Powerset

Like many features at Powerset, our highlighting feature came about through the ingenuity of one of our engineers. Ian was having a discussion about circular polarized filters for camera lenses with his brother. He copied and pasted some text from Wikipedia into an IM chat, but his brother was dubious: “Where did that come from?” After Ian tried, unsuccessfully, to navigate his brother to the right passage in the Wikipedia article, he thought, “There must be a better way!”

Hence, a new feature was born. User Highlighting allows you to highlight sentences on a Powerset page. The highlighted passage persists when you bookmark or share the URL.

To use, just click the highlighter icon in the Article Outline and then click any sentences that you want to highlight. You can copy and share the URL; your modified page will automatically scroll to the highlighted section. This is made possible by the fact that Powerset semantically marks up Wikipedia and knows where sentences begin and end. It’s a great tool for sharing notes with a friend, posting a specific sentence in context to your blog, or proving someone wrong in an argument.

For example, let’s say that you wanted to share with a friend that John McCain has been a guest on The Daily Show more then anyone else, as of 2006. As opposed to just sending over that bit of information, you can send a link directly to the text. Now they can read the fact in context of the Wikipedia article, and read about McCain’s other television appearances. Check out the video below for a full demonstration.

Powerset User Highlighting demo video from Ian Collins on Vimeo.

Find a great use for the Highlighting feature? Let us know in the comments.

From October 20-22 Powerset will be attending the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterey, CA. This year’s theme is “Beyond 2.0: User-Focused Tools & Practices,” and Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land will be making a Keynote Presentation “Search Engine Land: What’s Happening Out There?”

We’re excited to be able to speak to so many internet-savvy librarians, to show off how Powerset is a cutting-edge research tool and to gather feedback about how to make Powerset even better.

Powerset is sponsoring the Internet Café.  If you’re attending, stop by to check your e-mail, learn about Powerset, and get some nifty schwag!

Powerset is excited to be participating in Web 3.0, held in Santa Clara from October 16-17, 2008. 

Scott Prevost, Powerset’s general manager, will be keynoting in the morning on Friday, where he’ll describe The Road to Semantic Search.  Also, Mark Johnson, a Powerset Program Manager, will be hosting a roundtable discussion on Thursday afternoon called Semantic Startup 101 – Successes, challenges, and strategic decisions, featuring Alitora, Cerebra, Metaweb, and Evri.

If you’re interested in attending, you can get a full conference pass or just come to the Expo Hall and keynotes for only $50.  We hope to see you there!