Comments on: Comments on 18868

Post number 18868

nomisxid — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 13:40:26 -0800

Tangent.cx is now online. Endquote first came up with a concept for automating self-linking within his own blog. Now he's expanded the idea so that you can build a network of content-driven-sites that auto-link their content with your own. The niftiest part, to me, is his new link pop-up menus, so that one word can link to articles from multiple sites.

By: benbrown

benbrown — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 13:48:47 -0800

Bryan Boyer and I did this about 3 years ago on a site called Teeth. It worked well when we were able to define keywords for documents, and have those documents linked automatically, but also relevantly. We'll have to see how well this picks up the context, etc. What would really be neat is something like Teeth mixed with something like the second gen Deepleap engine I wrote (that nobody ever saw) that could really pick out the important keywords in a document and search on them.

By: benbrown

benbrown — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 13:50:46 -0800

... from the example given, it doesn't look too smart. Just because I use the word "Smart" and you use the word "Smart," doesn't mean there is a connection between the documents.

By: KnitWit

KnitWit — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 14:01:55 -0800

I sure hope as they build this they'll learn that some words are better off left unsearched, or learn to search by phrases, which could be more useful. In the meantime it could be a great help when looking for other sites that may be discussing the same topics... a bit like trackback, except without the moderate effort involved. Thank goodness we're now getting to the point where as we write, we no longer need to search for references. Now we can just sit back and let the references come to us.

By: endquote

endquote — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 14:23:33 -0800

Currently it's not very smart, but that's because none of the content has keywords defined to search on. It's hoped that as authors join up, they'll define keywords in their content, so that those sites that care about relevancy over serendipity can have their links only go to relevant sites. Until then, it should be thought of as a more advanced and automatically generated sort of webring, where you can define rules so that your site links to other sites that you like or are similar to yours. Figuring out relevant words automatically would be neat, of course. I'd be interested in hearing how that part of your engine worked, Ben! Were you just counting word frequency and throwing out the short ones or what?

By: benbrown

benbrown — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 14:29:09 -0800

Uh, the text was being run through a dozen or so filters to pick out what was relevant and what wasn't. It's been so long, I don't really remember what it did specifically -- pattern matching, db lookups, frequency, placement in sentences, context, etc. It was really cool. Wish I could have open sourced it.

By: dagny

dagny — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 15:01:47 -0800

Isn't the entire point with weblogs that they work as a human "filter" of the information overload? Wouldn't this, then, at least in its current level of development, be running in the exact opposite direction?

By: holloway

holloway — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 15:26:50 -0800

Bryan Boyer and I did this about 3 years ago on a site called Teeth

Bubbasomething? -- yeah.

By: KnitWit

KnitWit — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 16:36:06 -0800

Isn't the entire point with weblogs that they work as a human "filter" of the information overload? Wouldn't this, then, at least in its current level of development, be running in the exact opposite direction?

'Bloggers' will still be able to point to links they want, this thing just appears to allow people to find the extra bits the writer may have overlooked. That and if you're interested in blog-surfing , this thing could become ideal (assuming the list of partisipating weblogs grows enough).

By: Monk

Monk — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 16:59:28 -0800

Wasn't one of the uses of Microsoft's much maligned smart tags to automatically generate links based on keywords? Could they be used to do something similar to Tangent?

By: folktrash

folktrash — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 20:02:33 -0800

One word. Three syllables. Sounds like the Card short story 'The Originist.' Rhymes with 'why berry.' Although I seem to remember that he based it in a different authors world. Still a great story. Oh yeah - Asimov. Please excuse my weak ass links.

By: folktrash

folktrash — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 20:03:22 -0800

Also - aren't i not spupposed to be able to see the invisible dot? Isn't that the point?

By: kilroy

kilroy — Fri, 02 Aug 2002 02:54:47 -0800

dots need love, too.