In 2007, I persuaded MIT graduate students Michael Bernstein and Robin Stewart (who was interning at Endeca that summer) to help organize the first Workshop on Human-Computer Information and Information Retrieval (HCIR 2007), which we held at MIT and Endeca. Its success convinced us to keep going, and we enjoyed record attendance at this year’s HCIR 2010, held at Rutgers University.
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New Web Site for HCIR Workshop
HCIR 2010: Bigger and Better than Ever!
Last Sunday was HCIR 2010, the Fourth Annual Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval, held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, collocated with the Information Interaction in Context Symposium (IIiX 2010).
With 70 registered attendees, it was the biggest HCIR workshop we have held. Rutgers was a gracious host, providing space not only for the all-day workshop but also for a welcome reception the night before.
And, based on an informal survey of participants, I can say with some semblance of objectivity that this was the best HCIR workshop to date.
The opening “poster boaster” session was particularly energetic. There was no award for best boaster, but Cathal Hoare won an ovation by delivering his boaster as a poem:
Exploring Nuggetize
I’ve been exchanging emails with Dhiti co-founder Bharath Mohan about Nuggetize, an intriguing interface that surfaces “nuggets” from a site to reduce the user’s cost of exploring a document collection. Specifically Nuggetize targets research scenarios where users are likely to assemble a substantial reading list before diving into it. You can try Nuggetize on the general web or on a particular site that has been “nuggetized”, e.g., a blog like this one or Chris Dixon’s.
Taking Blekko out for a Spin
If you’re a search engine junkie like me, you’ve probably heard about Blekko, a search engine that has been percolating for over two years and recently launched a private beta. If not, I encourage you to watch the TechCrunch video I’ve embedded above. You can join the beta by following them on Twitter. I did that earlier this week, and my invitation arrived via a direct message the next day.
HCIR 2010 Accepted Papers
The 4th Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval (HCIR 2010) is coming up on August 22 in New Brunswick, NJ, taking place immediately after the Information Interaction in Context conference (IIiX 2010). That’s just a few weeks away!
If you are are interested in attending and haven’t already registered, please let me know as soon as possible via email or Twitter (speaking of which, follow the #hcir2010 hash tag). We’re making the remaining slots available to the community on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Questions. But Why?
Yahoo! Answers and Answers.com have been around since 2005. But community question answering (as distinct from question answering using natural language processing) has witnessed a resurgence of popularity–at least in the blogosphere and among investors. Quora and Hunch are two of hottest startups on the web, and Aardvark was acquired by Google earlier this year. Most recently, Ask.com relaunched with a return to its question-answering roots and Facebook began rolling out Facebook Questions.
SIGIR 2010: Day 3 Industry Track Afternoon Sessions
While the SIGIR 2010 Industry Track keynotes had the highest-profile speakers, the rest of the day assembled an impressive line-up:
