I'll highlight several new projects that A9.com has launched recently, including BlockView (our Yellow Pages with images) and OpenSearch (an extension to RSS to allow people to syndicate search), and talk in general about the issues of improving the user experience in search beyond the usual "enter 2-3 words and get a list of links".
About the speaker:
Udi Manber was a professor of Computer Science at the University of Arizona where he co-developed several popular search software packages, including Agrep, Glimpse, and Harvest. He left academia to join Yahoo as Chief Scientist in 1998. In 2002 he moved to Amazon.com with the unusual title of Chief Algorithms Officer, where he worked on Amazon’s Search Inside the Book project, among many other things, and in Nov 2003 he became the CEO of A9.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.com developing innovative search technologies.
Contact information:
Udi Manber
400 Hamilton Ave, suite 300
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Instructor comment:
The impact of personalized search may be far reaching. Already there have been questions raised about of privacy and security. The long term impact is still unknown. You may find it amusing and provacative to visit http://epic.chalksidewalk.com" to see one view. -dra