Ypodia! – The yahoo search experience in the wikipedia way…...

Vipin asked me to define the problem …which was indeed an intimidating demand of his. Yes, how about user tuned web search or sharing the search query strings (on specific keyword) on the web, well as the web user count is increasing each and every day there is a increased need to mirror the searches that has happened on a specific keyword and sharing the web searches made by experienced web user to the newbie …isn’t that idea comprehensive enough. My idea is to have a wiki, where instead of static articles...It will contain links to different information sources grouped by different contexts and different search APIs like (Google, yahoo, technorati search and yahoo answers .Flicker photos etc.)

Introduction:

Web search has become the hottest application on the wire in recent years, but the online encyclopedia tools like wikipedia still prove their success over powerful web based search engines like Yahoo or Google when a user wants to find some specific information on the web with search keywords, like “second world war” or “Microsoft corporation”. Just to give an illustration, if you search Google or yahoo for “Microsoft corporation” will return you links from web like the following ( top 10 results )

1) www.microsoft.com

2) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft

3) support.microsoft.com

4) home.microsoft.com

5) msdn2.microsoft.com

6) office.microsoft.com

7) office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/default.aspx

8) www.research.microsoft.com

9) msdn.microsoft.com/xml

10)members.microsoft.com/careers/default.mspx

Now, lets see what happens when we go to wikipedia for the same

It takes us to the page of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corporation article, which comprises the following

* 1 History

o 1.1 1975–1985: The founding of Microsoft

o 1.2 1985–1991: The rise and fall of OS/2

o 1.3 1992–1995: Domination of the corporate market

o 1.4 1995–1999: Foray into the Web and other ventures

o 1.5 2000–2005: Legal issues, XP, and .NET

o 1.6 2005–2007: The road to Vista

* 2 Product divisions

o 2.1 Microsoft Platform Products and Services Divisions

o 2.2 Microsoft Business Division

o 2.3 Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division

* 3 Business culture

* 4 User culture

* 5 Corporate affairs

o 5.1 Corporate structure

o 5.2 Stock

o 5.3 Diversity

o 5.4 Logos and slogans

* 6 Criticism

o 6.1 Corporate

o 6.2 Technical

* 7 Microsoft.com

* 8 See also

* 9 References and footnotes

* 10 External links

Isn’t that great, a single source for all your want to knows … you can know better about Microsoft corporation from this page than anything available on the web, as this is a very structured and globally contributed article which pretty much cover the entire Microsoft story, so now on you will always go to this page instead of doing popular search engine search.

But lets not stop here, lets take a third approach..What happens if I would have searched web using the globally shared contexts on “Microsoft Corporation”.

Like the following

search string
(contexts)

a)Microsoft corporation history:


##### results #### ##### source #####

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft yahoo search
www.radessays.com/viewpaper/13230/Microsoft_History.html yahoo search
www.microsoft.com/billgates/bio.asp yahoo search
www.answers.com/topic/microsoft yahoo search
www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm yahoo search
www.csl.mtu.edu/winter98/cs320/micro/history yahoo search

The history of Microsoft Corporation? yahoo Answers search
The History and Development of Microsoft Corporation? yahoo Answers search


b) Microsoft products


www.microsoft.com/products yahoo search
www.microsoftproducts.net yahoo search
technet.microsoft.com yahoo search
office.microsoft.com yahoo search
msdn.microsoft.com/canada/academic/products yahoo search
members.microsoft.com/careers/careerpath/
marketing/product.mspx yahoo search
tech.msn.com/guides/msproducts/default.aspx yahoo search

Why do Microsoft products suck? yahoo Answer search
Why do some people hate Microsoft, but still use
Microsoft products? yahoo Answer search
Microsoft products? yahoo Answer search
IBM and Microsoft product compatibility? yahoo Answer search
How can I find who a Microsoft product is registered to? yahoo Answer search
Stupid Microsoft Product Activation Bullshit problem? yahoo Answer search

Now think of a wiki, which contains a log if all the searches made on specific keywords with different contexts. A place where you will find a collection of links grouped by contexts applied on the search keyword ( those linked are typically fetched by searching across the web using popular search apis like Yahoo , Google and Yahoo answer , flicker …basically a detailed snapshot of all the search query combinations available for the specific keyword ).

Gory Details:

How it works? Possibly that will an interesting question to answer at this point…

This is a new type of wiki driven by search , as said that basically creating a document here is something like this , you define a keyword on which you also create search contexts like if the keyword is a person , as Shahrukh Khan , the possible contexts will be “filmography” , “awards and nominations” , “scandals” . Then once you define the contexts, you will be given the options to choose the search channels , like Yahoo search , yahoo answers , de.icio.us tag search , technorati blog search and when you select the search channels and generate the results …you will be given control to choose the results. Now once you choose the results …it will wiki the whole thing, keyword as the document root …under that various contexts defined and under each context the links that you have chosen. Now when I say that the whole thing is going to be built on the wikipedia infrastructure …then its valid that anyone can add more contexts and refine and redefine any of the existing contexts.

Eats-shits-and-leaves-of-my-life

You know what ! I committed this crime once again , another weekend ( long one as they say ...when we have three days of retire) and me in my favorite apartment with my laptop .. 250 GB load of movies ..so Sunday became a nice movie day for me! Watched 5 movies back to back! ( without a single grain of pop-corn) ..the one about which I want to talk about is “ Ask the Dust” , a Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek starrer . This was the movie I was waiting for a long time , because its about a writer who looks at people , their life and try writing things from his experiences. Arturo Bandini , the hero of the movie , is a writer by profession who is trying to put himself at a good place in American Literature. He moves to LA with the aspiration of look at the life of its ( LA ) population , the hotels , restaurants , parks , pubs , malls , streets , ghettos everything. Now , as the money left in his stash is fast effacing , he faces a real tough situation to maintain his livelihood in LA , to pay his rent , get a square meal. But he doesn't give up and he continues to do what he was doing ...sometime wrapping tobacco with toilet paper for his joint , biting the sour oranges he manages to get from the Chinese cheap fruit seller ...continues his battle till the day when is left with a nickel ...wants to grab some coffee before being bankrupt ..which lead to meet this Camelia Lopez ( Salma plays that character ) gal , a sweet Mexican girl who is the waitress in a bar and incodently she serves him some real bad coffee ...worst of its kind to spend one's last nickels on ...gets into a fight with her and falls deeply in 'Love' ( well ....I don't claim that I know the meaning of this little word ..so you can read it as the “symbolic cynical chemistry in a man's mind for a woman” )...

Now there is another important character in this movie Vera Rivkin , a Jews girl who is a fan of Bandini's column , somehow comes to meet her favorite author Bandini , who can solve her problem ...all she wanted Bandini to say that “She is beautiful” ....finally she becomes a pivotal inspiration for Bandini to start on his new novel , which eventually fetches good amount of money and fame for Bandini. Now how the Camelia and Bandini's love towards each other grows and matures and finally how the movie end should be untold here to make sure that you watch it. But I would say , with my limited knowledge about woman ...Camelia , though portrayed as a rough-tough beautiful Mexican gurl ..represents those of its kind where they breath on their submission towards a meaningful relationship and expectation from the same. Bandini , well what you can think of a nice normal human , scared to get settled , confused about saying “yes” to Camelia ,whom he loves more than anything in this world, when she asked him to marry her , quite typical of a man character , his arrogance is marked by his uncomfortable way of treating a woman ..which I really found something unusual in Hollywood heroes.

Ban-(g)-alore-uno

Bangalore ..well in terms of perspiration and cynical frustration on the components of life I used to live in chennai , its much better now. The weather is really cool ..which nullifies the scope of the first and the nice apartment I am staying in ..which is also very near to my office in MG Road ( some kinda Park street of Bangalore ) made my life very smooth.But the standard Bangalorian culture is very much stereotype ..looks like everyone here likes to copy the others. You can see everyone using same kinda mobile phone , same denim jackets , same byke ..named Pulser , same dark Lipstick ...same ..lot other things ...I mean last saturday I went to this Pub called Bunker ..to check some crowd here ..I was alone ...because I didn't invited my friends ..as just wanted to enjoy the show in solitary. I was even amazed to hear that ..the PJ ( pub jokey ...its my innovation ) was playing some hardcore GodSmack stuff like .." I stand alone" ..that was good ..but you know ..I experienced the same stereotype thing when I saw that everyone was holding bottle of beer in their hard ..can you imagine ...beer in such a weather but nothing else . I thought ..I would let that be the inflexion point and ordered a large rum. I kinda settled myself at a corner of the hall ..and starting my voyeur again ...it was a huge floor ...
and they have the square platforms made in the middle ..where the couples or non-stags ( I mean a group where the man:woman greate than 1 ) are supposed to stand ..and those places are elevated than the normal floor ...where standard men crowed is supposed to stand.As I was enjoying the music ..the drink reached me ...though I ordered for Coke ..( my fav. base drink ) but the guy brought Pepsi ...he begged excuse and suggested that they both are the same sir! ..go hell with your suggestion I told him ...and started my drink neat ..well in turn I requested for one of my favourite number of this time ..by the best American Band ever called Doors ..named Roadhouse Blues ...with that ..I mirrored a "cheers" to the crowed and to Bangalore and joined the gala.I mean here are few of the eye catchers ....only Bangalorians-Indians ..can dance in Amitav's style with ACDC songs ..some of the manly ones ( I mean the macho-mumbos ..not with the six packs but tummy-pot-less creatures) will catwalk in front of the gals ( of course they came to the disco with some guy ..or some group of men and women ..) in the lucrative dream of pleasing her eyes..or I dont know why..non-indians ..well well ...poor they .,.dont even know that after a Indian has had his saturday night drink ...he cannot excuZe you ..even if you say "Excuse me" myriad times ....all that went on till after grabbing my third I took the retire and started walking towards my apartment.

Inscrutable Virginity

Just came back from a Saturday dinner party, during the dinner ( which was great ! ) the topic just popped into my psychic vista , well I never thought about the literary validity of this oxymoron ( that’s my claim if anyone think this is not please comment ) “inscrutable virginity “ , rather it was another two lettered member those keep coming in my mind. But when I told this to Nitesh , he told that its an interesting thing to be talked piece of idea to be talked about in detail. So as now I have few free hours before I retire for bed and have a pack of cigarettes which I can finish on this ( smoke for thought ) I decided to take this oxymoron as the title of the post I am going to do after one long year of abstinence from writing blogs.

Enough for introduction .... let me divulge the main course ; this is about the past one year of my life ; part of my life where things happened in a very fast pace , never been before , lot of people came into my life ( some of them left …some of them with some conspicuous abruptness ..) , I have been to situation which was brand new to me , learnt a whole lot of things , committed a bunch of activities never thought of …well I think all these sound pretty normal as this is how the walk of life is supposed to be , but then again why I am getting the feeling that this one year is much more important than being another trivial window of time. Just that a considerable amount of my though process has been shoestring effect on my living, it does not mean that I have not taken those ideas to some logical end points. Being an uncommitted thinker, my utopia ranges from being the PM of India to dating Priyanka Chopra ( sigh …) , recently I was involved in a self assigned project of analyzing every sparks of ideas coming in my mind explicitly and found out that most of them dont have logical coherence in between , finally I took a decision after some sleepless nights that no more infringing limits of possibilities as that kills you hundred time ( minimum ;-) ) before getting erased from your mental hemisphere.

Now , three major influential factors of my life my laptop , my new flat in BesantNagar , Chennai and Orkut.com. My ThinkPad R51 is the coolest possible thing happened to me , in terms of entertainment apart from its major use for my research purpose , it has served beyond the sum of money I am going to pay till December ( that will be end of a great financial agony ). Now the flat in beachside district of Chennai , BesantNagar ( A place in Chennai where sun rises in the west ;-) ) which we took as a measure to get a place for high noise parties and improved privacy for our bachelorhood ( in here in Chennai , the direction goes ….dogs and bachelors are not allowed ..) have taught all lessons of life in the hard ways. Sometime the drainage system is screwed up or sometime you wake up in the morning and go to toilet and after pooping when your press the lever of the flush, no water comes out to flush out the dirt ( god damn shit ! ) and with sheer dismay you discover that the water pump is fubared …..now the biggest problem is English is still not the national language in India , you have to talk to plumbers and construction managers , speaking lingua franka Tamil ….that means you better be trained in acting in some pantomimes …. Well finally as we lodged several complains to our landlord who is a NRM ( non resident Madrasi …Madrasi is the alias for the mad rash Chennai-ites ) he took some frivolous approach to pacify our rage…after a lot of patchwork and turmoil it’s a better place to stay. The number three, Orkut.com ….its a great thing for me not because reader’s expected premonition of it being the good place for hunting down feminine “shikaar”s ( hindi term for Quarry ) but being the only feasible medium of keeping contact with my friends staying in other cities across the globe …as I am not very efficient in using online mediums like IM and Telephony as the ways of keeping contacts alive , for that matter the concept of leaving scraps really been working out for me.

I am going to take a break , as I am going for pee after writing for last 2 hours and left with the third last sutta ( cigarette in collegiate lingo ) and after coming back I am going to talk about the most important aspect of this melodrama , my experiences with alcoholic intoxication … so better stay tuned. (In popular soap ad break style …)

TRANSHUMANISM

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TRANSHUMANISM ........to make us more than human
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'What is a human being, then?' 'A seed.''A... seed?''An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree'

David Zindell, The Broken God

Transhumanism is a philosophy that humanity can, and should, strive to higher levels, both physically, mentally and socially. It encourages research into such areas as life extension, cryonics, nanotechnology, physical and mental enhancements (Intelligence Amplification),uploading human consciousness into computers and megascale engineering.

Specially the scenarios like nanotechnology,mental enhancements and megascale engineering are somthings where we need tremendous scientific & R/D effort to tryst with our transhumanian destiny. As we have only seen the concepts like "mega structures" only in sci fi drama or fictions but this is time for us to educate ourself with the documented concepts and theories related to this arena . I am giving a link here where u may have a knowledge about the 'megastructures" http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Tech/Megascale/megastruct.txt.
Guys its sounds pretty nerd but I am just thinking of being the "Gandalf" by enhancing my mental and physical attributes (http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm?http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/g/gandalf.html if u wanna know about this grt man !) , which will be offered to the common man as a result of this neo humanitorian movement.

Transhumanism is entering the mainstream culture today, as increasing numbers of scientists, scientifically literate philosophers, and social thinkers are beginning to take seriously the range of possibilities that transhumanism encompasses. A rapidly expanding family of transhumanist groups, differing somewhat in flavor and focus, and a plethora of discussion groups in many countries around the world, are gathered under the umbrella of the World Transhumanist Association( "http://transhumanism.org/" ), a non-profit democratic membership organization.

"Biotechnology", "genetic engineering", "stem cells", and "cloning" are the major technological arenas R&D segment is concentrating these days..and there r few other topics like "superintelligence", "virtual reality" , "cryonics" and "singularity hypothesis" ..the transhumanitorian world is concentrating oflate. I will advice to google these topics if things sound interesting.

Now the basic question is Why should I be a transhuman?

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Transhumanism can't tell you what kind of music to listen to, which hobbies to pursue, whom to marry or how to live your life, any more than, say, being a member of Amnesty International or studying molecular biology could tell you these things.Depending on your situation and your needs, you might or might not find some of the currently available human modification or enhancement options useful. Some of these are commonplace exercise, healthy diet, relaxation techniques, time management, study skills, information technology, coffee or tea (as stimulants), education, and nutritional supplements (such as vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, or hormones). Others you might not have thought of, such as getting a cryonic suspension contract or chewing nicotine gum for its nootropic ( mental enhancement) effects. Still others for instance pharmacological mood drugs or sex reassignment surgery are suitable only for people who have special difficulties or needs

Transhuman's day out:
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As proponents of personal evolution and self-creation, transhumanists tend to utilize technologies and techniques that improve cognitive and physical performance, while engaging in specific routines and lifestyles designed to extend health and prolong life.

Many transhumanists are transhuman by virtue of seeking to become posthuman (http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/56/), which they claim is the next significant evolutionary step for the human species. It is supposed that specific biotechnological and nanotechnological innovations will facilitate such a leap by the midpoint of the 21st century. Depending on their age, some transhumanists worry that they will not live to reap the benefits of these future technologies. However with this knowledge, many have a great interest in life-extension practices and as a last resort cryonic suspension.

Transhumanists are also forming regional and global networks and communities to provide support and forums for discussion and working on collaborative projects.


transhumanically yours
Sudipta Banerjee