Semantic search applications are finally starting to gel this year. Tonight, Adaptive Blue is releasing the latest version (dubbed Indigo) of its FireFox add-on, Blue Organizer. Put simply, Blue Organizer lets you surf things instead of Web pages. It recognizes when a Webpage that you are browsing is about certain classes of things: books, movies, music, stocks, recipes, restaurants, blogs, wine, clothing, electronics, celebrities, musicians, hotels. And it creates shortcuts to other Webpges about that same “thing” (or object). If you are reading a book review on a blog, for instance, Blue Organizer will let you jump directly to the page on Amazon about that book, or AbeBooks, Alibris, Barnes & Noble, eBay, and more. You can also go to a custom Google page that only searches book reviews for that book. For each different class of things it recognizes, you get a different set of contextually-relevant options.
Blue Organizer was developed by Alex Iskold, a frequent contributor to ReadWriteWeb. He raised $1.5 million from Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures back in February 2007, and is going to try to raise a B round soon.
Baked into Indigo is semantic search technology that acts more like a discovery engine than a traditional search engine. It is limited in what it can recognize, but it does recognize certain things and concepts and matches those with other Webpages about the exact same thing. You never have to go to a search engine, you just have to surf the Web and hop from concept to concept. The software can make inferences about entire Web pages, text inside those pages, and links inside those pages.
When it recognizes that a Web page is about a book, a movie, a recipe, or some other thing, the Blue Organizer icon at the top of your browser changes to an appropriate image (book, movie reel, chef’s hat) to indicate that it has identified an “object” on the page. And it offers a series of appropriate links, such as the Amazon page for a book or a list of reviews, as well as other links based on the way you use the Web, such as “Save to Delicious,” “Share on Facebook,” or “Digg This,” options. The software studies your Web history to surface links to Websites you already frequent. And Adaptive Blue has created a customized Google search engine for each class of objects it recognizes for more relevant search results.
Within a page, if you highlight the name of an author or a movie, for instance, a little SmartMenu box will pop up with links about that person or thing. If it recognizes the name of a book or restaurant that is already hyperlinked, a little blue folder icon will be embedded right next to the word. Click on that, and you get a bunch of associated “SmartLinks.” The SmartLinks also appear in search results pages, much like the Stumbleupon icon does when a you have the StumbleUpon Firefox add-on and you come across search results which have been rated by that community.
As with the previous releases of Blue Organizer, you can also save objects in the slide-out sidebar. This is a bit different than just saving links because you define what kind of “object” you are saving (blog, book, image, stock, toy, etc.), and you get the associated SmartLinks, custom search pages, and other categorization that goes with it.
Thinking of the Web in terms of things instead of Web pages does not come naturally. I installed the old Blue Organizer add-on more than a year ago, and have maybe used it twice. It was too advanced and didn’t fit into the flow of how I use my browser. (It is not just me—the add-on has been downloaded 1.3 million times, but only a couple hundred thousand people use it actively). The new features in Indigo, however, surface the utility of the application implicitly as you surf the Web. You don’t have to remember to save anything. You see a little blue folder, click on it, and get helpful links about that concept. You see the toolbar icon change, and you click on the pull-down menu to do something useful.
Complex apps need easy entry points, and Indigo has plenty of those. There is a lot more to this app than I can go through here. It makes it easy to create smart widgets, supports microformats, recognizes common names and addresses, and lets you highlight any text and send it as a message on Twitter, Tumblr, or Lijit. You can find more details on the Indiigo release here and here. Check it out and tell us what you think.
Best of luck Alex!
Sounds cool!! What kind of an algorithm is he using?
What is with the love affair with this app? It provides shortcuts! No-one actually uses it.
Is there some debt that needs to be paid to Fred Wilson?
This looks like a cool add-on but I don’t understand your use of the verb “surface” in this context. Surface is an intransitive verb. I think you mean “expose”.
i dont get why this is so great.
I remember when microsoft got body slammed for smart tags …
“how dare someone modify the intent of my web page” was the rant
same thing here, albeit with an plugin
Neat app. There are a few other things out there that do pretty much the same thing. AlchemyPoint from Orchestr8 is one, Twine is another. Hakia and some other sites also offer semantic search.
I think there is need of exact matching the same thing the user search on.
So much negativity!
Surely its just the next evolutionary step for AdaptiveBlue in an arena of vast scope, where very little user preference has been defined and supporting infra is in its infancy.
I’m damn interested to try it, give feedback and look for opps that I can exploit!
That’s what Yoono is for, and I love Yoono.
“This Software License Agreement (“Agreement”) is an agreement between
the end-user (“You”) and AdaptiveBlue, Inc. (“AdaptiveBlue”) (…) a non-exclusive, non-transferable License of the Software for your
personal, non-commercial use”.
OK you want to benefit from free/libre software community and products (ie Firefox here), but you don’t want to share. It may be OK for some people, but not for me thanks. My priority is the freedom, not the last hype.
WOW……hold your horses all. After never hearing of Adaptive Blue I stumbled onto them from RWW last month. Also, I’m one of those that run a minimalist browser. So i tried it out, got in on the beta and it is actually useful.
There are many times when you may be at a blog about subject matter X and never think to relate that to content source A. The cool thing is the icon in the browser, it intelligently figures out what type of content your are viewing and gives a matrix of options to see that info or related info in a different context.
I was skeptical at first as well, but the install and setup is easy as pie.
I’m curious what this is going to do to affiliate links. If I’m affiliate linking to a book on Amazon, is this toolbar going to steal that click? Seems to me it will. If it does, this would be the most evil “tool” I’ve come across in a while.
Don’t screw with my content.
@DMC,
We are going to pick up your affiliate code and maximize the sale for you – inside SmartLinks users will have 5 more opportunities to transact with Amazon.
Alex
This sounds like an interesting idea, but how is it different than a regular google search? The search criteria the article says it has is: “The software studies your Web history to surface links to Websites you already frequent. And Adaptive Blue has created a customized Google search engine for each class of objects it recognizes for more relevant search results.” I suppose this is technically “semantic” in the sense that it is using keywords, but when people talk about the semantic web they are talking about something far more advanced. The two key elements are advanced taxonomies and ontologies which would parse words and data in order to generate a more meaningful search. Does Adaptive Blue utilize any of these next generation semantic technologies?