I did profiled several posts on this alpha search engine, i.e. Powerset on this blog before. If you read Powerset, it is a search engine that based on natural language understanding technology, and has taken on a new, and yet important complexion. Typing a few keywords to Powerset search engine will probably not making you understand what its core technology and how it’s differentiate itself from Google or Baidu. But you definitely aware of its organization skills, and a lot of Ajax effects on its search engine. It’s not that surprise, I read that Powerset’s interface was built by Ruby on Rails, and this programming framework has thus become a ubiquitous tool for Web development.

Although several search engines have enjoyed a significant presence on the Web, there’s still not cater to all the needs of the users. In other words, there are still many opportunities for improvement. Playing around Powerset will introduce users to a new view of what a search engine can present to the users. The launched of Powerset’s first phase product is a clear example of how a search engine can make in order to be a most appropriate tool for interacting with users on all the archive, history news. Put an example, I just input several keywords on football, and especially my beloved football club, Arsenal. The results appeared remind me how great this football club it is, albeit that I deeply sad for the fact that Arsenal did not won any trophy for the past two years. I know they’re not afford to buy a lot of superstars, but without all those big names, I still find several Arsenal success stories on Powerset’s Wikipedia article search results. If Powerset continue to improve its natural language search technology, historical news might be the mainstay of most users’ retention strategy.

This is my first thought of Powerset. Frankly, I need a second look on it. As Powerset still positioning their search strategies and framework, I’m looking forward to use it as a search engine for historical news.

If you want to know more about Powerset, there’s a video I’ve embedded in the below. Also read the key man behind this search engine, Barney Pell’s words on it.