Watson 2.5 is here

Watson 2.5 shipped today!

There have been a bunch of changes under the hood, but you'll notice the surface first.

Streamlined UI
We refactored the sidebar UI based on user feedback:

• Pause button -- people got confused by the old "push-pin"
• Search and search in context -- we made the search box work like other search boxes (and improved the relevance of regular searches too). Now when you type keywords and hit enter, Watson will search only based on the words you typed. If you want Watson to consider the words in the context of the document you're viewing, just click "Search in Context". Ideally we would have two search boxes, but there just isn't enough room.
• Focus -- we removed the focus icon because it was taking up too much space.
• Streamlined toolbars -- we removed the grippers.

Watson Toolbars
When we looked at the data two groups of users jumped out right away -- those that like to keep Watson open all the time and those that like to open and close it a lot. For those of you "occasional users" out there, we added Watson Toolbars, so you can easily get back in to Watson from whatever program you're using.

The toolbars make it easy to start a search or search based on the context of your open document.  (In Office 2007 you'll notice these buttons under your Add-ins tab -- Ribbon integration is coming).

More Sources!
We added a bunch of new sources and updated our addons site. I am totally addicted to our new YouTube connector.

Other Stuff
Like I was saying, we changed a lot under the hood, and added some support for more recent versions of software:

• Firefox 2.0 support
• Much smoother Office 2007 integration
• Improved Outlook integration
• Many memory and performance issues solved
• Many bug fixes

Give it a try and let us know what you think. 

And if you're in the US, have a Happy Thanksgiving.

-j

Comments

[Ray]

Ok, maybe its just me, but I DLd Watson, installed, the toolbar is there, I click the buttons, nothing, nada.

What to do?