Powerset Reinvents the Search and Discovery Experience for Wikipedia(TM) Articles
Company's First Public Release Goes Beyond the Search Results Page, Adding Value Throughout the Entire Search Process

(PressMethod) - 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:



-- Powerset searches over 2.5 million Wikipedia topics in English
-- 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 (screenshots)



-- Factz -- When users enter a topic query, Powerset assembles a compact
summary of interesting, and sometimes surprising Factz, extracted from
pages across Wikipedia
-- Dossiers -- Powerset creates a summary of information found in
Freebase and Wikipedia to give users a quick overview about a topic
-- Answers -- For many questions, Powerset automatically assembles an
answer list from sentences in Wikipedia or data in Freebase
-- Semantic Highlighting -- The most relevant search results are
highlighted based on the meaning of a user's question
-- 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)



-- Article Outline -- A navigational tool that follows users as they read
Wikipedia articles
-- 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
-- Explore Factz -- Offers a helpful guide of key relationships and
topics in the page, each of which can be clicked to highlight relevant
Factz
-- 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:



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


(click to enlarge)



LINKS:

Please use this link to access Powerset

Powerset blog

Powerset Twitter feed

Powers et Launch Screenshots

Powerset Launch Video

Quotes, attributable to Powerset executives:

-- "Wikipedia serves a fundamental human need -- a single destination to find a broad range of information," according to Barney Pell, Powerset co-founder and CTO. "This broad content base is a great way for us to showcase Powerset's functionality while giving people a faster time to satisfaction."

-- "Our first product has only touched the surface of what our technology will allow," said Lorenzo Thione, co-founder and product architect. "Our team of computational linguists, computer scientists and engineers, together with the PARC technology we licensed, has allowed us to develop a solid platform to begin to change the way people consume content."

-- "We have focused on making Powerset able to read and understand documents on the web as part of a broader vision to change the way people interact with technology," said Scott Prevost, general manager and director of product. "This first product will make people's search experiences on Wikipedia and Freebase easier, more natural and more relevant."

Quote, attributable to Carla Thompson, senior analyst with Guidewire Group:

-- "Powerset's new Wikipedia experience is an impressive achievement, and goes beyond what I expected to see from Powerset's first public product," said Carla Thompson, senior analyst with Guidewire Group. "In many ways, it defines a new search category altogether and brings the power of semantics to mass consumers. Once users have experienced the usability and deep relevance of Powerset-enabled Wikipedia search, I imagine they'll start demanding this level of intelligence from all content channels."

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