Yahoo has highlighted a few more implementations of BOSS, the search API it launched in early July that allows third party websites to incorporate Yahoo search functionality seamlessly into their sites.
This is the second time Yahoo has showcased the fruits of BOSS developers. In early August, Yahoo drew attention to 4HourSearch, the Cuil knock-off formerly known as Yuil; PlayerSearch, a sports-focused search engine; Newsline, a tool for plotting news items on a timeline; and Tianamo, a 3D search visualization tool for Windows machines with Java installed.
Now we’re presented with three more implementations: 123People, askBOSS, and BuildaSearch.
123People
123People is a search engine designed to help you find information about ordinary people. It supposedly returns the best results for people living in Europe, although the index includes those living in the United States as well.
123People has used BOSS to show web results and images about people alongside the email addresses, instant messaging accounts, documents, phone numbers, and other information it collects from elsewhere. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I couldn’t find more than a few photos of myself when searching with my name, even when I told it which area code to look within.
askBOSS
Built by a Yahoo employee, askBOSS is like Powerset for images. It processes natural language (i.e. “who was the first president of the United States?”) and returns images that are intended to “answer” your query.
In my tests, it worked very well with some queries (“who is the lead singer of the Rolling Stones?”) and returned amusing but inaccurate results for others (“what was the first machine gun?”). But then again, this kind of search isn’t supposed to be easy.
BuildaSearch
BuildaSearch intends to remove the whole programming aspect of implementing BOSS for your website. It simplifies the setup process by letting you pick just the colors, images, and scope of search results you desire.
It took me a a grand total of 30 seconds to set up site-specific search for TechCrunch, found here. Unfortunately, our logo only shows up on the first page so the engine isn’t truly white-labeled.
Comments
Buildasearch looks cool.
But it’s not correctly linked. Please check about that.
Maybe they can BOSS their stock price back the $31 before 2010
Maybe Cuil should just pack it in and replace their search with the Yahoo API and hope nobody notices.
Boss API is pretty cool. I have been able to ask questions in private and get quick answers from real people. It is funny how someone responding to an email can motivate a person to invest money in a company. After one positive interaction I will choose BOSS API for the applications I am building over Google.
Let us know when you’re finished
Yahoo’s developer support for BOSS has been excellent. Quick responses to posted questions especially by Vik Singh and dmontal2. Very encouraging to build on this platform. Great job Yahoo.
Maybe Yahoo needs to create a Yfund like FBfund instead of creating these sites that fail like their venture into social sites. They have great tools and by embracing developers, maybe they make themselves relevant enough where even Mikey A gives them props.
Where did you send email to ask questions? I sent email to them but never got answered. Definitely I hope they can provide the API for the cahed pages.
@DoesWhat
That’s amazing idea. I am a cuil employee. I guess we will replace our search with yahoo api.
123 people is good … found most of my information from different social networks immediately… thumbs up
I sent it to this one. bosscustom@yahoo-inc.com Maybe I was lucky in who I reached. It sucks when you can’t ask questions about issues that are private. A big reason I am building me app in Facebook is because unlike open social I was able to get private help. A simple email by facebook was a reason for me investing my money in that platform. Often a 10 minute email can lead to a client for life. With API’s this is so important because the best apps are going to push your services in directions you never imagined. These companies should do everything they can to help people succeed. At the most basic level from the companies perspective, it is still cheaper to provide good help than it is to develop a lot of the apps themselves.
askBOSS kind of sucks … I tried 5 queries and all did not return anything close to an answer:
Who was the first president of Israel?
Who was the first president of Argentina?
Who is Diego Maradona?
Who was David Ben-Gurion?
Who is the most pretty?
Ok ok … the last one provided some good laughs.
askBOSS is just a basic prototype, built in few hours using the powerful Yahoo BOSS APIs and mashup framework. Results cannot be accurate always, but in most of the cases, they are better than regular image search results.
Thats cool but i think google have something similar called google images “face” im not sure.
Boss is seriously groundbreaking…
Anyone else reading techcrunch less after the new design? Just curious if I am the only one.
:/
So that is a Chrome feature which lets you pull the comment box bigger. Huh, that is cool.
People don’t read TC because of the layout. They read it because it is useful to keep tabs on the cool stuff out there. Maybe I am in the dark ages but I often read about something in TC and get ideas from it. I would never of considered using Boss without TC.
Content matters more than layout.
That is a feature of WebKit. Safari users have been blessed with for ages.
@DoesWhat - I agree, this is an excellent idea. I am also a Cuil employee, a Project Manager to be exact and have been thinking about this since our beta period. I’ll see if we can get a copy of the Yuil source code and go from there.
@cuiler - Agreed. Let’s bring it up with Tom, Anna and the engineering team during tomorrow’s planning meeting. I think we’ll get promoted for this.
@Wowa - I am certainly reading TC much less, I hate the new design. It makes the site look dead and boring for some reason. I wonder if the unique visit stats for TC are down in any way to encourage them to bring the old design back, or something similar.
Before you attack TC why don’t you work on your homepage. You have all this space and you use such a small search box and small text. Ever considered the fact that not everyone likes squinting.
@WTF - I think the world would be a better place without your retarded comments. Have u ever written 10 lines of code? seriously. So shut the fuck up and get ur ass back to ur work.
Search for “Who is Stupid?” in powerset for images
What about bossyhorns? - an iphone optimized ysearch.http://bossyhorns.appspot.com
I feel Yahoo! have a lot more things in their bag for BOSS. They can lend their infrastructure to the startups by keeping their proprietary content with search access to them them only.
More they can do is categorize their results so as to build vertical search engine over their indexes. A small mashup coping the 4hoursearch ui. http://prism.appspot.com
hey guys,
glad you featured our site here and that you like the app. I just wanted to let you know that we recently also developed a plug-in for Firefox’ Ubiquity, which enables to search for people straight while typing “people search + name”
here is a video of how it works: http://vimeo.com/1621539
all the best
lukas
123people.com team
all three sites are good. Gr8 job done yahoo!!!
You’ve linked 4HourSearch to TechCrunch.com.
Good read though.
Great Picks. I really like Buildasearch.com what an innovative concept. Cool guys! Keep on innovating…
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