Day: June 18, 2003

More on search from Tim Bray last night. Very short, on a topic I’d like to hear more about from him, based on his experience. I know something about this topic from the user end and the product end, if not the technology end, since I worked on the now un-lamented Snap.com / NBCi.com back in the day. I even ran the search team for about six months, although admittedly more in caretaker mode than active oversight mode… but I learned enough from osmosis and listening to agree that “…it’s much easier to offer a good advanced than simple search.“

Someone on the on the online-news mailing list pointed out that Scopeware offers Vision Search, which is what Gelertner was talking about as an interface (screenshot). Scopeware is by Mirror Worlds Technologies, Gelertner’s company.

Fueled by the research and writings of Dr. David Gelernter, world-renowned Yale professor and our Chief Scientist, and Dr. Eric Freeman, Mirror Worlds Technologies was established in 1997 to develop and commercialize the patented technology based on this premise.

This makes the essay seem a bit more like self-serving marketing, at least in its interface ideas — but still provoking, in the best ways.