Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Deep Web: The Cusp of a Technology Break-through

I was casually surfing and i found this interesting piece on a technology (Can't call it new as it was established in '05) called as Deep Web. A Trivia: Google (# 1 search place) can scan and provide results from a trillion web-pages. However, this repository is just a fraction of the whole web out there. How many times have you thought out of the box while googling and asked yourself: Why can't i get results for an uploaded picture or why can't google answer questions like : "Is there accommodation at Savoy on 28th Feb, 2009?" Sounds a bit off-the-shelve, but if you realize the amount of data sources connected to Internet, you would be awed by the power it can bring into ones hands.

I track the manufacturing software side for my division and there is scramble of events happening to jump the bandwagon and leverage the benefits of new-age technologies like "Cloud Computing". Every technology has its own pro's and con's and it depends on every individual organization to match up with its internal strategy to harness its true potential. Similarly, Deep Web is the scanning of Databases which is different from the traditional crawler program (web-spiders) which is actually a program. Spiders are used to unravel the hyperlinks between web-pages, but it is not so helpful in scanning data repositories. So, comes in a radically new search engine (An example: http://www.kosmix.com/) which matches databases in relevance to the string typed in. Trivia 2: Kosmix was founded by two Indian's - grads from IIT and Masters from Stanford. You guys make us feel so proud !




The technology is obviously complex, as it has to match every bit of your intended meaning and furnish expected results and not alienate you in using their engine :) What's even more cool is... the web-page throws up connected results and aids in additional surfing, if required. For ex: If i type in the name of the sport : Ultimate, the web-page build delivers a host of results (Quite a few of the are not related) like description of the sport, communities, people, videos..et.al. Hence, it's like a convergence of all kinds of information on one portal. User's have a one-stop shop to view and learn all they have to about a particular topic ! I am sure, this technology is expected to break barriers and start the avalanche of changing businesses.

Oh yeah: I wish this happens as well: I upload the picture of a boulevard in Prague' and i get the entire listing of travel advice journos, places to visit, travel options, hotel acco's, price ranges, nearby tourist locale's, what's hot and what's not and so on. Imagination is just unlimited but to bring the cogs to deliver requires innovation, passion and drive !

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