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Free Watson helps consumers find what they weren’t seeking.
Turning your computer into a kibitzer that watches your every move and offers advice will become freely available beginning Monday.
Chicago-based Intellext Inc. will offer its Watson software http://intellext.com/ free to consumers, adopting the ad-supported business model embraced by Google, Yahoo and other Internet powerhouses.
Launched in January, Watson is an advanced search engine intended to help users find resources they may not even know to seek. Developed by Northwestern University computer scientists, Watson was originally intended to serve business customers who pay subscription fees of $100 a year or $10 a month.
The subscription product is still available to enterprise customers, said Al Wasserberger, Intellext chief executive, but a consumer-oriented Watson can be freely downloaded from the company’s Web site at Intellext.com.
Watson moved into the consumer arena in September when Microsoft Corp. started promoting it to Windows users, but Wasserberger said consumers balked at paying.
"They said a subscription was OK for Watson as a business tool, but when they used it at home, they didn’t want to pay," said Wasserberger. "They could use Google and Yahoo for free, and they wanted Watson the same way."
The free version of Watson is configured to help with online shopping and other consumer-oriented functions, he said. The subscription Watson typically searches a user’s company Intranet and private databases like LexisNexis that the company buys, as well as the public Internet.
By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter
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The Firefox Hacks You Must Have
By Quinn Norton
With the release of the new version 1.5 of Firefox, there’s never been a better time to download the open-source browser, take it for a drive, kick the tires and see what it can do. In the case of a browser, mainly what it can do is show you web pages, hopefully quickly. So the real satisfaction comes from finding enhancements and add-ons, because you can only have so much fun timing page loads with a stopwatch.
Fortunately, Firefox is famous for its pluggable extensions architecture, which allows you to download little snippets of code that act as the software equivalent of small consumer electronics devices, only they are free.
Full Story: http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69781,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
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Tech guru dials into gaming’s social side
By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
About a year ago, Trip Hawkins had an epiphany — and not the kind you’d expect from a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
"I realized I had been doing the wrong thing for 30 years," he says in his office, eyes twinkling behind rimless glasses, his tanned skin and swept-back gray hair making him look like a displaced movie star.
That is why Hawkins is sure he’s doing the right thing now with his 2-year-old company, cellphone-game-maker Digital Chocolate.
Hawkins had spent those previous years chasing what he calls fidelity, or realism. In 1982, he started one of Silicon Valley’s all-time great successes: Electronic Arts, the world’s biggest video game company. At EA, Hawkins is best known for creating Madden NFL Football. His goal inside EA was to use technology to make the most realistic games possible. He was out to push the fidelity envelope, thinking that’s what consumers craved.
If you’re going to make games, make them social and mobile.
Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2005-12-11-exec-suite-hawkins_x.htm
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