Powerset Blog
Powerset Releases iPhone Optimized Version of its Wikipedia Search & Browse 5
Powerset has always been a fan of the iPhone. Over a third of the company owns an iPhone (roughly equivalent to the number of PhDs working here) and a handful took the afternoon off on the day of the iPhone launch to make all of their friends jealous.
With that many iPhones ringing around the office, it was kind of embarrassing to demonstrate a handicapped Powerset mobile search product. Therefore, after launch, one of our first major projects was to create an iPhone-friendly version of our search & browse experience for Wikipedia. If you’ve got an iPhone, just go to www.powerset.com and it will work automatically.
The iPhone web app includes all of the functionality that Powerset features on the Web site, but is designed to be easy to use on your iPhone. We think that Powerset is currently the best way to search and read Wikipedia on your iPhone.
For searching Wikipedia, you can enter a topic, phrase, or question and get back Powerset results. For simple Factz-style questions (see our blog contest about Factz for more details), Powerset will return the list that we derived from sentences across Wikipedia article. Side note: Dr. Bruce Horn, one of the original developers on the Macintosh and creator of the Macintosh Finder (as expressed by what did bruce horn write on Powerset), is manager of Powerset’s Semantic Search Platform. Also, when we get an answer from Freebase, we’ll display those results. And, we’ll show regular search results for any query, whether it’s a keyword query or a natural-language style query.
Once you click on a search result, you will go to the Powerset-enhanced Wikipedia articles. You can either browse the article or use the Outline to navigate directly to the section you want.
The Factz summary gives you an easy-to-read list of all of the Factz that Powerset was able to derive from the article, which often reads like a Cliff’s Note’s summary. This is great if you’re on the go and looking to quickly scan the information in the article.
The search-within-the-page brings semantic search into the results page. You can search for keywords or you can search for questions, e.g. “who stole pat’s rocket” on the Achewood page.
We’re really excited about this release and hope that, if you’re an iPhone user, you’ll use Powerset next time you need to look up something while you’re cheating at trivia night at your local bar, get details when you’re uncertain about some new fruit at Whole Foods, or just trying to convince your friends that you really do know the right answer.
If you’d like more information or an interview, drop us an e-mail at press@powerset.com. If you have suggestions, join Powerlabs and make feature requests for the iPhone app.
Update: We created a quick demo video, for the luddites who don’t have iPhones.
Powerset iPhone Web App Demo from officialpowerset on Vimeo.
Hi there,
I think this article is offensive as it uses the word “luddites” at the last sentence in this article, please respect people who does not believe in iPhone BUT in PowerSet.
Thanks
blink4blog, this whole post, including the Luddite part, was written by Mark… who doesn’t own an iPhone :) so I’m pretty sure that part was written in jest.
I fail to see why, in the opening paragraph, you feel it neccessary to comment on the number of PhDs working at powerset. Seems pretty lame to me.
Ha, not a very popular post then.
What is the URL of this version? Probably it works in other Webkit-based browsers on Nokia S60 phones.
Sebhelyesfarku, right now it detects if your browser’s user agent is iPhone or iPod when you visit the site, and then gives you the optimized version if it is, and the normal version if not. We haven’t tried on an S60 phone, although I do have an E50 that I might be able to try it on… I’m not sure how well the touchscreen-based navigation we set up for the iPhone and iPod touch will translate to the cursor-based Webkit S60 has, but I remember the rendering being pretty nice on the E50 so it’s worth a shot. Adding its user agent to the list would be easy if it works well.
I think one of the next steps will be an even more stripped down version for more traditional cell phone browsers and Blackberries and the like. So if the S60 phones don’t fare too well with the normal site or the iPhone version, the more stripped down version would probably be best.
And don’t worry, Scott, the Powerset college dropouts (myself included) provide a counterbalance to the PhDs every day :)