I have a big complaint with much of the search technology used for streaming media and other sites.. To put it simply, it’s just not very smart.
Unless it’s gets a lot smarter, any PC maker who is betting any part of the future on PCs as entertainment could lose their table stakes.
I{n an ideal world, any search engine that I use to locate an online episode of PBS’s Nova series should correctly assume I'm interested in science or technology programming and initially make deep recommendations based to my searches. It’s improbable that any search feature could satisfy my pent up demand on the first try.But believe that after I’ve used it for awhile, it should be able to meet my pent up expectations.
There are more search recommendation engines that fail than succeed. Surprisingly, NetFLix recommendations just don’t cut it in my world. And don’t even get me started on Spotify, whose recommendations don’t even come close to what expect in a streaming audio site.
But, there are some services that show promise. Apple Itunes’ Genius feature is one example. To make a point, Genius is the only service I’ve stumbled on that correctly predicted that I might be interested in the music of the Los Angeles band Hiroshima because I have downloaded music from fusion guitarists Larry Carlton and Robben Ford.
how smart does search have to be to understand the names of musician/sidemen who accompany a featured player and then recommend selections from those artists?
I think the answer is “not very smart.”
Google’s YouTube is another great example of a site with above average search in the streaming media entertainment category, YouTube is the only site that produces search results that are contextually linked to topics. Examples of this include my deep interest in California Gold mining. After searching for documentaries on dry lands gold propecting, YouTube delivered amature footage detailing of how an avocational prospector made a gold discovery about 200 miles from my house. The YouTube Search engine also works very well when it comes to semantic search results.
Despite the overpowering dominance of Google Search, which has been made more powerful by Semantic Search technologies,, I believe there is still a lot of money for entrepreneurs to mine in search engine technology.
Reality listing is a classic example. I want badly to move to the Sacramento CA region -- where housing is still quite affordable and I would really love to use my veteran’s house loan to buy a small house with a dock on the Sacramento River.
Given the price of housing, you might assume real estate listing services would want an engine that delivers lists of available properties in response to specific queries such as “Home For Sale Sacramento RIver with dock.”
Unfortunately only one service has responded to my query with a specific property.
but I’m still hopeful and believe improved search technology is ight around the corner. If not, I’m pre approved for a zero down VA loan at two and fraction percent interest.
And that leaves me with enough money to buy boat 3.0 to tie to my very own dock on California’s Mother river.-- Jim Forbes on August 15, 2013.
Smart post. How about taking it step further and providing cross-service search so I can tell which streaming service has content that another does not? Otherwise it's go-fish when it comes to finding stuff. Does Netflix have it? Nope. Amazon Prime, nope? Then Hulu must, right? Someone has to come up with cross-service media search.
Posted by: David Churbuck | September 05, 2013 at 05:13 AM