In the beginning, there was the search engine. You typed in a search term, clicked Search, and were presented with tens of thousands of links. It was good.
But not good enough. No one has time to look through tens of thousands of links. So search engines have been scrambling to provide innovations that get you information faster, more precisely, and more enjoyably than ever before. Some are succeeding, and some are just innovating, coming up with new twists on search technology that, at worst, are interesting and, at best, give you a compelling way to find exactly what you're looking for in the least amount of time. The best innovations are downright addictive.
Take Answers.com (www.answers.com), for instance. Instead of providing you with a list of links, Answers.com gives you "answers." You are given intelligent results from actual Web pages based upon your search words -- and you don't have to click any links to get the results.
Let's say you're looking for information about Ernest Hemingway. Type the search term "Ernest Hemingway" into Answers.com, click Go, and almost immediately you'll get an overview of Hemingway's life, his writings, important dates, a photograph, and biographical selections from several sources on the Internet. All of the information is presented stylishly, too, in a form that's appealing to the eye. Each section of information is annotated at the end with links for further material on the Internet. And to get this information, you've had to click no links.
Search engine newcomer Clusty (www.clusty.com), operated by Vivisimo, offers Web site previews when you click on a magnifying glass image under each returned link. Clusty believes that it can dramatically improve search by doing the work of organizing, or clustering, search results for you.
In Clusty, a search for French philosopher and author Albert Camus, for instance, results in your usual list of links.
But alongside those links, a "cluster panel" appears with topics such as "existentialism," "quotes," "bibliography," and "myth of Sisyphus." You can cluster any search term by topic, source, or URL (Web address).
With the amount of innovation occurring in the search engine field these days, you'd never know that the dot-com boom supposedly came to an end just after 2000. And the best news for Internet users everywhere is that while Google and Yahoo are still far and away the most popular search engines, smaller newcomers are providing head-turning functionality that's sure to keep the leaders looking over their shoulders.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure