you a ringside seat to developments as they happen. Mark Johnson, Powerlabs Product Manager mailed us today with Steve's latest and there will be weekly updates and goodies for Powerset fans. So for now, we wanted to provide you with the very first inside look at Powerset in development. We are looking forward to the design competitions, demo tests and a whole series of surprises that these "rocket scientists" have in store. You can sign up for Powerlabs here and also see a cool video sneak peek here.
Be advised the image above is of the Powerlabs interface, but the Powerset engine will be much more typical of a search engine like Hakia (unless of course the community can come up with a better suggestion, and I already have one).
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Exclusive: Launch of Powerlabs, Plus More Powerset Screenshots.
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We got some great news today from Powerset today, that the much awaited "natural search" engine will be operating Powerlabs to get feedback and inform the Internet community. Co-founder Steve Newcomb provided us with the first look inside th... Read More
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Hey Phil, thanks for the post and a good representation of what we are trying to do. Send me a note, I'd love to talk.
Posted by: Steve Newcomb | June 14, 2007 8:26 PMAll this hype for what. There's a lot of people who already do NL search.
Posted by: Cary | June 14, 2007 8:27 PMThis is quite a scoop! I haven't been able to get past the invitation stage yet!
Really looking forward to trying this engine out.. and NOT for the "P" word in the screenshot ;-)
Great job Phil.
Posted by: Robert Sanzalone | June 14, 2007 9:30 PMThanks Robert, as always I appreciate your thoughts and praise. You are the best man!
Steve, we are very impressed with what you are trying to accomplish. I am personally intrigued and supportive because of the fine people you have assembled and the relative difficulty of your task and how you are going about it. Like my friends at Hakia and Wikia the resultant art will probably astound many.
Cary I hope you can catch a glimpse of the intricacy of what all these innovators are building. What we have now in terms of real language search is but a shadow of what is coming I believe. It is a difficult subject to breach and very difficult to describe. My first talks with Riza Berkan made me feel like an idiot and I have been an engineer for 30 years.
Posted by: Phil Butler | June 14, 2007 11:56 PMI am always intrigued as to the amount of money invested for startups, and the fact they rely on the free input of the Web 2.0 crowd for test driving and feedback from the Internet community.
Sign me up Phil.
Posted by: digitalnomad | June 15, 2007 8:28 AMPS- Congrats on the scoop.
Posted by: digitalnomad | June 15, 2007 8:29 AM