Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts

Friday, January 16, 2009

Google v. Powerset search (part III)


Here's a comparison of the two search engines on the search string "flight 1549".
Notice that there is a Wikipedia article about this term. FYI flight 1549 of USAir crashed yesterday over Hudson River luckily with no victims.
Since Powerset only works with wikipedia articles, I thought the term was a good testbed.


The results are pretty disappointing for Powerset. Google yielded the relevant news articles about the flight on the top of its first page. Powerset didn't yield any relevant article in the first page (or as far down as the 5th page; I wouldn't look anywhere deeper than that!):








Powerset results


Ironically, Google listed the "flight 1549" wikipedia article first in its search results effectively beating powerset in its own turf:









Google results


Saturday, February 23, 2008

watching the news...

The next big revolution will be in the direction of exercising judgment when it comes to information. Do I really need a daily depression dose by CNN and newspapers in order to "get it" that the economy is bad and people are losing their jobs and -most crucially- that the government isn't doing much about it? I say stop watching all this negativity and start doing something about it in your daily life: from voting, from questioning political practices, from living "in the present" and tuning in to what's happening around you (CNN won't tell you how many of your neighbors lost their jobs in the last X months). Open your eyes, be present and use judgment and common sense when it comes to "mass media". Above all THINK. Yes, use the substance in your skull that promotes intelligent life. Mass media perpetuate negativity. This is how it is. It's not to blame. It's up to you to "buy it" or not. I say use your own mind and separate yourself from the "mass". Then you have better chances of staying positive and do something in your life that promotes a change to the better.