Welcome to My Blog

So, who am I and why am I starting this blog?  I'm Jay Budzik, the co-inventor of Watson and CTO of Intellext.  I've spent the past ten years researching and developing intelligent information systems, trying to fix the traditional user experience of search.  You see, we don't think the problem with search is search technology.  The problem with search is that it's not integrated into the user experience.  What is needed is not better search but a total rethinking of what it means to access information.  We need to turn the user experience of search on its head.  Watson is the product of that effort.

When I finished my Ph. D. at Northwestern, I had already proven some of this in principle.  But when we introduced Watson a year ago, we began to show the world we could make it a reality.

As far as search goes, now is a particularly dynamic and challenging time.  The search user experience is seriously broken to begin with.  But on top of that, there's too much information.  As people start making more and more content available online, from traditional publishing initiatives to the individual voices that contribute to the blogosphere.  This proliferation is making search seem even more broken because the stakes are so much higher.

I started this blog to have a place where I can share my thoughts on where we've been and where I think this is headed, share what we're doing about it and hear from people about what they think about all this.

Any feedback woud be great, whether it's topics you'd like this blog to cover or comments on posts.  Please feel free to speak up.

Thanks for checking in.

Comments

[Rafael Sidi]

Dr.Jay (it sounds good), I look forward to reading your insights on the "user experience" topic.

[Alessandro Perilli]

Dr.Jay,
I really think Watson is a revolutionary way of search.

I'm a IT security and virtualization specialist and maintain 2 blogs about these topics.
I do a lot of research during my whole day and Watson now saves me hours, giving me instant coverage of what I'm searching or what I'm going to write on my blogs.

I'm also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (http://mvp.support.microsoft.com) and I extensively talked about Watson to MVP community these months.

Many professionals I know are absolutely enthusiasts of your product and hope to see more soon.

I personally would just see it working with Maxthon (www.maxthon.com), the most famous Internet Explorer mockup, much more powerful than Firefox, Opera or the upcoming IE7.0.

I'll read your blog carefully.

Thanks

Alessandro Perilli, CISSP, MVP
http://www.alessandroperilli.com
http://www.securityzero.com
http://www.virtualization.info

[Nicholas Kaye-Smith]

Personally, I would like to see watson working on Linux.
By the way, when you call Maxthon more poweful than firefox, Alessandro, you forget security (see secunia.com) and firefox extensions.

[Alessandro Perilli]

Nicholas,
I don't think this is the right place to start a browser religion war.
Anyway, just to be clear: I never talked about security. I'm well aware of modern browsers security level, it's my job.

My fault was to use the "powerful" adjective. I was referring to user experience, which should be a main theme on this blog and in Watson product.

I extensively use Firefox extentions and they still cannot provide same level of user interaction Maxthon offers since years (without any plug-in).
I would consider Opera much more evolved in this aspect than Firefox.

I'll be glad to continue this thread by private email.

Alessandro Perilli, CISSP, MVP
http://www.alessandroperilli.com
http://www.securityzero.com
http://www.virtualization.info

[RennyBA]

I think it is a great idea that you start sharing you're knowledge through a blog Dr. Jay. I've subscribed you're RSS feed and then I am uppdated whenever needed even without my computer as I read this feeder on my mobile phone.

Watson has been very usefull to me while writing articles and presentations!

[Manav Sehgal]

Dr. Jay

I think it is very appropriate timing for applications like Watson which are based on current user-context.

As I evaluate this space, I would like to hear your views on how Watson compares with similar tools like Blinkx, particularly in terms of how it handles context-sensitive search?

I am also evaluating Watson currently - however it does not seem to recognize my current context when I am using Firefox 1.5.0.1 or IE 7 beta2. Works fine with Office 2003.

Any suggestions?

Manav Sehgal
http://www.agilemap.com

[Watson]

Manav, we've got an update for FF and we're working on IE7 B2 right now -- if you send email to support at intellext dot com we might be able to get some bits to you early.

We like blinkx because it supports the idea of having content delivered directly to you in context. Blinkx will blink when it has content relevant to what you're working on.

The problem with blinkx is that you can only see content that's indexed in blinkx technologies. In order to get the blinkx user experience, you have to give up your choice of sources and adopt a closed content architecture.

You have to have the blinkx desktop search, and you have to use blinkx web search (which can't compete with 'real' web search in terms of completeness) and blinkx news feeds (what if you prefer another source of news?) and btw, if you want to get blinkx to work with your company's data, then you just can't.

Instead you'll be buying the same product from Autonomy (which feeds blinkx a lot of its search technology). At that point, if you have SharePoint or FAST or Documentum, you're going to have to replace it with all-Autonomy infrastructure. This costs lots of $$$ and headaches, when instead you could use Watson.

Watson doesn't require you change your search back-end. You can layer Watson on top of the systems you already have in place. In the industry this is called federation. (More on this later.)

We also think the search results are more relevant. See, Watson uses models of the applications you're using -- it looks at documents differently depending on what application you're using. That's why you don't see things like Maxathon support come overnight. It's not just a matter of plumbing -- but developing smarts about what information matters based on how users interact with applications. Blinkx/Autonomy don't do this. (More on this later, too!)

Thanks to all of you for your words of support! We'll check out Maxathon, too -- do you have any other favorite apps you'd like to see Watson working with?

-j

[Helge Hasvold]

Jay, congratulations with new blog.

I think your focus on AI is most important these days and Watson is an example of how easily we now take AI into use. The speed of change is accelerating dramatically, and we estimate that in year 2020 knowledge will double every three months. That's a major challenge for every business, and I believe AI will help us out meeting that challenge as well as accelerate the development.

[Manav Sehgal]

Dr. Jay, thanks for your detailed response. It really clarifies many areas I was unclear about. Looks like you have a winner! To answer your question - favorite apps that I would like to see Watson work with. Here's a list prioritized - most important onwards:

1. Browsers: Firefox, IE - latest versions
2. MS-Office apps
3. Popular offline RSS readers
4. Integration with desktop search tools like Google and Copernic
5. Mind Mapping tools like MindJet's product
6. Programming, Development environments like Visual Studio, Eclipse
7. Popular IM Clients

I would also strongly suggest one point which will definitely increase the popularity of your tool.

Please enable free edition to be customized with additional sources like blogs I like, sites I visit regularly, search engines, etc. Better still enable OPML import, linking with social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, integration with RSS readers (on/offline), integration with web clipping tools like Onfolio to determine personalised search sources. This will be a very powerful feature and really lock-in your users.

I am assuming this would not end up being a cost issue for you as most search sources offer free APIs / RSS for search integration.

I am sure your current revenue model for free edition with Sponsored Links plus relevant Shopping links can continue to serve you in this scenario.

Manav Sehgal
http://www.agilemap.com

[Sharon L. Bolding, Ph. D.]

Hi Jay!

Glad to see your blog. Are you going to be at Semantic Technology 2006 in San Jose this year? Take care,

Sharon

[Watson]

Manav, thanks for the ideas. I'd love to see some of these come to fruition. We already integrate with IE (working on 7 now) and Firefox, as well as Windows Desktop Search, Google Desktop Search, and X1, but RSS readers and IM clients would be great. IM is an interresting technical challenge because language in IM is so different. When we brought on Outlook support this was one of our primary challenges.

Thanks again for the feedback!

-j

[Watson]

What offline RSS readers do you like?

[Draicone]

Oh for crying out loud. If I had a penny for every browser debate I saw, I'd be having coffee with Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Seriously. I appreciate all browsers, I'd like to point out that all browsers have their pros and cons, and I would invite die-hard IE/FF fans to look up and listen. IE7 is all very well (although I personally think it's poorly done), and it brings things like tabbed browsing to the masses, but it's too commercialised. FF is near perfect as an app, but as a browser itself it falls down in things like support and error handling. IE6+Maxthon are ok, Maxthon is a safe bet as it gets beyond about 5-25% of IE's security holes and uses a rendering engine many sites are designed for (they shouldn't be, Gecko should really be what they aim for, but who can blame them? 85% of net users don't see the light thanks to Gecko) plus has the features people want. Personally, I have FF1.5, FF1.5.0.1, Maxthone, IE6SP1, IE7B2, Opera 8 and Flock installed, so don't accuse me of bias.