ASSISTA archive at Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

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Archive for the 'ASSISTA' category

With Love From Siberia: Office Pictures

Published on April 4, 2008 in ASSISTA, Bido/DNZoom, Business, General and Recall Media Group. 4 Comments

Few pictures Jeff sent over, from one of our offices in Siberia. Most of the folks here are largely responsible for much of our development projects, from Assista, various RMG projects, Flowchart.com, domain related projects, and more. Darren, Jeff, myself and others within RMG all feel we have completely lucked out on having such great minds in our operations and for that, we’re all grateful.

Sahar

Alex

Ilya

Vera

Oleg

Mihail

Natalia

Dmitry

Dmitry (2)

Boris

Andrey

Andrey (2)

Alexander

Office room 1

Office room 2

Office room 3

Office room 4

Office room 5

ASSISTA Gets New User Interface, And More.

Published on March 12, 2008 in ASSISTA. 1 Comment

(Click to enlarge)

New user interface is out which deals with some design issues we felt needed some work. We also added a WIKI option to all questions in the index. ASSISTA is still runs as a R&D project and not as a true business. We hope to get to execution sometime early next year.

Feedback most welcome.

Cheers

Sahar

In The Works: ASSISTA New Look

Published on February 12, 2008 in ASSISTA. 1 Comment

(Click to enlarge)

Now that we took ASSISTA live, it is time to polish the site, upgrade functions. For next 10 months we plan to do mostly that. Sometime next year, we’ll bring the site to the next level - execution.

Image above is work in progress of new look/feel. In terms of functionalities, we are making community indicators better, adding a WIKI module to each question in the index, and also adding unique tagging functions for content creators.

Feedback most welcome!

Sahar

Today’s Search Is A Paradigm Addiction

Published on February 4, 2008 in ASSISTA, Business and Search Technology. 0 Comments

What is a Paradigm Addiction?

What occurs when a paradigm and its most ardent supporters are addicted to the paradigm to the point where they lose the realization that they are even in a paradigm at all? Ardent paradigm supporters have equated paradigm survival with their own personal survival, and will manipulate and control a society in order to prevent any social or cultural advancement out of the existing paradigm, ignoring or suppressing public knowledge of anomalies, equating perception of anomalies to “personal abnormality” in order to intimidate populations to remain within the status quo control paradigm. Addiction to a paradigm results in either paradigm death or death of those who maintain the paradigm.

While playing with ASSISTA, visiting a number of pages, I came across the above quote. I believe The words here describe exactly the current Search industry, where Search is taken for granted, where nothing else exist. Couple of years ago I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read in some reputable publications that “Search is solved!”. It became to me even more clear we’re in a Paradigm Addiction mode when Microsoft, a company with some of the smartest developers on earth, believe the only way to move forward against Google is to buy Yahoo, a technology dinosaur.

What happened to innovation? What happened to thinking of Search in different ways? Is today’s Search satisfactory? Can search results be personalized? Can search results be better organized? How can Geo targeting help you further find relevant information? What about what you searched for five minutes ago, is it of the same importance of information you worked with five years ago, and should that information be part of the equation in present search activity? How about Global results, live translations of relevant material? And cycles? Can search take sales cycle in consideration when searching for a product? The list of questions go on and there’s no doubt I don’t know all, never will. What I do know though, when everyone accepts the status que, opportunities arise.

An example of a paradigm shift during today’s paradigm addiction is Wikipedia. In an age of algorithm and control Wikipedia defied the odds by doing the exact opposite, and winning.

Why is this important? I would like to encourage others to think of what else is possible. There’s no doubt in my mind future Search is not anything close to today’s Search. As Search is the biggest game in town today, solving these issues, even a small part in the whole equation, can change the world for the better. And wouldn’t you want to be a part of that? I know I would.

Have a great day!

Sahar

Office Visit In Novosibirsk, Siberia

Published on January 25, 2008 in ASSISTA, Domain Names, General and Recall Media Group. 5 Comments

As some of you know we have many projects in the works, from ASSISTA, to NDP (Niche Directory Platform), to auction systems, Flowchart.com, lead generation software, domain management tools, and other technologies. None of these would be possible without the amazing people which work with us, our Siberian team.

Why Siberia? We’ve been there since 03 doing first domain scripts and later full scale development projects. A little more about where our offices in Siberia are, from CNN.

Russia’s software exports total $1.8 billion annually; the country is the third-largest software-outsourcing destination in the world, after China and India. “Inside Intel we have an expression,” says Steve Chase, president of Intel Russia. “If you have something tough, give it to the Americans. If you have something difficult, give it to the Indians. If you have something impossible, give it to the Russians.“

Below are few pictures of some of our team members. To each and every one of you.. THANKS for working with us, you guys (and gals) are G R E A T !

(Click to enlarge)

The More Information Online, The More Important The Skills To Sort Through It

Published on January 8, 2008 in ASSISTA and Search Technology. 0 Comments

Found via Paul Kedrosky’s blog. A press release by “Center for Medicine in the Public Interest” found that:

For millions of Americans, Google has replaced the family physician. People trust, and make decisions, based on the information they find online,” said Goldberg, “With few exceptions, the information we found appeared legitimate but had no medical authority whatsoever. In many cases, we found lawyers posing as medical experts.”
The analysis of search results revealed that online real estate was dominated by Web sites paid for and sponsored by either class action law firms or legal marketing sites searching for plaintiff referrals. Other sites were sponsored by groups or individuals selling “alternatives.”
– Sixty-five percent of the first three pages of search results came from sites which were biased or contained unverified information.
– Nearly half of the first three pages of search results belonged to lawyers and attorney referral services seeking plaintiffs for class action law suits.
– No official regulatory pages or professional medical organizations appeared in the inventory of results.
“Patients who use Google to find important health information will be overwhelmed with negative information and will find little, if any, solid medical information to help them weigh the risks versus the benefits of using these medications,” said Peter Pitts, CMPI President and former Associate Commissioner for External Affairs for the FDA.

Which begs the question, what is more important, the information you find or the questions that lead you to the information you find? ASSISTA categorizes information by questions, as at times there are many different sources dealing with the same questions, ASSISTA gives the individual an objective look at information.

(The issue above is also directly related to the U.S Department of Health & Human Services and this campaign I wrote about before.)

Is The Israeli National Anthem Inspired By Smetana’s “The Moldau”?

Published on January 8, 2008 in ASSISTA and General. 4 Comments

To those who don’t know I’m a huge classical music fan. I don’t usually pay attention to titles although I have few favorites. Why classical music? Besides the fact it is timeless I find it better for thinking as there are n lyrics imposed in the music.

Two years ago I was driving around town listening to the classical music channel on XM when I first heard Smetana’s “the Moldau”. During the time I was listening i called home and put the phone near the speakers so my mom and sister can listen as well. It was obvious to me this is related to the Israeli National Anthem.

My mom and sister are traveling in Asia these days (part pleasure, part business) so I get to have more cars around the house. My sister’s Hummer is parked outside and although these days I don’t use it, two days ago I decided to take it for a ride. To me, in one word, that moment was “Destiny”. Why? Because I forgot the name of the composer above, Smetana, and I really was interested in finding that work for last couple of years again.

So now that I found it again I went online, did some searches. ASSISTA Smetana and you get a good source about who Smetana was (under the question ” WHO WAS BEDRICH SMETANA?”. Google Smetana and you get many great resources as well, including one for the longer query “Smetana Hatikva” which reveals the connection between the two.

Why am I writing this here? 1. To share a great work with you and 2. I guess just to close a circle, a quest I was after for a couple of years. And in case I forget again, now I have a reference on the blog to remind me

Sahar

How We Think (Part III)

Published on January 7, 2008 in ASSISTA, Debates and Search Technology. 0 Comments

This is a follow up post on Part II of “How We Think” series.

The question in Part II was: Why do we, as individuals, have different ideas for the same search query?

The answer to it as Kamal noted, we’re all individuals. We all have different associations, different life experiences. As an individual, when you use a certain query, your life experiences come with it. “Real Estate” for example, to me, means Real Estate in South Florida, as that’s where I live. For you it likely means something completely different.

Why is it important to understand we all mean different things by using the same search query? Because the “holy grail” for traditional search engines, for advertisers and users, is relevancy. However, relevancy as we just saw,comes on an individual basis.

So can Google, Yahoo, MSN, or even Wikia with their transparency concept, solve the relevancy problem? The answer is No. No because their model is flawed from the very top.

Traditional search engines provide AVERAGE results and what I mean by that, they provide the sum of all rather than addressing the individual needs of the user.

There are two ways I know of to solve this issue:

1. Personalization. I spoke about it many times before (just search my blog for keyword “personalization”)

2. Breaking the generic into specifics. I also talked about it before here.

How does it all relate to ASSISTA? For an advertiser, ASSISTA is a dream come true. It breaks the volume of generics into the value of specifics. A search query for “Real Estate” becomes ” What is a Real Estate Investment Trust?” or ” How is leasing on real estate taxed?”. Much more information, much more targeted.

Is ASSISTA a replacement for traditional search engines? Of course not. I think many can co-exist, each do what they do best. In terms of relevancy though, I simply don’t get it when traditional search engines discuss relevancy in search results without addressing individual needs. That to me makes no sense at all.

Search Wikia Is Live!

Published on January 7, 2008 in ASSISTA and Search Technology. 5 Comments

http://alpha.search.wikia.com/

From first look this is going to be huge. If there is a Google killer out there it is Wikia. Why? Transparency, community expertise, founders experience, buzz, funding. Wikia has it all.

More here from the NYTimes.

Where does it put ASSISTA? ASSISTA will create its own path, carve its own niche.

Wishing the very best to Jimmy Wales and Co.

Sahar

How We Think (Part II)

Published on January 6, 2008 in ASSISTA, Debates and Search Technology. 9 Comments

Following Part I, The following are some of the thoughts you left in the comments area:

1. I want to know more about it
2. Quick fix to get some relief for my back
3. What types there are and which one may I be experiencing
4. How to Cure
5. Who can help me

Even with a very small pool of participants we can see individuals may mean different ideas for the same query. If we had more participants you would likely see thousands of other ideas individuals have in mind when searching for that same query.

My next question is:

Why do we, as individuals, have different ideas for the same search query?

Looking forward to reading your thoughts here. Part III coming up tomorrow.

Sahar