About

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About

• Vivisimo Inc. is an enterprise software company
• Creates innovative software to access and cluster
  the worlds information, for better search and
  discovery
• Founded June 00 in Pittsburgh, 22 employees,
  sustained profitability
• Organic growth, no venture capital funding
• About 80 customers Cisco, JNJ, NSA, JAMA,
  Micropatent, AOL, AAAS, etc.
• Clusty.com, acclaimed web search engine
• Launched on Sept 30 of last year
• Raul Valdes-Perez, CEO co-founder
• Last Stop Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Dept
  (1986-2000)

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Bookstores versus Electronic World

• Bookstores and Libraries
• Stack of books on the floor?
• No. Books are categorized on shelves
• Categories are better for bookseller book
  buyers
• Why Not the Same in Electronic World?
• Print-world model too costly complicated
• Based on Dewey Decimal System ideas taxonomy
  building
• Electronic world still in the stack of books on
  the floor mode
• Vivisimo has disruptive technology (clustering)
  to fix this
• Vivisimo creates innovative software
• to access and cluster the worlds information
• for better search and discovery
• We aim to be the Intel Inside of the search
  industry.

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End User Benefits of Clustering
User Benefits 1 See what's available At a
glance, the folders show you an information
landscape. 2 See much further Following our
interests, we navigate to low-ranked but
interesting search results, which we're unlikely
ever to see otherwise. 3 See similar
information together We don't have to be
satisfied with the first reference we come
across. We can compare several and pick the best
one.
Key Advantages 1 Works on the fly No need for
pre-processing 2 Spontaneous categories no need
to pre-define them
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Commentary

• This Clustering Engine is a technology that,
  in the long term, we would expect to become part
  of almost all search engines.
  
  
• Cool Vendors in Advanced Information
  Management
• Alexander Linden et al. (Gartner)
• specialized search tools can improve on
  Googles results. My favorite is Vivisimo,
  founded by scientists at Carnegie Mellon
  University, which clusters search results into
  useful categories rather than putting them in one
  big list.
• 
  
  James Fallows, New York Times
• Another common prediction, and one that falls in
  line with usability, is for the increased
  adoption of clustering technology. America Online
  is already offering clustering via its Vivisimo
  partnership. Gartner analyst Alan Weiner, for
  one, said he's hooked on clustering
• Jennifer LeClaire, Ecommerce Times

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Clusty the Clustering Engine

• Perhaps the most disgusting brand name out
  there
• The problem with this new search engine, is the
  name what kind of name is Clusty? I can see how
  they came up with it, "hey we cluster results, so
  let's call ourselves Clusty." The problem is,
  it's brings to mind too many negative images,
  like crusty or maybe worse, lusty.
• recently launched a Web search service under
  the dopey name of Clusty.
• the awkward name conjures images of Crusty
  the Crab from The Incredible Mr. Limpet (or the
  Simpsons Clown, depending on your tastes) ...
• I don't see crusty, I see busty. I definitely
  don't like the name.

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Clustering, Query Refinement, Personalization,
or Entity Extraction?

• Query Refinement - Show alternative queries to
  the user
• Pro little computation, dont need search
  results as input
• Con
• History-based, not matched to search results,
  relevance is a challenge
• Click on a query, your screen disappears, absorb
  new context
• Personalization
• Pro its about you!
• Con
• Peoples interests arent static (Olympics,
  Oscars, Tsunamis, etc.)
• Shared computers lead to shared personalization
• Clustering
• Pro content can come from anywhere, spontaneous
  categories
• Con need a good 100 search results,
  unpredictable categories

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Some Licensees of Clustering Engine
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Non-Vivisimo Meta-Search Installation
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Meta-Search Output
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Lots of scrolling!
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Clustered Search Results
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Alternatively, Cluster by Sources
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Scale Up to Many Sources
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Vivisimo for Corporate Libraries

• Meta-Search One Query Visits All Eliminates
• Need to be aware of the available sources
• Need to learn multiple search syntaxes
• Tedium of searching many individual sources
  combining results
• Improved Decision Making (CIO Update paper)
• Employees bring into view 10-50x more information
• Guaranteed time savings User Model
• Clustering Solves the Meta-Search Information
  Overload
• Categorized search results without cross-source
  taxonomies
• Optimize Your Publications Budget
• Reporting Tool gives precise statistics on usage
  of licensed sources
• Achieve the Above with Simple, Non-Invasive
  Overlay

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Old Way of Thinking

• If a search returns many hits, then youre a
  novice
• Most patrons/users are novice searchers!
• New way
• Purposely start out with broad searches
• Learn something by viewing the results
• Use what you learned to search again
• Find what youre looking for
• or discover what youd normally miss

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Clustering Will Go Mainstream in 2005-06

• Why? Critical Mass of Installations and Buzz
• AOL Clusty reach about 10 of web searches
• Unbeatable Value Proposition
• Instant organized information without taxonomies
• Real End-User Benefits
• Users can consider lots more info with the same
  effort
• Makes people smarter!
• Meta-Search without clustering worsens overload
• Transform online world of information
• Less like 1-person used bookstore with piles of
  books
• Look more like Barnes Noble or Borders