Understanding hakia – Astro Versus Scooby Doo

Explaining and understanding hakia and other semantic search engines has been a little more than tough for developers and potential users these past few months. Readers and users are not dense, but perhaps they are impatient and a little ADD. Developers, especially the good ones, spare no text or video to explain these complex and often abstract creations. Still, most visitors (to hakia in particular) are not willing to devote more than a few seconds to evaluate the potential of this extraordinary development.

Honestly this has been a source of great frustration for me as well. My general opinion is that most people would have looked on the first huge 50 ton blocks of the great pyramid at Giza and muttered: “Looks like a waste of time to me, it aint even got no roof!” One block or several, no matter how huge does not a pyramid make. So, I have decided to go “down home” in explaining why one word, special case and other bumblings around do not render anything like a fair evaluation of hakia at this stage. I also wanted you guys to get the latest bit of news from hakia and perhaps a laugh too.

OSMR2 (origin – deep southern US: pronounced – Oh S EM Are Too)

As Henry Blodget puts it in his cutting (though somewhat pointed) post on hakia in July: “ignorance is bliss.” He is referring to the fact that most people use keywords rather than English (or other) language queries in search. Here we have a great example of what we might call “The Scooby Doo Web”, or a universe where terms like “Ruh row” are uttered as a goofy, cute hippy dog lights up another fatty. Something overlooked by Scooby and others is that hakia has a very advanced algorithmic aspect at least as good as Google's that renders keyword results often rivaling others. The gist of Henry's article is that these semantic engines do not have a future because their traffic is not great now, and that Google essentially rules the market (though he does not say this specifically). Henry says semantic engines are no good – I say: “OSMR2!”, just not right this instant.

Nuculer Sinetist vs Scooby Doo

My good friend Riza Berkan (I know, lost objectivity but I am honest) took effective issue with these assertions in his customarily kind and intelligent way on the hakia blog. Fortunately for me and our readers I am under no such gentile constraints ( down home remember). Honestly folks, I don't even know who this Henry feller is, his rationale and rhetoric remind me of every pessimist or entrenched person I ever met. No homespun humor or discourse of mine can outweigh the precision and clarity of Riza on this subject, and I quote from the blog:

“In retrospect, I was one of the first users of analog cell phones. You know… the Motorola era. At that time I was quite happy with it. Reception was OK, it did the job. If someone came to me those days and said, “hey look there is a digital cell phone coming up so you can take pictures with your cell phone.” I would, and probably did, say “who cares.” Like me, many people may have been responding to future ideas in this manner. Namely, judging tomorrow's technology with today's behavior.”

Why is it so hard to conceptualize a future not 6 months from now, but 2 years from now when semantic search takes over for our 2 dimensional versions? Riza actually does go NYC “down home”- pointing out that in Henry's version of the universe Mr. Spock would have been talking to the ship's computer using keywords. I think Henry actually insulted us all with the “ignorance is bliss” thingy. If that is true we are all a bunch of lazy, mindless gnomes who cannot think past the end of our noses. I do not believe that for a second – ADD, stressed and impatient – yes, idiots -no. In the image to the left is Spock doing a keyword or a semantic mind meld?

Astro vs Scooby

I hope some of you can make the comparison between George Jetson's dog Astro and ole Scooby. I just had a discussion last night with a brilliant friend about this very dynamic. Astro was a smart dog, while Scooby was a moron who was half stoned all the time. Astro would do goofy stuff for sure, but in the end he was a quick learner and pretty dog gone sharp. Ironically, many of my friends had just “tried” hakia challenge with perfectly predictable initial “Astro” results. They typed in a one word queries and got essentially a weird looking Google result and that was it! The problem (and this is sorta hakia's fault) is that a semantic search engine cannot be tested with one or even a few queries. I know my “Astro Friends” will read this and hammer me, but then they will see the error easily just like Astro would. Scooby on the other hand would just say: Ruh row, wong wanswer” and roll another one.

Cornclusion

What are them parmutashuns any ways? Riza and hakia did actually try to head off the “Scooby” effect in explaining the lack of awareness concerning the combinatory permutation space and favoritism in limited testing scenarios. In a nutshell, Astro or Scooby need more than 200 queries to properly test such an entity. The funny thing about all this is I tried to explain some of this to a “good ole boy” down here in the deep-deep south the other day and he uttered the most intuitive response: “Whaaa hell, I was a wunderin when sumbody wood come up wid suma dat Star Wars stuff!” It would appear that Astros abound even in the deep woods and Scooby roams the streets of NYC too.

I appreciate all of you who got this far and assure you my intentions are in no way condescending or mean. As a little reward for the faithful hakia just rolled out a Firefox version of their ScoopBar on Tuesday. This is yet another incremental addition leading to answers to all questions. In the end hakia, Powerset and a host of others may fail to rival Google, but something will supplant it eventually, and my bet is on semantic search.