Proximic does better than Google at contextual info delivery
BREAKING NEWS: You know how Google Adsense works? On blogs or web pages? It looks for keywords used and then delivers ads.
Or, you know those “related links” things that are showing up on various blogs and news pages? They are generated the same way.
But Proximic just shipped a much better system than the ones I’ve seen from Google and other players.
Here it is. This isn’t a lightweight Web 2.0 company, it was under development for five years.
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October 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm
And not even a link to Proximic?
***SIGH***
Manoj
October 1st, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Sorry for missing that. I just added it. http://www.proximic.com/
October 1st, 2007 at 12:40 pm
The “Here it is” tricked me. :|
October 1st, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Went to try it out but their download stuff doesn’t seem to be working right (firefox) and they are not listed with https://addons.mozilla.org I got it to work the hard way, though.
That said… I hate sidebars. HATE them. I can’t see this being very useful to me if I need to constantly have it in the sidebar to get much use out of it.
I like the concept though. :/
October 1st, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Oh my, not *another* company thats going to blow away Google.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Just installed this add-on - works like a charm!
Kelly is right: it’s not listed publicly on mozilla.org - but can be found in their sandbox.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Because a toolbar for a browser that’s not used by a big majority of people is really going to get them mainstream.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Ever think that maybe there aren’t a lot of people advertising on “avian bird flu” ? The examples used just didn’t seem very good.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:57 pm
The best part of being a startup is that you are forced to tackling specific problems. Good stuff this !
But Question : do you really think they can afford to give competitors another five years before building “contextual content delivery” and “in-text advertising” expertise ?
Answer : I really don’t think so 8 )
Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode
October 1st, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Natural language Contextual matching technology has a huge future…I may not be too surprised if couple of years down the line companies like proximic become the next big thing
October 1st, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Isn’t this essentially what inform technologies does?
October 1st, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong but, By working of characters instead of words or phrases, don’t they completely lose the ability to relate articles/posts/whatever that are in different languages?
By identifying ‘patterns’ in characters like they suggest it seems to me that yes it will WORK for any language, but it will only relate to other items posted in that same language which to me defeats the idea.
October 1st, 2007 at 8:48 pm
[...] 1st, 2007 · No Comments This is a fascinating interview by Scoble with the people from Proximic. Its hard to follow, but worth the effort, if you [...]
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:57 am
Oops, right, it’s still in the mozilla sandbox. Always thought there must be more nice stuff out there. Let’s let it free.
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:53 am
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/digitaljoystick/archives/122857.asp
October 2nd, 2007 at 10:44 am
Did he actually say “US Americans” ??
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
The idea of finding relevant information within the content’s context one is reading is not something new. LinkedWords.com for example has been around for more than a year now but seeing how Proximic plans to do that I think http://LinkedWords.com is taking a different approach and instead of using a widget that matches the context they are linking strategic words across web pages, documents and content areas through their contextual platform (38M page large, btw) as in this way they create contextual connections between two and more content areas with the same context helping this way common users find contextual information while web publishers are given with the opportunity to gather and exchange extremely targeted traffic among themselves. As far as I understand the matter seeding contextual links around web on tens of thousands of content areas is perhaps better idea taking into consideration the long term benefits of having static in-text links around web rather than relying on a java/ajax based widget which normally is closed for the eyes of the major search engines and their indexing/filtering/semantic/clustering engines. Simply said real contextual links among content areas around web seems better and easier idea by me than contextual connections among web sites done through invisible for the search engines and placed off the real text widget. (Disclosure: I have used LinkedWords in the past). Proof for the better approach is currently the 400,000+ unique visitors per month to the LinkedWords’ contextual platform.
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:57 am
[...] http://scobleizer.com/2007/10/01/proximic-does-better-than-google-at-contextual-info-delivery/ [...]
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
XP running on a MacBook :)
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Robert Scoble , thanx for your information about proximic
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:18 am
Adsense works in German and with local adaption - do they too or do I need to go through the whole interview just to find out they don’t? tip: include that info for your international readers next time. ;)
October 8th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
[...] Proximic currently offers a widget for publishers, so they can display relevant information from around the web on within their sites, and a Firefox browser plugin that displays similar pages. Because it relies on patterns, not words, it can be used in any language. Scoble has a good video interview with the founders here. [...]
November 7th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Breaks the Firefox sidebar when I try it: moves it, and prevents it being resized.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Tried it a three months now and my enthusiasm’s gone.
It’s still buggy (after all those years) and often I found the results terrific bad. Well, it works fine with some computerrelated stuff (especially if you owe a macbook as I do) and okay for a few other topics, including english soccer results. But there a lot of gaps in other topics. And you rarely get something deeper than the usual “introduction into the topic” stuff. If my interests go into parachuting,I’m not interested in yet another “why parachuting is fun” article.
It’s not that progressive to show related wikipedia articles and the links found there. Mostly, it’s a lot easier to have a simple look in wikipedia first. There is no need for a tool like that.