TechCrunch 40 Session 1: Search & Discovery
Session one as follows, including our live notes.
Powerset
Powerset presentation begins: talk about semantics and search, “we parse the web”. Natural language search.
Announcement: Powerset labs, where users can explore tech demos, share ideas, feed the learning engine and “improve your search karma”.
Demonstration of natural language queries with a social voting style feature. Touches of other sites
Demonstration of Powermouse (see screen shot), information is pulled from Wikipedia into a semantic index.
TC40 attendees will be amongst first in private beta.
Overall: tough sell in the search vertical, but interesting take. Great start to TC40.
Cognitive Code
Flagship product: “silvia platform” Symoblically isolated linguistically variable intelligence algorithm. Laymens terms: AI.
Demonstration with AI on the screen, the AI system is having a conversation with one of the Cognitive Code. A couple of bugs in the live demo, but pretty cool.
Uses include embedding in toys, phones, websites “unlimited uses.” First major target market is “smart toys.”
Clever idea, if they can pull it off we’re seeing the future of toys.
CastTV
Presentation begins: CastTV doesn’t host videos, they index them.
Britney Spears video search compared, Google, Yahoo and CastTV: CastTV results are pitched as being better, more accessible etc
Colts Titans next example. CastTV is using smart clustering for results, pulling video from MSM and user generated content. Nice results, even if I have no interest in American Football :-)
FAROO
Interesting concept, P2P in a strict sense. Results are only pages that have been visited by users…I cant’ help but think the SEO crowd is going to love this :-)
The presenter claims that the algorithms actually prevent manipulation: he doesn’t know the people I know. Nice results though.
Indexing via a desktop P2P client, demonstrated version on Windows. Faroo beta opens today.
Viewdle
Demo starts with 2 minute demo video. Slick, we’ll see if we can get a copy.
The facial recognition is always an interesting concept, but I’m remind of Riya. More Britney Spears examples, although they are pulling data from others in the video as well, it looks a step from previous tech, particularly give it’s video they are scanning, not just pics.
Product: Top Chance, scans on criteria, including date. Popularity search includes total video time and when. Platform (presuming API) will also be released shortly to plugin widgets etc.
Expert Panel: Ryan Block Chris Anderson, Marc Andreessen, Om Malik, and Marissa Mayer
First question Marc Andreessen to Powerset, great question, how do you break out, API’s etc. Good response.
Chris Anderson: what are the advantages of the various products to the user
Faroo responds first: we are by the user, for the user, it’s good because “they are doing the search together”
Om Malik to Faroo: most P2P systems people turn off, how do you overcome that, also how do you seed the network?
Faroo: it’s not a problem…not a particularly good response.
Marissa Meyer wants to know about the video search startups, scaling etc…classic :-)
CastTV: we’re scaling, focus. Viewdle “we reference a point” hence can scale to billions, using “fusion engine”
Discussion continues around AI and natural language tools.
Jason asks Om: which one is the most viable. Om: CastTV. One to last: Cognitive Code. Middle of the road pick: Powerset. Faroo is “interesting,” Viewdle will be “acquired soon”
Jason Calacanis to Marissa Mayer: will people switch away from Google. Reply: most people use more than one search engine according to stats. Google’s advantage is being a one stop shop. JC: what did you think of CastTV, MM: nice interface, clustering for duplicate issues is good tech.
Marc Andreessen: I don’t want to be obsessed with distribution…but I am, how do companies deal with it
Powerset: we’re very aware of this…uploading to users (???), embeding on external sites (Google custom search style I’d think).
Conclusion: speaking to Nick and we agree that CastTV was the winner in a very competitive group, good tech which just works with a practical use. Cognitive Code had the coolest product, but the demo wasn’t great which lost it for them.