Guy Halawi, our development team leader, is such a practical and modest individual, that it took a fair deal of convincing to get him to introduce the story of how our Google search enhancement feature came about. Being a good guy (no pun intended) he eventually came around and found the time to chat with me…
headup offers its discoveries when you google something
Getting to know Guy
Me: So Guy how did you get involved with headup?
Guy: Like many of the folks here I was introduced to headup through a friend. Just over a year ago I was working on the development team for Phillips-Giga and, as rewarding as that was, I decided I wanted to experience start-up life. headup’s product looked really cool, and I already knew some of the people socially, so it made for a perfect fit.
Me: And how is it turning out for you so far?
Guy: It’s fun and challenging. I really enjoy the opportunities I get to play around with new technologies and the whole “start-up atmosphere”. There is a pioneering spirit here that’s exciting to be a part of. The Google search enhancement is actually a pretty good example of this.
Me: Do tell.
How the idea of headup on google came about
Guy: A while back during a brainstorming session focused around defining how headup would interact with different web services Tal (Tal Keinan – our CEO) came up with the idea of integrating headup discoveries into Google’s result pages. The sheer chutzpah of the idea appealed to me so I took it upon myself to figure out if this could be done and how. After some research it became evident to me that not only was Tal’s idea do-able, it wouldn’t even be that difficult to implement.
Me: Do you care to elaborate?
Guy: It’s a matter of figuring out when Google’s page is refreshed in the user’s browser and then splicing our code into Google’s result page HTML.
What does headup on google display
Me: Cool! What does headup display when activated from google’s results page?
Guy: That depends on whether headup succeeds identifying the type of object you’re searching for or not. When headup is successful it displays results customized for this type of object. For example, when you google “The Dark Knight” headup identifies that this is a movie and tailors results accordingly.
headup identifies an object's type and adjusts its discoveries accordingly
Me: But what happens when headup is unable to identify the object’s type?
Guy: If headup can’t identify a queried object’s type it displays a set of default discoveries that includes a summary, related things, search results, online activities, related news & blogs, videos, and photos.
Me: Is it possible that headup won’t display anything?
Guy: In extreme situations, like googling a string of gibberish, headup will return no results. Of course neither will google in most cases…
Me: Thanks for your time. What are you working on these days?
Guy: We’re all very excited about headup’s transition from being a private beta to being a public one. I have my hands full making sure the transition, scheduled for early in 2009, goes along smoothly…