Techcrunch40 Session 1 – Search and Discovery

This first set is from the search and discovery. Reload this page to see the latest info – I will note when the post is complete.

Powerset

• they check every single word and phrase on the web –
• they parse the web
• powerset is learning from the web
• today they are opening powerset labs – explore technology, share ideas, feed the learning engine, improve your search karma
• Includes quotes to search wikipedia, business to search wikipedia for company info and powermouse for searching facts from wikipedia
• the powerset labs seems to use wikipedia – they show a search results with powerset vs. other guys
• they ask you to vote which is better – helps them build the better results
• voting helps you earn brownie points for powerset labs
• Powermouse shows you connections between x thing and y thing – their example is hulk hogan "defeated"  and then showed katrina related to new orleans – this looks pretty cool – also showed paris hilton related to sex
• i cant tell for sure but it looks like the search is only from wikipedia
• its still not live btw – i dont get it

Cognitive Code

• It’s Symbolically, isolated, linguistically, variable, intelligence, algorithms
• Its  a virtual woman’s face and he has a conversation with the face
• Reminds me of that movie with will smith irobot
• he tells her to open a wod doc and she opens it
• they should have done a pre-recorded demo – it didnt pick it up correctly
• the program extracts the meaning from what you say so you dont have to say the same thing every time – it seems smarter but the voice is still boring :)
• she says she could be used for call centers or educational applications
• can be deployed anywhere – toys, games, mobile devices, web servers, custom embedded
• well recognized brands at the ceo shows will be demoing silvia technology inside
• to find out more – go to www.cognitivecode.com

CastTV

• they want to index all of the videos on the web
• they take you to the most relevant result
• team is husband and wife
• video search involves lots of tough and interesting challenges
• casttv is solving these challenges with their platform

Faroo

• it’s a p2p search
• i dont know if i understand what this does honestly
• but it seems to use everyones pc to generate the search engine instead of needing millions of servers – they claim this will save $1B in costs
• they have a sidebar for additional results using the p2p search engine
• you can change the contributed resources for each user

Viewdle

• Viewdle is a search that is a revolutionary digital face recognition software
• has been developed over 35 years???
• it tells you who the face is of as you watch a video – seems interesting
• you can jump inside a video to just the parts where x person is
• they are partnered with reuters labs
• opening the platform using widgets so anyone can leverage the platform
• allen’s question – what happens if you jump to a face in the video and pass the ad at the beginning?

Panel discussion

Mark Andressen – most of the startups compete with Google – how do you get people to another site and distribution?

• powerset - its about creating new opportunities, if you are better then users will come and refer their friends

Chris Anderson – the p2p search was the most interesting

Om Malik – in most of the p2p systems, people will turn off sharing of resources – how do you overcome that and how do you get people to join it

• faroo p2p search  – self-interest makes people not want to turn off the resources

Marissa Mayer – I would like to know more about your matching algo for the video search engines

• casttv - we have been scaling as the video market grows – relevancy is a very tough problem – we are matching 3rd party sites and supplementing the meta data
• viewdle – matches faces and its not just a collection of pictures, we dont store the videos on our site, we just keep the index and just refernce the point in the video stream

Ryan Block – Most people have used a chat bot before – you basically have 5 seconds before people think its a crappy widget – do you see your product working better as an enabler for other technologies vs and end-all tech?

• cognitive code – oh yes, we plan to do that – this is just the first launch vehicle – we are looking to enable silvia to more complex data behind the scenes

Jason to Om – which of these companies will be around in 5 years and which will be acquired?

• Om – casttv – most likely to be acquired they have solved the issue of video discovery
• Om – cognitive code – most likely to be around in 5 years
• Om – powerset is my middle of the road pick
• Om – faroo is very interesting – just wondering how many people will join the network
• Om – viewdle – reuters will buy them

Jason to Marissa – do you believe people will never switch off Google?

• Marisa – the switching costs for low – the challenge is that google is a one-stop shop, its hard to be just a one technology shop
• Marisa – casttv seems to be very solid on freshness and using clustering technology

Jason to Mark – which would you invest in?

• Mark – I am an investor in CastTV – hum, why not put him on a different panel?
• Mark - they all have big goals which can make it scary
• Mark – I would put all 4 in the potential bucket but i would need more time to review

I thought the panel was going to give feedback on the actual demos and apps, not an open discussion. There are also a lot people standing – must be crazy to stand considering you might have paid $2,500.

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