Category Archives: General

Watson is just a super search engine

Not like I’m so smart or anything since I’m sure lots of people thought the same thing, but the first thing that went through my mind when I heard about Watson was that it was a search engine disguised as a Jeopardy contestant.

Watson is just a super search engine.

If you’ve ever wondered what search quality/editorial/analysis people like me do at search engines, a big part of our jobs is training and evaluating machine-learning systems like Watson.

Bloglines is closing

I just saw that Ask.com is officially closing Bloglines. Read more here: Bloglines Update. I’m sorry to hear it. I’ve been using Bloglines for 5 or 6 years. The first couple years I checked it obsessively for new articles about search and other interests. Now I check in much less frequently, maybe a couple times a month. But it’s still a good place to catch up on articles that where timeliness is not so important. I’ll have to decide whether to find a new RSS reader. Or not.

supercuil

An interesting new search engine. Supercruil.

LibraryThing

I’m one of those (OK, maybe I’m THE only one) internet librarian types who is coming late to the Library Thing party. Please help me use it. I like it but I’m not really sure why and not sure how exactly I should be using it to take full advantage of it.

So if you’re on there drop me a comment so I can add you as a contact and further explore the site.

thanks!

Gurus, Evangelists, Rockstars, Superstars

Have you seen all those companies looking to hire Gurus, Rockstars, Evangelists, Superstars and Revolutionaries. Really? REALLY?

Imagine your job if the coworker sitting at the next cube is a…

* Guru - do you really want him sitting cross-legged and offering you wisdom and guidance all day?
* Evangelist - and all day long she’s preaching to you.
* Rockstar - do you really want him drinking booze and partying all the time while you’re working?
* Superstar - and while you’re sorting Excel she’s being interviewed by Barbara Walters.
* Revolutionary - and he’s constantly plotting how to take over the company.