by Andrew Redfern @ 14th May 2008 1:42 pm

Powerset, a company pioneering natural language technology, today announced the launch of its publicly available beta product that reinvents how users search and discover information from Wikipedia(TM).

Powerset’s breakthrough natural language technology is based on patents licensed from PARC (formerly Xerox PARC) and Powerset’s proprietary research. The technology, which can be applied to any topic and any domain, reads and extracts meaning from every sentence in Wikipedia.

This release is the first step in Powerset changing the way users search and consume web content. Unlike traditional search engines, which look for words, Powerset matches the meaning of the user’s query to the meaning of sentences.

Powerset currently searches content from leading free content providers:
o    Powerset searches over 2.5 million Wikipedia topics in English

o    For many questions, Powerset returns answers from Freebase(TM), an open, shared database of the world’s information
*    Powerset’s search results page includes the following helpful features

o    Factz — When users enter a topic query, Powerset assembles a compact summary of interesting, and sometimes surprising Factz, extracted from pages across Wikipedia

o    Dossiers — Powerset creates a summary of information found in Freebase and Wikipedia to give users a quick overview about a topic

o    Answers — For many questions, Powerset automatically assembles an answer list from sentences in Wikipedia or data in Freebase

o    Semantic Highlighting — The most relevant search results are
highlighted based on the meaning of a user’s question

o    Minibrowser — A result can be expanded to show the snippet in
the context of the full Wikipedia article

*    When users click on a search result, Powerset offers features that summarize long pages of content, allowing users to find and browse information quickly (screenshots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerset/tags/enhancedwikipediapage/)

o    Article Outline — A navigational tool that follows users as
they read Wikipedia articles
 
o    Summary of Factz — An automatically generated summary of the key Factz on the page, which often reads like the Cliff’s
Notes(TM) for the article

o    Explore Factz — Offers a helpful guide of key relationships and topics in the page, each of which can be clicked to highlight relevant Factz

o    Semantic Search in Article — Brings Powerset semantic search and highlighting directly into Wikipedia articles.

*    Powerset’s technology improves the entire search and discovery experience by:

o    Allowing users to express themselves in the search box through keywords, phrases, or simple questions.
o    Providing more accurate search results on the page, often answering questions directly, and aggregating information from across multiple articles.
o    Offering a better way to search, digest and navigate content on Wikipedia quickly.

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