Watson 2.3 is here!

Some of you may have noticed we shipped Watson 2.3 last week.  This is a great new version with many enhancements.  One of them is our new drag & drop support.  You can now drag search results from Watson and drop them into the documents you’re working on.  Watson will create a citation like this one:

(Watson found that link for me based on this post I’m writing now.)  You can also drag links from Watson into folders on your desktop, which is a great way to keep a collection of links related to a project you want to visit later.   Just like search doesn’t start when you decide to enter keywords into a search engine,  it doesn’t end when you get that famously long list of search results.  We want to make it easy to incorporate useful information into the work you’re doing, and will continue to deliver features that make this even easier.

Another great feature in Watson 2.3 is our updated Outlook contacts support that includes integration with ZoomInfo.  When you select a contact in Outlook, Watson will do a precise search for the ZoomInfo Web Summary for that contact person.  It will also gather precise results from all of the other sources it is connected with.  This is great for when you’re about to make a phone call and want to quickly get up to speed on one of your contacts.  It’s like having a briefing book delivered to your desktop right when you need it: you get a ZoomInfo web summary like this one, any recent news articles, emails you’ve exchanged with that person, and a link to their home page, if they have one.

This feature shows how Watson can provide even more precise information when knows more specifics about the context in which you are working.  By leveraging structured data in contact records, Watson is able to formulate extremely precise queries, to both structured sources (like ZoomInfo) and unstructured ones (like the Web).  The queries Watson forms based on contacts are very different from those it forms when you are browsing the web.  Because Watson knows that contacts have names, affiliations, positions, and email addresses, it can make sure it finds you information about Martin Lee at IBM instead IBM message board entries posted by Lee Martin.  This feature is a nice demonstration of the leverage you get from paying attention to the semantics, or meaning, embedded in everyday applications, and how Watson can leverage those semantics to deliver information with razor-sharp precision.

We want to hear what you think!  Post a comment or send email to feedback@intellext.com.

-j