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posted by martyb on Wednesday February 04 2015, @11:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the seek-and-ye-shall-find dept.

Researchers at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT have developed a new search engine that outperforms current ones, and helps people to do searches more efficiently.

The SciNet search engine is different because it changes internet searches into recognition tasks, by showing keywords related to the user’s search in topic radar. People using SciNet can get relevant and diverse search results faster, especially when they do not know exactly what they are looking for or how to formulate a query to find it.

Once initially queried, SciNet displays a range of keywords and topics in a topic radar. With the help of the directions on the radar, the engine displays how these topics are related to each other. The relevance of each keyword is displayed as its distance from the centre point of the radar — those more closely related are nearer to the centre, and those less relevant are farther away. The search engine also offers alternatives that are connected with the topic, but which the user might not have thought of querying. By moving words around the topic radar, users specify what information is most useful for them.

http://www.aalto.fi/en/current/news/2015-01-27/

[Paper]: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181621-interactive-intent-modeling/fulltext

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday February 04 2015, @11:25PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 04 2015, @11:25PM (#141351) Journal
    So legendary that I could not find any demo on the net, only some screenshots in TFA.
    --
    https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Buck Feta on Wednesday February 04 2015, @11:35PM

      by Buck Feta (958) on Wednesday February 04 2015, @11:35PM (#141355) Journal

      Obviously you are not using SciNet to find itself.

      --
      - fractious political commentary goes here -
      • (Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 04 2015, @11:40PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday February 04 2015, @11:40PM (#141358) Journal

        SciNet is on a search for itself, that is why you cannot find it.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday February 05 2015, @12:14AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 05 2015, @12:14AM (#141363) Journal

          SciNet is on a search for itself, that is why you cannot find it.

          Apropos TFT(itle), at least one of the "relevant" or "faster" attributes is wrong.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:51AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:51AM (#141378)

      > So legendary that I could not find any demo on the net, only some screenshots in TFA.

      http://hand.hiit.fi/scinet/scinet3/ [hand.hiit.fi]

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:58AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:58AM (#141382) Journal
        I almost modded it +Informative. Until I got "Auth Required".
        (for extra informative points, please do tell the guest account).
        --
        https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:28AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:28AM (#141390)

          Dunno, I use noscript it didn't ask.

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 05 2015, @08:46AM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday February 05 2015, @08:46AM (#141442) Journal

            It not only uses JavaScript, it also uses ajax.googleapis.com (and d3js.org — anyone knows more about that one?).

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @03:33PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @03:33PM (#141528)

              D3.js is a very nice graphing library. Probably being used to make the radar plot.

      • (Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Thursday February 05 2015, @08:35PM

        by bucc5062 (699) on Thursday February 05 2015, @08:35PM (#141635)

        What's with the login panel? Pretty hard to even compare when you can't even access it. Google would have been a hoot back in the day if they required registration to use their search tool.

        I'll pass till the serfs can give it a spin.

        --
        The more things change, the more they look the same
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:57AM (#141381)

      When a post complaining about being unable to find something on the net is modded +1 informative, that's a sign people have got more mod points than they know what do with.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:31AM

      by martyb (76) on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:31AM (#141392) Journal

      I failed to notice TFS lacked an actual link to the new search engine. Story really shouldn't have made it to the front page. Please accept my apologies. I've updated the story title to better reflect the content. Thanks for keeping us one our toes.

      And kudos to the community in that you took an "off" story, and still got an ineresting conversation going! You're the best!

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
  • (Score: 5, Funny) by pipedwho on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:08AM

    by pipedwho (2032) on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:08AM (#141373)

    I hope that's a soft 'c' in SciNet...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @04:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @04:46PM (#141557)

      > I hope that's a soft 'c' in SciNet...

      It is not. Look at the dev's directory, they originally called it skynet - http://hand.hiit.fi/ [hand.hiit.fi]

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by acharax on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:51AM

    by acharax (4264) on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:51AM (#141379)

    What I really want to see again is a search engine that returns the results for the queries I actually input, instead of yet another one that assumes I don't really know what I'm looking for and instead forcefeeds me with guesswork.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:00AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:00AM (#141383)

      > What I really want to see again is a search engine that returns the results for the queries I actually input,

      Preface your google searches with "allintext:" and you will only get literal matches for each keyword.

      I tweaked my local install of the firefox search plugin for google to do that automatically for me. (I also made it append &gbv=1 so that I get the search results without javascript too.)

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by acharax on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:43AM

        by acharax (4264) on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:43AM (#141399)

        It will also get you flagged as a bot when used too often.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Aiwendil on Thursday February 05 2015, @11:25AM

      by Aiwendil (531) on Thursday February 05 2015, @11:25AM (#141461) Journal

      Just add &tbs=li:1 to your search-url for google, it sets the verbatim mode (also hidden under the search tools) which basically is "google without the 'smart' features"