Microsoft's 'Wild Thing'

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Microsoft's 'Wild Thing'

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05-03-2006, 05:00 PM

Darius Wey Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 12,959		Microsoft's 'Wild Thing' http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2...plays-wild-card "Microsoft is preparing a technology that will allow users to enter search queries by using only a few characters. The technology, dubbed 'Wild Thing', comes out of the Microsoft Research group and was demonstrated on Tuesday at the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Road Show at the company's Mountain View, California office. Wild Thing uses 'wild cards' to limit the number of characters that users have to enter on a mobile device. The software assumes that a 'space' or 'asterisk' can be replaced with any number of random characters. A search for 'c rice', for instance, will give 'Condoleezza Rice' as the top result, and 'ar sw m' will result in 'Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies'. Microsoft also demonstrated a local search option that lets users look for cinemas in a specific city by using only a few characters." When using a mobile device, it's not uncommon to experience bouts of laziness when typing out long search strings, so a 'shortcut' such as this would prove useful. The 'Wild Thing' search technology has already been patented, and Microsoft will supposedly introduce it in MSN Search, MSN Mobile, and MSN Virtual Earth products within the next six months. Are any of you looking forward to this? __________________ Want the latest news, views, rants and raves? Visit our portal. Wish to contact me? Send me a private message or e-mail.*

05-03-2006, 07:16 PM

WorksForTurkeys

Intellectual

Join Date: Aug 2006

Posts: 177

Quote:

A search for 'c rice', for instance, will give 'Condoleezza Rice' as the top result

Why wouldn't a search for "c rice" display "Carolina Rice"? Now I'm a bit suspicious of their system for weighing responses that would give priority to a proper name over a trademarked brand name: if Condoleezza is replaced in the next administration, will she no longer show up first? I would prefer a search engine that doesn't use the editorial content of the NY Post in order to weigh its responses.

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