05.07.08
Dev Log set up for iSayHello.com
So that I don’t post those posts here any more I’ve set up a Dev Log at iSayHello.
It will have all my posts about adding things and revisions and such.
04.25.08
Adding Content In Mass
I like Lists, Archives, Collections… It is great when things sort nicely in to piles. www.iSayHello.com just had data from the CIA Fact Book Added, If you search for an abbreviation which is used in the CIA fact book, we now return what that abbreviation stands for. Which can be interesting because I don’t think of AU as African Union, I think Astronomical Unit, or the Periodic Symbol for Gold (the periodic table will be added shortly as well).
I also added 12k prescription medicines and their generics, along with a link to more information on the drug. Here is one Example…
This adds nearly 30k entries to the search results.
Today or early tomorrow, 15k game cheats are being added. Mostly PC first, then Console games in the coming days, 35k in all across 16 platforms.
Recipes are in the works, and I’m working to find a provider of Videos to go with the recipes, but at least very nice pictures.
What is the point you ask? To create pages that present you with the information you are most likely looking for and more choices if it wasn’t.
I also updated the site’s logo some. Not great but I only spent 20 minutes minutes on it.
Lastly, I fixed the bug where if there was no Video or images for a result I don’t try and return blank results.
04.22.08
Wikia.com vs. Stumpedia.com vs. Mahalo.com vs. ISayHello.com
I’m obviously biased, so when I win don’t be surprised…but I’m going to try and skew the results in favor of the other guys because well, if my product sucks I want to fix it.
The Test:
I’m going to search for Jason Calacanis on each of the services. I haven’t hand modified my results for Jason Calacanis on my engine so it should be a reasonable test.
Speed:
Wikia: And I thought the 800ms ISayHello.com’s search results took was too long. You can go get a Starbuck’s in the time it takes for Wikia to return results. I clocked 14 seconds, for most results a few came in at 8 some at 20, but 14 seemed to be both the Mean and the Mode.
Mahalo: Blazing fast. It aint Google fast, but it is fast.
ISayHello.com: It feels slow especially compared to Google, but on par with Live.com maybe a tiny bit slower than Yahoo. I think I take a hit from Youtube and Metacafe loading.
Stumpedia: Reasonably fast, doesn’t take long to load 3 results.
Quality of Results:
Wikia: Not too bad, but not great. Calacanis.com, Searchenginewatch,ReadWriteTalk, Mahalo, Twitter, Webpro news, TechCrunch, WebanalyticsBook, WebProNews, Beet.tv…. No Photo even though that is supported.
Mahalo.com: Calacanis.com, Twitter, Wikipedia,Weblogs Inc, Forbes, Jensense, TechCrunch. A picture of Gallery of Jason from Flickr, links to a Google Video and Jason’s Ustream
ISayHello.com: Calacanis.com, Wikipedia, TechCrunch, Twitter, Valleywag. Youtube of Jason Calacanis at his home, MetaCafe of someone talking about Jason’s Keynote at Affiliate Summit, 3 good Flickr Photos of Jason, and one odd one.
Stumpedia: Tinpig, Calcanis.com, Wikipedia. No Pics, no video, nothing of note.
Summing the Jason Search Up:
None of these results sucked except for Stumpedia. Mahalo Kicked ass with its hand edited results for its CEO. And it should. Wikia was slow but didn’t suck, Stumpedia just plain fails. 3 Results? I mean Jason is not Britney Spears but he isn’t a nobody, and you would expect that anyone in the search engine business should have something for him. (Matt Cutts only got 2 results)
But lets say you dislike Jason. I don’t dislike Jason, I think he is a smart guy, and he left a comment on my blog or someone using his name did, so hey, I’d buy him a drink, or a dinner, but lets say you didn’t like him. His start up crushed yours or something like that…
So you search for Jason Calacanis Sucks, because lets face it sometimes you aren’t looking for "Happy" search results.
Stumpedia: Zero Results
Mahalo: You get google results, and they all say Calacanis and Sucks but none of them are about how Jason Sucks.
iSayHello: Digg-Why it Sucks to be Friends with Jason Calacanis. That counts as a "hit"
Wikia: Jason Calacanis Sucks by MorningCoffeeNotes.com that Counts as a "Hit"
So what does that say….
Wikia doesn’t suck. It is slow but there is promise, I don’t think it offers any improvements over Google, but maybe someday.
Stumpedia, yeah it sucks. Too Few entries 4500 or so.
Mahalo, Good but only if you search the way it expects. You can’t get hits on a lot of phrases. I actually got better results doing a site:mahalo.com search in Google than I did using their search bar.
ISayHello: You knew I was going to declare victory, it’s my site. Mahalo is faster. And if you are the CEO you definitely get better results than my Generic Template can give. But I also had results for Jason and his level of Suck which I count as a victory because you aren’t always looking for "encyclopedic" results.
This is a Response to:
Venturebeat - Search Wikia takes a step closer to the promise of ’search meets Wikipedia’
Mathew Ingram - Wikia Search: Edit anything and everything
CenterNetworks - Wikia Search Launches Major Enhancements to Search Alpha
04.21.08
ISayHello.com Launched! A truly Hybrid Search / Research Engine
www.isayhello.com went live last night. The front page is ugly, I don’t have as many human edited pages as I would like, but it is day one, and this is the first step. In the coming days you will start to see better and better results pages, and more "Category" templates.
Not all results will be hand edited, but more and more topics will get classified into a category which will give results tuned to that category type.
What is ISayHello.com?
It is a hybrid of traditional computer generated results, human classifications of results, and human generated content. Keep in mind that ISayHello.com was built in about 150 hours by one guy. (Brandon Wirtz).
What isn’t ISayHello.com?
A replacement for Google, Yahoo, or Live.com Search results. Because we don’t index specific pages you will never be able to find a specific phrase on a site, but you will find specific phrases in titles, topics, and categories.
A Mahalo.com clone. The biggest difference between our results and Mahalo.com results is that we have results for pretty much everything on the planet. Mahalo.com only has results for topics that people have written results for. Much like Mahalo, iSayHello.com creates relevant links to sites that we think would best help you find answers to your searches, but our results change dynamically based on trends for the topic. For example if your favorite actor gets hit by a bus, we will switch from being 100% links to that actors works and biographies to a blend of links about that actors works, and news results about the recent incident.
What will ISayHello.com become?
ISayHello is working hard to add features almost hourly. Things like Game Walk Through / Cheat Data Bases, and Biographies of everyone on the planet. Some of these will just be willed in to existence and improve all of the results they are tied to, and others will be a process. (we can’t have a biography of everyone until you submit yours now can we?)
ISayHello is also working on relationships with other "engines" so that we can bring you results for the best price on products related to your searches when appropriate.
How does ISayHello.com work?
ISayHello.com works like many search engines, but is a "Just in Time" search engine. We Scour a huge number of places based on the type of search we think your topic is, and return results on that topic. We cache those results for a time, but if you come back in a few days you may get different, likely better results.
Our results take a little longer to "come back" than other search engines because of this, but we think we get better results because of this extra time. If you are doing a search that someone else has done recently you will be served a cached results and should get a fast response. As this is the beta very few speed optimizations have been made, so expect that results will get faster over time.
How can I help with ISayHello.com?
We will be posting various ways you can contribute. So check back every so often. We will also be running contests, and posting full time positions.
04.18.08
Call in the Robots, no more outsourcing, I’m looking at automation
For a long time I was competing in my own way with Mahalo.com Jason Calacanis’s human powered search site. The formula was simple, take the Google.com/Trends data, then sort through the most "ownable" terms which was basically defined as anything with fewer than 10k competing pages and have a girl in India create a blog post about them. This is not quite Jason’s model, he was creating pages for every term, but as he has Sequoia’s VC money behind him, and I only have my own money, I had to generate revenue to pay for the content creation.
The model worked. I could recoup about 10% of the pages the first day, and 40% the first month, and the rest I’d lose money on, but taking a 6 month average all pages would break even and begin earning money. The problem is I don’t really have the bank roll to sponsor 6 months worth of posts to make $5 on each of them. The model doesn’t work that well.
If I write the posts most of the time I can make $5 the very first day, and for several days after that, but my time is worth more than $15 an hour.
So I needed a solution that would create pages at least equal to the quality of a Mahalo.com post, and created at zero cost.
Using nothing more than my server and content that is available through various web API’s. The results are a bit slow if you are the first person to search a term, but caching makes the results fast for the next person.
If you’d like to be in the beta, contact me (Brandon at XYHD.tv) I’ll point you to the site.
I’m still in the process of picking a domain, all the good ones are taken, but likely I will have several, each tuned for different types of searches.
I was blown away that there is not a good "classification" tool on the web, basically just to sort, this X term is of type Y. Like Britney Spears is a Person, Paris France is a Place.
My results could be a lot better if I had this because then I’d know where to look for types of queries. No worries I can build that in to the logic later, or make that part of the human part of the equation.
11.03.07
Introduction
Taking the Bridge is the new home for my "thought pieces". I had been using XYHD.tv for all of my writing, but since that has really evolved into the gaming and gadget site, and the random thing I think will get me Google Traffic site. As I am stepping into a CTO role I need a more serious grown up site for my ramblings on Start-ups, Managing Development, and Tech Industry news.