Comments on: Blinkx Blinkx!

By: GigaOM » Blinkx, finally serves its purpose

GigaOM » Blinkx, finally serves its purpose — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:07:13 +0000

[...] It was three years ago – June 17, 2004, I first met with Blinkx, a toddler of a start-up, showing off a tiny little downloadable software that added context to search – be it on your desktop or on the web. To say the least, I was suitably impressed. [...]

By: David Kaspar

David Kaspar — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I hear you Steve and Otis and even despite my little experience in professional researching, your points seem very valid for a professional researcher.

I however think that _Blinkx_ are trying to reach the mass market. Users like me and my mom that have realised the power of Google and are utilising it well. We are now ready for the next step in information delivery and if Blinkx can package that nicely I think they have a success on their hands.

With time, the tool may become more advanced and maybe even useful to hard core information miners. But as pointed out, limited resource such as a small start up normally has, limits you from doing everything for everybody in version 0.9.

Now I just need to find the time to actually try out Blinkx and see if it is any useful.

By: Marivi Lerdo

Marivi Lerdo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, Om…I’m doing great. Working at OnPR, a public relations firm with three tech specialty areas: wireless, enterprise software and consumer tech… I’ve also just had a baby girl! Let’s catch up soon…

By: Rick Gregory

Rick Gregory — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dammit Om, I’m supposed to be working, not playing with this very cool new toy!! Sure there are issues, but this is VERY nice. I can see using this constantly writing research reports and doing research online. It’s almost enough to get me to switch back to IE as my main browser…

By: Om

Om — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

rick – my sentiments exactly. this is pretty addictive and cannot wait for the mac version to show up. by the way it works equally well with all other browsers – at least on firefox it does.

By: Rick Gregory

Rick Gregory — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Om – it works on Firefox?? Oooh, even cooler. I don’t get the little Blinkx controls that I see in IE, but I’ll talk to them about that. Thanks for the tip!

MUST… QUIT… PLAYING…..

By: Vish

Vish — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Om, curious to know why you think they have no model … after all, Google et. al. are making a killing on search.

By: Jonathan Greene

Jonathan Greene — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

need … mac … support…..

Looks very cool.

By: Om

Om — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

i think with google you can deliver tons of those damn text ads on the side of search results. the way their client works there is only one place to sell an ad. i am not particularly fond of the ad-model. unless you have scale, which google has, it is difficult to make a business. trust me i have tried it many times, and it does not work. so that is why. what i would like to see – ‘blinkXbox’ for contextual document search inside large corporations as a sideline. basically they need to build an API where you could interface, corporate database, web, news sources such as lexis nexis and your hard drive into one sweet simple interface application.

By: Om

Om — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

they told me that the MAC version is currently under development but because they are a smallish company, resources are always an issue. i understand and am willing to wait for them. as i said, they need an API which would lets say let guys who make Watson or Sherlock (apple??) plug into this. sweet and easy baby

By: Mike Kelly

Mike Kelly — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Looks a little (lot?) like Dashboard … or even further back, The Rememberance Agent. I’m glad to see this stuff is finally happening in a mainstream sort of way. The Rememberance Agent was cool, but I had to run emacs (ick!) to use it!

By: Om

Om — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

mike- that is a blast from the past. anyway glad to see you are adding relevance and context to this discussion. i am sure we all agree that when it comes to technology, what goes around comes around. this is supremely better than dashboard

By: Peter Luce

Peter Luce — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Another little app that took the integrated desktop/search approach was/is GuruNet. Rather than build links dynamically, all you needed to do was hover over a word or phrase and it would build a brief summary on the word or phrase from standard reference works. It would also provide links to search results for the word or phrase.

I was a product manager at Ask Jeeves from 1999-2002 and worked on several prototypes for “Personal Jeeves”, which aimed to do all that Blinkx does and more. One of the approaches we took on the business side (Jeeves Solutions) was to create a dynamic natural language interface to as many business systems as possible – ERP, HR, SFA, product catalogs, e-mail,etc that would allow you to pass queries directly to the appropriate business system query interface to retrieve “answers”. Jeeves Solutions acquired the foundation from another cool company – Octopus, which began as a consumer-oriented tool before taking the corporate tack. Ultimately, Jeeves Solutions was sold to Kanisa before the technology could be further developed. I agree wholeheartedly that the ad-driven business model is a poor idea. Unless they can sell it corporations as a knowledge management utility, it will go the way of apps like GuruNet and the Brain – another KM tool that alloweds you to create dynamic, 3D link maps to information on your desktop, on the web, etc.

By: Marivi Lerdo de Tejada

Marivi Lerdo de Tejada — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I saw Autonomy demo the same thing back in ‘98. I believe they called it Kenjin.

By: Om

Om — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yup, we saw the same demo, but the damn thing did not work. this works just fine and is brilliant. use it, two hours later, you would be convert as well. how are you doing otherwise marivi

By: searchguru

searchguru — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I saw a few press releases that said that Blinkx uses a “piece” of Autonomy’s technology. Therefore a “piece” is akin to the entire DRE and what was once Kenjin from Autonomy is now Blinkx from Autonomy. Autonomy also has a corporate version called Active Windows Extensions. Looks like Autonomy is trying to change their web strategy with this corporate spinoff and looking for VCs to fund it all the way.