What's next, computers writing proposals??

[skess]

Is anyone familiar with the RealCities network? They're doing a strange branding thing, which is that all their local-content sites have domains like &quot;myrtlebeachonline.com&quot; or &quot;indy.com&quot; and the &quot;realcities&quot; is downplayed.<br>
<br>
Anyway, I'm in SF and use bayarea.com sometimes for local info (i use sfgate.com much more often though). There is one amazing thing I've learned about it though, and that is that the directories for the RealCities sites are edited by a machine. I had no idea technology was at that stage. They use software that goes out and &quot;reads&quot; all these web sites and then understands which categories they belong in and puts them there. &quot;Autonomy&quot; is the company that makes the software. And the listings are good - no search-engine randomness. The look like they were put together by an intelligent human being.<br>
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I produce content for a fairly well-funded outdoor/adventure travel site. Out founders talked to friends at Yahoo and Looksmart when they were getting started and decided not to even try to assemble the manpower needed to create a comprehensive directory for our category, or not for the time being anyway. So I'm very intrigued by this software, it limitations, its cost, it's installation/integration difficulties, etc.<br>
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If anyone has any input for me, I'm all ears. Thanks very much.<br>
<br>
Steve

 

[Karl Blessing]

try going on irc.webchat.org, the IRC server, it has these randmo news postings, that basically just goes out and finds new catagories, and post it on their site, pretty much a of a story rippoff, but computers arnt intelegent enough to think, nor decide, the program yer speaking of, works thru filters, and preselected sites. most news sites, will probally have a standard of how things are posted., but HTML is only texts, and tags in it's lowest format. also alot of websites will now use &lt;META&gt; tags, you can put descriptions and keywords into this tag, and computers always read that, when it goes thru the filters, sites such as search engines, and webspiders, will now mainly use those tags for direct info, rather than searching the page for keywords, they might have the word &quot;Sports&quot; , or &quot;Front PAge&quot; in the meta tags, it's not hard to do. <p>Karl<br><a href=mailto:kb244@bellsouth.net>kb244@bellsouth.net</a><br><a href=

http://kb244.8m.com>

</a><br>Experienced in , or have messed with : VC++, Borland C++ Builder, VB-Dos, VB1 thru VB6, Delphi 3 pro, Borland C++ 3(DOS), Borland C++ 4.5, HTML, ASP(somewhat), QBasic(hehe, yea it was 4.5 too, least i didnt start with COBOL)

 

[calahans]

I <b>LOVE</b> the title of this thread - if I could find a machine to write proposals I would be a happy man......<br>
<br>
Lousy documents

 

[brian33]

Here's the URL of a little article from ComputerWorld, which I saved for pricing reference since we've been considering buying technology along these lines - <A HREF="

http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/991025C832"

TARGET="_new">

http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/991025C832</A><br>

It's about the Dept of Defense setting up an Autonomy-driven knowledge store which creates interest- and skill-profiles for personnel. A separate tool then gives a visual 'map' that lets managers pick people for a job or a team. Sort of cool.<br>
Like I said we explored some of the options last year for in internal intranet portal, which then got put off. The article mentions that the DoD was looking into Excalibur and some other one too. We also looked at Verity.<br>
<br>
Brian

 

[bbrooks]

I read about that DOD project too. It sounds useful, but it's really not the best showplace for this technology. The DOD staff managing solution requires that people explicitly enter and update their profiles. What sets Autonomy apart is that it can profile based on the work employees review and do. In other words it can read all the documents and emails that come from various employees, then hook people up who are working on similar projects, and let you know when you have something in the works about all the other company/web/news/etc documents that are relevant to your current project. So it can work invisibly/automatically to build profiles without anyone needing to enter them. Caveat being that in most cases a combination of the two will serve best.<br>
<br>
Bart Brooks<br>