Category Archives: General

Wired Article on Bing

I just came across a Wired article today on a new search push from Microsoft, which will supposedly be named Bing. It touches on some of the issues that we were discussing in yesterday’s comment thread, in particular:  People thought … Continue reading

Posted in Exploratory Search, General | 2 Comments

Machine Learning and Search: Action or Reaction?

I have a question that has been bothering me, kicking around in my head, for at least half a decade now.  And I can’t seem to come to any solid conclusion on it. I suppose it can’t hurt to throw … Continue reading

Posted in General, Information Retrieval Foundations | 13 Comments

Week Links, Volume 1

This was a particularly busy week, and I did not get a chance to post many thoughts.  Instead, I’ll do a quick roundup of articles that I enjoyed reading this past week+. First, a tongue-in-cheek post from Nick Carr entitled … Continue reading

Posted in General | 2 Comments

Opposite Day

Two pieces of recent news have my head spinning. Both are instances of technology companies acting in exactly the opposite manner from their ideals (and public statements). The first is Microsoft announcement of an open-source version of BigTable:  Instead of creating … Continue reading

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Personal Branding and Search Results Integrity

Google is an information retrieval company that prides itself on the purity of its results.  It does not allow the integrity of its ranked list ordering to be tampered with by sponsored results. It also has claimed for years that … Continue reading

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Do You Rotate Your Search Engine Usage?

It is good practice to rotate the mattress on your bed, to prevent lopsided wear-and-tear from shortening its useful life.  The same thing applies to car tires; they need rotating.  Smart travelers know to rotate the airlines from which they … Continue reading

Posted in General, Social Implications | 1 Comment

The Tyranny of Simplicity

One of my ongoing frustrations with modern, consumer-facing information organization and retrieval systems is the way in which functionality is often sacrificed in the name of simplicity. Full functionality under the rubric of simplicity is a laudable goal, and I … Continue reading

Posted in General, Information Retrieval Foundations | 12 Comments

World Pinhole Photography Day

While the focus of this blog is the retrieval of existing information, from music to images to videos to text, every once it a while it is nice to create new information as well.  In that spirit I decided to … Continue reading

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Google Similar Images: Only 20%?!

A few days ago, Google launched “similar image search” functionality.  From TechCrunch: A new 20% time Google project has just launched called Google Similar Images. It’s pretty self-explanatory — when you search for an image and find one close to … Continue reading

Posted in General, Information Retrieval Foundations | 3 Comments

Researcher on Fire

Over the past month and a half, computer science researcher and UQAM Professor Daniel Lemire has been on fire.  He’s written a series of blog posts on what it means to do research and be involved with a research community. … Continue reading

Posted in General | 5 Comments