"future of search" entries

Search Notes: The future of advertising could get really personal

Google mines data for more predictions, Yahoo and Bing evolve the search experience, and how search could change advertising.

In the latest Search Notes: A look at how Google is using its data to make even more predictions; Yahoo and Bing continue to evolve their search experiences; and a look at how search could change advertising and help a few other industries along the way.

Search Notes: The future is mobile. And self-driving cars

Foursquare 3.0 and local search, Google's mobile search dominance, and awesome autonomous cars.

In the latest edition of Search Notes: How Foursquare 3.0 could shape personalization and local search, and a look at Google's mobile search dominance. Plus: self-driving cars, just because they're amazing.

Computers are looking back at us

The mouse's days are numbered. Researchers have developed laptops controlled by eye movement.

Tobii Technology is testing prototype laptops that use eye-tracking technology that replaces a mouse — and they think it might just be ready for mass-market consumption.

Smarter search looks for influence rather than links

A Princeton search algorithm uses language indicators to measure importance.

A search algorithm being developed by Princeton University researchers parses language to determine relevance. Academic application is one possibility, but this type of algorithm could also extend to news recommendations.

Watson and the future of machine learning

Watson opens the door to conversations, not just answers.

Now that we can build machines that can answer tough and ambiguous questions, the next step is to realize that the answer to a question isn't the end of the process.

"We need tools that can help people have their ideas faster"

Aditi Muralidharan on improving discovery and building intuition into search.

Ph.D. student Aditi Muralidharan aims to make life easier for researchers and scientists with WordSeer, a text analysis tool that examines and visualizes language use patterns.

Hacking online advertising

Two recent ads contradict common attitudes and hint at something bigger.

Grand and bold declarations about the demise of online advertising — and the web itself — get all the attention. But two recent ads serve as countermeasures to the gloom: hackers are calibrating online advertising to serve their own specific needs.

Thousands of workers are standing by

CrowdFlower's Lukas Biewald on crowdsourced work and the state of human-machine relations.

The definition of work has changed dramatically in recently years. Where jobs used to be defined by place and time, now many types of work can be tackled by anyone, anywhere. Lukas Biewald, CEO of labor-on-demand company CrowdFlower and a speaker at next month's Web 2.0 Expo in New York, is at the center of the labor shift. He discusses the pros and cons of crowdsourced labor in the following Q&A.

Augmented reality as etiquette coach

Alasdair Allan has a practical goal for AR: putting names to faces.

Alasdair Allen, author of Programming iPhone Sensors, says real-time facial identification — the sort that pairs names and faces on the fly — is closer than you might think. He expands on that topic and a number of others in this video interview.