Picture (from left): Dr Ramesh Jain, Donald Bren Professor in Information & Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine; Dr Kees A.Schouhamer Immink, President and CEO Turing Machines Inc; Michael Yap, Executive Director, IDMPO; Dr John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar, Annenberg Center at University of Southern California; Prof Dr Jose Luis Encarnacao, Professor of Computer Science at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and head of the Interactive Graphics Research Group (TUD-GRIS)
The Lab for Media Search (LMS)—which comes under the Interactive Digital Media Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO) at the National University of Singapore—looks set to receive more support for its work on an online search engine that uses linguistic analytics instead of keywords to deliver more precise responses.
The search engine being developed, according to LMS researchers, uses a question-answering system to derive exact answers rather than a long list of Web pages, such as those that other search engines are currently providing.
The search results offer 70 to 80 per cent more accuracy compared to 20 per cent by typical search engines that use keyword search processes, Professor Chua Tat-Seng, Director, LMS, told the media on September 4, 2008 at a press conference.
And when a user keys in a question, instead of just displaying websites with related words, the application will display a list of exact answers; and each comes with the name of the source, date of publication, and its Internet address.
Such a system, with its ability to give answers directly, would do well in a knowledge management space within the enterprise, Professor Chua said.
Already, the system, along with another that is able to search for video clips on the Internet, has been adopted by US-based television cable company Comcast to help its customers search for programmes more accurately. “For instance, the viewers can specify their search for fighting scenes and will be shown a search result of shows with fighting scenes,” said Professor Chua.
New Wave
This year, the LMS project will be joined by a new wave of 13 proposed by researchers from the local tertiary institutes. Some S$18 million in funding will be provided for this joint effort. Focusing on the research theme “Co-space”, the projects collectively aim to explore a new generation of the Internet—one which all the researchers concerned say that is more pervasive, immersive and integrated into people’s lives.
One of the new projects is on technology for mimicking and simulating the sense of touch and other human emotions to enrich the virtual experience; and, another one is for technology that addresses privacy and trust challenges in virtual worlds. The latter measures and deduces the trustworthiness of users in the e-commerce space and making the information available to interested parties. This is done through the examination of past behaviours and the history of the particular users’ dealings with others.
This specific project addresses the technology’s social aspect, which is often overlooked in many innovations, said Dr John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar, Annenberg Center at University of Southern California. “This helps bring a higher measure of trust to the Internet,” he said.
Dr Brown is part of IDMPO’s International Review Panel (IRP), which comprises academics and industry luminaries in the field of new media. The IRP—which met in Singapore September 1-4 to select the projects—declared that the new batch can trump the previous projects.
“I was very impressed to see such a progress since our last meeting in 2007. The quality of the research is very high and the talent being developed shows a high-level of competence and motivation,” said IRP member Professor Dr Jose Luis Encarnacao, Professor of Computer Science at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt and head of the Interactive Graphics Research Group.
