Monthly Archives: February 2009

Searching and Advertising

One of my interests in the information retrieval arena is the relationship between search and advertising.  Over on the FXPAL blog I posted a thought, and a quick experiment, related to this topic.  Here is an excerpt: The search engine … Continue reading

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And just like that..

..I’ve changed my domain.  I liked Jeff Dalton’s suggestions, to switch from wiakli.net to irgupf.com.  So if you’ve got me in your feed reader, please make the switch, and apologies for the sudden change.  wiakli.net as a domain should remain … Continue reading

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Empty Calories

A couple of days ago I made reference to a KQED Forum show on the 40th anniversary of the Personal Computer.  In listening closer to that program, a couple of the guests made comments about the “empty calories” applications and … Continue reading

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Music and Exploratory Search

One of my early, longstanding information retrieval passions is Music Information Retrieval — especially content-based music IR.  I began research in MIR back in 1998 as a graduate student at UMass Amherst.  In 2000, we organized the very first ISMIR … Continue reading

Posted in Music IR | 2 Comments

What is a “Gupf”?

The title of this blog is “Information Retrieval Gupf”.  I’ll wager that more than a few of you are wondering what a Gupf is. Gupf is an Austrian slang/dialect form of the high German word “Gipfel”, which means “peak” or … Continue reading

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One Click Away

Daniel Tunkelang pointed me to a NYT article on the growing power, and therefore growing public unwariness, of Google.  The article makes a number of points, but what struck me most was the pseudo-repartee between Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, … Continue reading

Posted in General, Social Implications | 6 Comments

The 10-speed and the Tricycle

Over the next few weeks I would like to begin laying out the theme of this blog. I’ve been thinking about exactly what it is I would like to say, and what would be of value to discuss with the … Continue reading

Posted in Information Retrieval Foundations | 3 Comments

Jumping in

Over the years, Greg Linden, Jeff Dalton, and Daniel Tunkelang have asked me to stop reduce commenting on their blogs, get out there and start one myself. While I am still not convinced that the world needs yet another blog, … Continue reading

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