True Knowledge
Like most people, I use Google most of the time when I need to find some information. I do my unit conversions in Google too – if you didn’t know how to do that, you can simply type in "20 km in miles" or "10 usd in lkr" into the query box and you’ll be provided with the correct conversion. But what about the times when I need specific information? Like say Sir Issac Newton’s birthday?
What I’d normally do is go to Wikipedia, look up Sir Issac Newton and find the information. It’s not that hard but it could get a bit complicated if I misspelt the name or if I’m looking for somebody who might not be listed on Wikipedia yet. And then there’s things like "How old is Michael Jackson?". Nothing that I knew of, till now, would give me that answer because it’s an ever changing answer.
Well, that’s where True Knowledge comes in 🙂 It *can* tell me how old Michael Jackson is! In fact, it is a new search engine which tries to answer your questions with a direct result rather than a list of search results which might (or might not) have the answer you’re looking for. You should really take a look at their demo video to get a clearer overview of the capabilities (and goals) of the search engine than my not very clear or concise explanation 🙂
True Knowledge does a lot more than tell you how old Michael Jackson is. It can answer questions by inferring the answer using the facts in its database. If True Knowledge does not have the answer, you can even submit a correct answer yourself and expand the extents of the information contained in their database. Pretty cool 🙂
The search engine is in beta at the moment and so you need to get an invite from them to participate in the beta testing. However, it is well worth testing out if you are geek just to see where search engine technology is headed 🙂
Well seeing as I’m not a geek I’ll be sure to stay away from it <> <<
Nope, no geek here that’s interested in finding the answers to my unique geek like questions <> <<
*quietly signs up without anyone noticing*
LOL. OK, maybe putting “geek” in there wasn’t such a good thing :p But I really am interested in a geeky sort of way by how new information is added to True Knowledge (go through the process and you’ll see what I mean) as well as how the system arrives at an answer to a question …
There is a show steps (or something similar) button which shows how the system deduced the answer and it is really neat to see the full deduction process 🙂