Over three years in the making we’re finally releasing Assista (if you are not sure what Assista is, see this link). This release is not of a finished product (will it ever be?) but of what we have done so far. Our main objectives for this release are three-folds:
1. Results Speed: When searching for keywords, topics we wanted to be able to show results in less then five seconds. Google, Yahoo, MSN set user’s expectations high when it comes to speed and if we are going to make it, speed must be addressed.
2. Question Expansion Results Speed: Same as above. Speed is an important issue, we struggled with it for over a year, not so because we didn’t know what to do but because unlike the big search engines, we do not have their budgets, infrastructure.
3. Design: After many tries we decided to stick with basics. Design is not our forte so we rather focus on navigation, ease of use.
Assista currently has over 120 million questions. By end of 2008 we expect to have over a billion questions in the database.
To get you started, here are some interesting Assista queries:
4. Myrtle Beach
5. Sepsis, Acne (Note: As you are soon to find out, Assista does extremely well with medical queries)
7. World War II
10. Gifted Child
We still have allot to do, things like adding privacy policy, about us page, clearing some issues on front page (for example, some links in “recent searches” are to non existing results), fixing the sub-topics results, and more. We’re aware of it, we’ll work on it. At the moment we set a goal to go live before end of year and even though we can delay it (that’s the easiest thing to do in life) we rather put it out, get some real feedback, and improve as we go along.
Thanks goes to our world class programming team, Hitfarm’s Kevin Ham and Colin Yu, our good friend Chris Hartnett, “Hardware guy” Michael Wiesman, Recall Media Group’s Darren Cleveland, and the hundreds of others who believed in us over the years. It is that faith you give us that keeps us moving forward.
Feedback as always is most welcome, highly appreciated!
Cheers
Sahar Sarid and Jeff Bhavnanie
Founders, Assista.com
Congrats Sahar!
I did a search for Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (my dog) and found the suggested questions and answers relevant and informative. In fact, I found the question and answer about cataracts in the breed to be particulary interesting because it was not a topic I would have searched.
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Good to hear David, thanks for the feedback!
Sahar
Sahar,
Congratulations to you, Jeff, and everyone involved with the launch of Assista!
The site is so much more than I expected it to be — with users able to have personal profiles, and with messages, discussions, and tags available as tools. Also, by enabling users to provide feedback about the relevancy of results, as you have, Assista will become increasingly more valuable as a research and learning tool over time.
FYI, I did a search on “New Year’s Resolutions” and found some interesting articles, including one where the author, Greg Thomas, addresses some things individuals can do to become more resilient ( http://www.leadingtoday.org/Onmag/2006 Archives/jan06/resolution12006.html ). I don’t believe I would have encountered Mr. Thomas’ article as readily via other search engines or directories (or ever learned that it existed).
Launching the site now is a good idea. You’ll get lots of valuable feedback sooner, and the Assista community will benefit from user’s involvement… And from where I sit in suburban Philadelphia, PA (using a cable broadband connection), results speed today was fine.
It is also obvious that you have given lots of consideration to user preferences, such as providing “Preview”, “New Window”, and “Same Window” options. You’ll undoubtedly get lots of suggestions for improvements (I, for one, would like to get more results displayed per screen), but you have made a terrific start!
Thank you for providing Assista, the online community for learners!
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Thanks Neal for the feedback, points will be taken into consideration.
Cheers
Sahar
good luck Sahar…a reminder, google has 175,000 home made computers running…you’d better get busy buddy!
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174K+ to go..
I searched for “conceptualist” and no reference of the blog came up. Is that ironic or what?
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In the future we will encourage content/brand owners to tag their sites, content. I blogged about it here.
Cheers
Sahar
Very impressive and congratulations! You are someone that keeps on delivering. You, Darren Cleveland and your partners must be very proud. Much success in the New Year.
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Thanks Michael
Cheers
Sahar
I am addicted already! Good job!
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Love that sort of feedback
Sahar
I tried it, its nice ……. how do you rate the top 10 questions? on what basis
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Top 10 and other front page functions are not yet working properly. When it will work right it will be daily statistical calculations of interacted questions. It’s a good question you are asking as we did overlook the explanation.
Thanks
Sahar
I think I buy the concept.
I love the name, it has a real pan-european feel to it. It comes from everywhere yet nowhere all at the same time.
Just don’t get the logo, but may be that is just me!
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Feedback for logo has been mainly negative. As we are “feedback sensitive” we plan to create a new design contest in upcoming months for a new logo.
Thanks for the feedback!
Sahar