Widget update

If you’re using Headup you’ll be pleased to know yesterday we published an update to our widgets that improves a few important aspects of how the widget performs on your site.

Freshness

One of the most important changes in Headup’s performance has to do with how often we refresh the widgets that appear on your site. With this new version Headup is updated on your home-page every 2 hours, and on all your other pages, every day.

Maps

Behavior of maps for location related topics has been improved.

Headup shows maps for location related topics

Widget Customization

The positioning of your logo in the widget has been fixed.

Data Improvements

We’ve made further improvements to, what our development guys like calling, our “Entity Extraction Capabilities”. Translated into English this means we make less mistakes about what we choose to highlight, and how we refer to it. If you’re the type of person interested in this kind of stuff you might enjoy visiting our website’s spanking new “Technology” section which explain at great length exactly how we do what we do.

Apology

Yesterday we encountered some troubles related to our recent increases in volumes, that caused Headup’s service to fail for about two hours. We’ve spent a fair share of our time since at re-deploying ourselves on a more powerful setup that is better equipped at handling our new loads. We’re sorry for this downtime and hope none of you was overly affected by it.

Over the past few weeks we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of sites using Headup widgets. To celebrate the Oscar’s here’s a list of a few cool new movie and celebrity sites that have joined us:

TheMovieBlog.com

The Movie Blog Logo

Started in 2001 by John Campea, the movie blog is… a blog about movies. The current editor is Rodney Brazeau whom we’ll hopefully have here as our guest blogger interview in the weeks to come.

HitDanBack.com

Hit Dan Back

Dan Brickley’s celebrity blog is “a delicious, low-carb blog manifestation of TLC Host and Us Weekly Fashion Cop“. I’m far from being an avid gossip reader but Dan’s Tongue-in-Cheek Trash-Talking style cracks me up every time.

VaughnOnMovies.com

Vaughn On Movies

Vaughn Fry studied film at the University of Kansas, he’s also the self described “World’s Toughest Movie Critic“, and serves as the programmer of the Tallgrass Film Festival.

Thanks for supporting us guys!
We’re glad to have you all on board…

Audee Mirza

Our guest for this week’s interview is Ms. Audee Mirza.
Audee is a self employed graphic designer based in Surabaya, Indonesia. She’s also a loving mother, doting wife, and the founder of “Graphic Identity” – one of Indonesia’s most popular web design blogs.

I learned of Audee’s blog when one of my Google alerts notified me of a review of our widget she’d posted.

After reading the first sentence in her review I knew I had to invite her to star in one of our Weekly Blogger Interviews.

“Why?” you ask yourselves.

Because Audee learned of us by reading the interview I conducted with her online pal Ruhani Rabin (@ruhanirabin) couple of weeks ago, and I love these little reminders one gets ever so often that, although the web is a huge and intricate skein of links and connections, at the end of the day there’s always another human being at the end of the line – a person to connect to, learn from, laugh with…

Mike:
Hiya Audee!
How’s it going?

Audee:
Great! Cool chatting with you.

Mike:
The pleasure is all mine.
I’m often curious as to how people first learned about Headup, but I guess in your case there isn’t much point in asking…

Audee:
Not really – As you know I first heard about you from the interview you did with Ruhani Rabin.

Ruhani’s pretty big in the South East Asian web scene and since we’re friends I try and keep up with his posts and tweets. When he tweeted he’d been interviewed by you, naturally I had to follow the link, and that’s how I first heard about Headup. After I read the interview I decided to give your widget a spin and the rest is history.

Mike:
Indeed.
It still doesn’t give me the deeper background story though.
I guess what I’m really after is how you first became involved with the web professionally?

Audee:
It’s all part of the evolution of my online persona.

Mike:
Now that sounds like a story worth hearing!

Audee:
I don’t know about that, but here goes: Like many, and perhaps even most web designers working today, I never actually learned web design formally. My basic education is a degree in architecture.

Mike:
Sounds familiar so far. I studied Industrial Design myself and got involved with the Web as the Internet evolved all around us.

Audee:
I guess sometimes you just have to follow your passions. Even during my studies I found myself strongly drawn to the Web and Graphic Design, so I began educating myself using online tutorials, books and help from friends – pretty much anything and everything I could get my hands on.

I can honestly say that as far as my graphic design skills go I’m entirely self taught.

Mike:
Do you regret studying Architecture?

Audee:
On the contrary, I think it gave me a wonderfully broad base in the basic theory of design. These basics are pretty much the same regardless which discipline you study.

Mike:
Very true…
So now we know how you got involved with the Web but how did you get into the whole blogging and social media scene?

Audee:
I started blogging in June 2007 and joined Twitter a year later. I saw blogging as a great way to hone my skills, showcase my work, meet people, and promote my business. My first inspiration was the excellent Bittbox blog.

When I first started out I was using Blogger simply because it felt like the easiest way to start a blog. It’s still the platform of choice for Graphic Identity, but I don’t know for how much longer, because since then I’ve become more involved in building sites on Wordpress, which is far more robust and versatile.

Mike:
So when you started out how did you decide what to topics to cover on your blog?

Audee:
Like I said before I was initially looking for a chance to express my abilities and skills. I thought a design niche blog would be a good start. Today I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned and helping other by writing tutorials and posting freebies.

Mike:
Seems your online generosity is well received. You have quite a following!

Audee:
Twitter following is just a number. It means nothing.

What really matters are the relationships you forge. Thankfully I’ve been blessed with a few of those too.

I only wish I had more time to be sociable and have more dialog with my followers.

Mike:
I’m curious as to how you juggle your time. You’re a self employed designer, a mother, and a blogger. What’s you secret?

Audee:
There’s no secret. I’m very selective in whom I follow and I tweet and retweet only things I find to be of value, like Headup.

It actually makes a pretty good example of my flow:
As I mentioned before I learned about you guys by reading Ruhani’s interview.
Since I like exploring new web applications, especially those that include a social aspect, I decided to try you out and write a review.
Knowing that I was committed to giving useful feedback encouraged me to try and get as full an experience of your product as I could, and I’m glad I did because I believe that Headup, and by proxy, my review of it, are helpful for my community.

This interview is a pretty great indication my activities have had value for me too.

Mike:
I think you just gave a very concise and succinct example of the ROI on blogging and social media activities in terms of building one’s personal brand!

Which brings me to my next question – Do you have a particular experience you feel is the highlight of your blogging “career”?

Audee:

“Highlight of my blogging career”, hmm…

I guess my best experiences are related to the freebies I create and share, like a series of Photoshop brush sets I released a while back.

It’s very gratifying to see how people appreciate my contributions.

Regretfully it’s getting harder for me to find time to provide these as more and more of my time is occupied with client projects. Still, I really miss playing around with my pen tool and creating vector freebies.

Mike:
Where do you see yourself a year from now?

Audee:
I want to keep up my blogging activity and freelance work and I’m also going to be launching a few new blogs very soon. I guess it would be nice to get more involved in collaborative projects

Mike:
I wish you the best of luck and would like to thank you again for all the support you’ve given us. I’ll be sure to look out for your new projects on your Twitter feed!

Audee:
Thanks!
I’m looking forward to seeing how you guys evolve too.

Mike:

So are we…

It’s been a big week here at Headup. At long last, after months of hard work, we’ve finally unveiled our Headup “Topic Pages“.

What are Headup topic pages?

Headup topic pages are a new and exciting way to help your audience explore the topics you cover on your blog.

How are they generated?

Like the Tabbed widgets you’re familiar with, the new Topic Pages are generated automatically for each of  the topics Headup identifies in your content. They include all the data you’re familiar with from the Tabbed widgets, and much much more.

How are they displayed?

Headup Topic Pages can be linked and launched directly from your content, or connected via a “Snippet” widget, like the one we’ve installed on this blog (mouse-over the annotations in the demo text below to launch a Snippet).

“…For those of you who simply can’t get enough of Tim Burton, we have another treat from Alice in Wonderland for you. We’ve been given some new images which show, process by process how a piece of imagery goes from being filmed to being put onto a finished piece of film. To help demonstrate this, we’ve got progression art for The Knave of Hearts, The White Rabbit and the Red Queen. Alice in Wonderland is to be released by Disney 5th March and the global premier is set to take place in London with The Prince of Wales in attendance…” (Source: heyuguys.co.uk)

To access a Topic Page click the “More” link at the end of the summary in the snippet widget:

Clicking "More" launches a Topic Page

How can they be customized?

Headup Topic Pages can be customized to match your blog’s branding and show your blog’s articles as “Related Articles”.

The Headup publishers’ dashboard enables you to configure your Topic Pages to show your blog’s logo and coloring in the Topic Page header and display your own posts, or posts from any domain you choose, in the Related Articles section:

Topic Pages can be customized to match your branding & show your related posts (click to view full size)

We’d love to hear your feedback!

Initially available only to a select group of Alpha testers, we intend to release this new feature as an option for all Headup users VERY soon, and are eager to hear your feedback so give us a shout out @headup on Twitter, or leave a comment below and tell us what you think…

Ruhani Rabin - the man to know online Malaysia

My guest for this week’s interview has a dream of harnessing the power of the web to help make the world a better place. His name is Ruhani Rabin and he’s an Asian tech blogger whose life story seems at times to border on the fairytale realms of the Arabian Nights.
Rabin lives in Petaling Jaya, the bustling city that serves as a commercial hub for the kingdom of Selangor, one of the 13 federated states that compose modern Malaysia.
Originally born in Dhaka he moved to Malaysia eight years ago after leaving Bangladesh to seek his fame and fortune. So far he’s well on his way to both – last summer Archanid, the independent agency where Ruhani works as Chief Technology Architect, won the award for “Digital Agency of the Year” from Malaysia’s prestigious “Advertising + Marketing” magazine. His next position is even more impressive (but you’ll have to read this interview to learn more about it).
I got to speak to Ruhani about his blogging career just as he’d moved into a new apartment and the only thing he’d unpacked was his PC.

Mike:
Hiya Ruhani, how’s the move coming along?

Ruhani:
I barely have my setup ready yet. Relocation is a mess.

Mike:
I’d have thought that for someone whose shifted countries such as yourself, a move between apartments shouldn’t be a big deal.

Ruhani:
When moving it’s not the distance that counts as much as the number of boxes you need to pack and unpack.

Mike:
Good answer… I’ll remember that one
So tell me Ruhani, how has your relationship with the web shaped your career?

Ruhani:
My relationship with the web IS in many ways my career. Over the years I’ve been involved in software, hardware, design, construction, data warehousing and other internet related industries but these past 5 years I’ve been very active on the social media scene.
It granted me the ability to create my personal brand simply by building honest relationships with my audience. My write-ups and blogs have provided me with enough exposure to keep me busy. In fact the last 3 positions I’ve filled were all opportunities that came my way thanks to my social networking activities. I didn’t apply for any of them – they just found their way to me.

Mike:
That’s an amazing testimonial you’ve just given to the power of social media but since I know you’re going to be leading Friendster soon you certainly have some pretty solid proof to back you up. Talking about Friendster, I’m really curious as to any details you can share about the plans you have for the site?

Ruhani:
Yes, Friendster has recently been bought by MOL Global/MOL Access portal (Malaysia). MOL is an online gaming, points system, prepaid and money transaction platform. I’ve been assigned to be Vice President of MOL in charge of integrating social engineering ideas for Friendster. Friendster, as I’m sure you know, is one of the oldest social media platforms around. I feel that what it needs is an injection of fresh and creative ideas integrated into the existing platform.

Mike:
I’m sure we’ll all be hearing more about that in the near future and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing Friendster returning to center stage of the social media scene, but I’d actually like to look back for a moment and ask you about your original motivation for blogging

Ruhani:
I blog in order to share the advantages of the technologies I’m exposed to with as many people as I can. I’ve always felt that it’s best to share the knowledge you have.

Mike:
Very true!
How and when did you start?

Ruhani:
I first started with Tech2all.com in 2006, around the same time TechCrunch launched. Sadly I lack the location benefits that TC’s team has…
The name tech2all reflected my sole purpose for blogging which is, as I mentioned earlier, to empower people through technology.
I began RuhaniRabin.com as part of my self-branding and I use it to give my personal perspective on topics I find to be of interest or value. I only wish I had more time to dedicate to my writing.

Mike:
How do you decide what topics to cover on your blogs?

Ruhani:
Tech2all covers and reviews “Web 2.0” topics, products and insights.
RuhaniRabin is more personal and therefore a little more eclectic. The main topics revolve around Social Media, Wordpress, Photography and Open Source tools. Lately Twitter has become a hot topic that influences my writing too as well.

Mike:
It seems that between the two blogs you really cover a lot of topics. I’ve also noticed, and you stated yourself earlier, that you’re heavily involved with social media. How did you first get involved?

Ruhani:
Actually my perspective on Social Media is that it’s all about getting to know, and being able to reach REAL people. The reason being that the knowledge you earn from people is knowledge you can’t find written in any book.
I originally started out on Myspace soon after they were launched. My first experiences were pretty unpleasant – I discovered a lot of dishonesty and deception. Rather than let this initial experience daunt me I moved on to Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, Twitter and a multitude of other social networks, some you’ve probably heard of and others too esoteric to mention. It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had.

Mike:
Quite a journey you’ve had. I think that in light of your experiences it’s especially interesting to hear what your perception of Headup is?

Ruhani:
Headup is a wonderful utility, I started using it slightly over month ago and for me it’s like an on-the-spot jargon explainer. The truth is that as a tech blogger I sometimes use terms that aren’t necessarily easy to understand or explain. Headup is my rescue toolkit for these situations. All my readers need do is mouse-over the keyword, and Headup explains it clearly along with related contents from other blogs, videos and tweets.
I think there could be a good monetization option for the widget.
I’ve taken a peek in the light edition of the widget and loved it too (note: Ruhani has been kind enough to let us test a pilot of our snippet widget on his blog).

Mike:
I’m curious as to what suggestions you have for us.

Ruhani:
I think in future it would be great to give an option to select which widget the blog displays to end users. Adding usage stats to the publisher dashboard would be simply fabulous. I’d love to see the speed improve as well.

Mike:
I’m glad to say that all your suggestions are already well under development and should be released later this month.

Ruhani:
Great!
In my opinion, Headup is a must-have for blogs. It really helps readers understand terms and words without having to leave the blog. Before I had Headup installed readers were often required to Google these topics. Headup reduces this need while simultaneously providing contents such as videos, images and tweets that the reader might not even know exist.
Once the stats are available I think Headup will help authors understand which words and terms are popular on their blogs. I really would encourage bloggers to try it out.

Mike:
Thanks so much for this incredible testimonial and all the support you’ve shown us along the way. Congratulations on your new job and good luck! I’ll be talking to you again soon…

Manny Brown - co-founder of 7outof10, and a very lucky man

Those of you who follow my weekly ramblings will have noticed that last week I failed to post a blogger interview.

Truth be told I was holed up at home for most of the week with a nasty case of the flu. Besides making my near and dear ones miserable I wasn’t really up to much of anything.

In the time that passed however our last guest, David Sztypuljak the editor and founder of the HeyUGuys film blog, made good on his promise and referred me to his friend gaming blogger Manny Brown.

Given the circumstances it’s only fitting that Manny is the star of this week’s blogger interview.

Manny Brown is still in his 20’s (at least for a few more weeks until he turns 30).

He lives in Cheltenham with his girlfriend and started 7outof10 together with game designer James Thomas and close friend Phil Davies. Although the site is still in its infancy Manny is happy with the way traffic is improving from month to month and was kind enough to speak to me on very short notice (some people forgot they had a blogger interview to publish this week, but I’m not saying who…)

Mike:

Hi Manny, thanks for agreeing to speak to me on such short notice.

Manny:

It’s a huge sacrifice but you caught me in a giving mood today.

Mike:

Lucky me.

Manny:

Indeed fortune has smiled upon you today.

Mike:

Seriously Manny, you’ve only just started 7outof10.
Can you tell me how you get into the whole blogging scene?

Manny:

I have a background in freelance videogame journalism and a 6-month stint as an editor at a now-defunct startup. I think these experiences, together with some IT background and a false career start or two, all came together and led to the creation of the blog in the middle of last year. James and myself decided to amalgamate our personal sites, and 7outof10 was born as a direct result. We’re still in our infancy, the site needs tidying up a bit, but traffic is improving rapidly every month.

Mike:

I wish my false career starts would have translated into a cool gaming blog.
And there I was thinking I was the lucky one.
I’m curious as to your blog’s name. What does 7outof10 actually mean?

Manny:

The name comes from a long-standing joke in the videogame reviewing world that 7 is deemed as an ‘average’ score for many publications, since nobody seems to want to use the full reviewing scale. That and fine UK podcast One Life Left were the main sources of inspiration.

Mike:

Reminds me of my ill spent youth and the report cards I used to get from school.
One important difference – no one ever objected to using the full reviewing scale on those…

Tell me, besides yourself and James, who else writes for the blog?

Manny:

James is a prolific poster, as is our fellow shipmate Phil. The three of us basically sit and moan to each other via email all day like old women. Our larger family includes many others such as William, Mike, Stevie et al, all good friends and all passionate about making this thing a success.

Mike:

“Moan to each other all day like old women” – now there’s an image for you.
I assume this reflects on your editorial process?

Manny:

Editorial process? What’s that?
To be honest we’re probably a bit too lapse with the editorial side of things. We have a forum in which people bandy about ideas, then everybody gets on with their own thing.

When it’s time for submission, James and myself will give things the once-over and fix any glaring problems before putting them live.

We’re gradually tightening the style as we go, but I think it’s important for sites such as ours to be staffed by people with their own voice.

Mike:

I’m actually certain that especially when you’re writing about games that’s pretty much a must. I mean having fun is what it’s all about! (I hope…).

Truth be told from what I’ve learned on your blog’s about page all the authors have professional experience in the gaming industry so you can’t be too far off with your content.

Manny:

Thanks. We do try

Mike:

I’m curious about that line in the “about” page – how did you all get involved in the field originally?

Manny:

Well, James is easily the most qualified among us, being a developer for a prominent company here in the UK.
Phil has worked in games retail for many years.
My own attraction simply stems from a passion for writing about the games I love. My aspirations started many moons ago writing lengthy posts and reader reviews on the Eurogamer forums, which then blossomed into curiosity and eventually a career in Freelance and as a full-time editor in 2008.

We all spend far too much time reading/playing and discussing videogames, so it just feels like a natural extension.

Mike:

I sooooo envy you guys.
What’s your most notable blog related experience?

Manny:

On a purely personal level, I’d have to say it was getting a chunk of my text published on renowned videogame blog Kotaku a few months back. I have a huge respect for those guys, so for them to highlight a paragraph of my Modern Warfare 2 review was fantastic.

In terms of more silly stuff, the one event that springs to mind was a ‘field trip’ organised by the PR company Koch media last year. Myself and nine other journalists were bundled into a van, taken to the Isle of Wight by ferry, put up in a hotel and treated to a beach party with stupendous amounts of alcohol, a massive fire and all sorts of food. The catch was, there was absolutely nothing to promote. Nothing to see. No game to play. I still have no idea what that was actually about.

Mike:

A certain scene from Monthy Python’s Life of Brian comes to mind…

Right, now that we’ve established you’re living a dream, what are your plans for 7outof10 for 2010?

Manny:

Grow, grow, grow! At the moment, we need as much content as possible, so I’m scouring the internet to find people that would like to become a part of the family as we take off from ground level, so to speak. We’re improving our traffic by at least 1-200% a month (sometimes a lot more), so I’m aiming to continue that trend and lift us higher as the year progresses.

Mike:

How do you monetize the blog if at all?

Manny:

We’re just experimenting with advertising at the moment and finding what suits us. It’s difficult, though. I don’t think we’ll be in the position to pay for anybody going full-time for at least another year or so, but I’m positive we can make it work. Alternative methods of funding are also being researched.

Mike:

I’m not sure there’s much of a market for gamer organs but I might know a guy who knows a guy. I’d be happy to hook you up.
Now tat I think about it I guess your beach party story made me bitter after all ; )

Back on track thought – What’s your prime motivation for using Headup widgets?

Manny:

My good friend Dave at heyuguys.co.uk introduced us to the concept, and it just sounds like a fantastic idea to lower our bounce rate and get people clicking around contributing. From the feedback thus far, everybody loves it.

Mike:

What features do you feel are missing from the widget?

Manny:

Not a great deal to be honest. The personalisation options are fairly extensive, so I think if you take the time to tailor it to your site, it’ll work well. I’m intrigued to see what you guys come up with though!

Mike:

I doubt we can beat a boozy beach party but I’m sure it’ll be loads of fun seeing our development team try!

Thanks very much for speaking to me Manny and lot’s of luck with the blog. I can honestly say it’s been a blast speaking to you!

Manny:

Cheers!

This week’s guest blogger is a child of the 80’s, self proclaimed geek, and avid Goonies fan. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Dave Sztypuljak – founder and editor extraordinaire of HeyUGuys.co.uk – England’s most popular independent resource for all things film

Mike:

Hi Dave – it’s marvelous speaking to you.

Dave:

Hi Mike!

Mike:

Dave who are the guys at HeyUGuys?

Dave:

The blog was founded by Jon Lyus and myself in November 2008 and is now entering its 2nd year. The name is a reference to “The Goonies” because we both love the film and originally thought we’d be posting only about 80’s movies. About two days after we started I think we realized the scope was too narrow and we wanted to write about film in general. BTW we nearly called the blog 88MPH – probably a less esoteric reference…

Mike:

I’ll admit the “Hey you guys!” eluded me but I’d have caught on to the 88MPH. How did Jon and you connect?

Dave:

Mike:

You know Dave, in preparation for this interview I spent a fair amount of time researching film blogs.
It seems to me as if there are very few serious film blogs outside the US. Am I wrong?

Dave:

Actually, Mike you’re absolutely right. We’re pretty unique insofar as we’re a non-American, English language, film blog. Honestly I think it’s given us an advantage in terms of exclusive content and audience.

Mike:

Do you feel cutoff?

Dave:

On the contrary! I feel unique…
Seriously though, being situated in England as we are, has provided us with some amazing opportunities that were very important for building HeyUGuys as a brand.

Mike:

Do tell…

Dave:

About seven months ago we realized Ridley Scott was filming the new Robin Hood movie, with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, in a wood near Farnham in Surrey. Farnham is only about 20 minutes drive from where I live, so one day we headed down there to visit and film the set. We didn’t quite realize it at the time but we’d created an amazing asset for ourselves – original and exclusive content that none of the “big” channels had. The post achieved popularity quickly and was linked to from everywhere.

The Tron poster we posted before anyone else is another example of a scoop that got us a fair deal of attention:

Dave Sztypuljak posted this Tron poster originally on December 9, 2009

Mike:

How has the success of HeyUguys affected your lives?

Dave:

Its funny really. The first time we received validation we were being picked up by the mainstream media it was such a surprise I thought it was a hoax!

We got invited to the Star Trek premier by Sky News. One day I opened my inbox and the invitation was just waiting there for me. We got full VIP treatment. Throughout the premier I was waiting for someone to grab me, tell me the whole thing was a mistake, and kick me out the door.

Mike:

From my experience as long as you keep a smooth face and act as if you belong these things go smoothly. Seems you can even gate crash the Whitehouse nowadays as long as you keep your cool.

Dave:

Believe me, when the second premier invitation came in both Jon and I were already far more suave about the whole thing, although we still get very excited!

Mike:

So now that you’re all cool with being a film blogger what are the plans for the future?

Dave:

I’ve recently quit my “day job” to work for HeyUguys full time. The plan for 2010 is to make the blog profitable enough to sustain itself and us. I’d be happy to live my life watching films, mingling with celebrities and writing about it.

Mike:

Sounds like a plan to me. Good luck Dave and thanks for talking to me and for supporting Headup!

Dave:

It’s my pleasure. I actually like what Headup is doing quite a bit, so much so that I’ve been chatting to some blogger friends getting them to try it out.

Apples, Yoda and NLP – introducing how we understand Language

One of our missions as a company has always been providing our users with the most useful, accurate and interesting content the web has to offer.
Early on in our existence we realized that in order to do this we’d need the ability to understand the web in a way that closely mimics the way humans do. In techno-babble this is often referred to as NLP, which stands for “Natural Language Processing“, and even more specifically as NLU, which stands for “Natural Language Understanding”
As trivial as this may, it’s far from being a simple task.

Here’s why:

Language is deceptive, especially if you’re an Apple

Ambiguous Apple

Language, as we encounter it on the web and use it in our daily exchanges, is often ambiguous, and therefore deceptive, tricky and difficult to understand. So much so that often enough understanding it is challenging even for a human.
Consider for example the following sentence:

“Apple, answered Steve, is my favorite”

The possibilities for interpreting it vary widely depending on which “Apple” and which “Steve” we’re talking about.

If you happen to follow technology news, you’re likely to infer that the “Apple” in question is in fact the company, and therefore “Steve”, is in fact Steve Jobs, its founder.

If however you lack this knowledge your interpretation of the sentence must be limited to the understanding that someone named Steve is making commentary about his preferences in fruits.

Understanding language – How do we humans do it?

Humans, even very young ones, understand ambiguous usage of language almost effortlessly thanks to an innate ability to infer an ambiguous term’s context by using a wide range of cues and clues:

• We refer to the identity of the person speaking – And therefore don’t necessarily treat every person who calls us “Bro” like family.
• We take cues from the intonation used - It helps us differentiate between “what?” and “WHAT?!”
• We depend on sentences’ grammatical structure - Now you know why Master Yoda is so hard to understand (and annoying – or is that just me?)
• We refer to our knowledge of the world – As in the example above – knowing a certain “Steve” is closely related to a company called “Apple” allows us to infer that this is a possible meaning for the sentence.
• We refer to the context in which an ambiguous term is used - In the example above it’s precisely the lack of context that leaves the ambiguity unresolved.

“Ok”, you might say, “People can understand the languages they use. So what?”.

The answer is that understanding how people understand language provides the clues necessary to teach computers to do the same.

Understanding how people do stuff is the key to teaching machines to do it too

Once we’d analyzed in depth the various cues humans utilize to understand language we examined which of them could be accomplished in real-time by using an affordably scalable system. The cues we chose to use are the bottom three from the list above: grammatical structure, knowledge of the world and context.

How do you teach a computer about the world?

In order to grant our platform the ability to understand language we set out to teach it about the world. We accomplished this by equipping it with a graph mapping out the billions of connections that exist between over 30 million nouns, topics, terms and things.

One might well ask: “What do you define as a connection?”

The answer is we defined any possible relationship between two things as a “connection”. For example:

The person “Steve” is connected to the company “Apple” because he “founded” it.

As I showed above, merely knowing that a possible connection may exist between two things goes a long way to assisting one in understanding the context in which they’re mentioned.
The more one’s aware of possible connections between the things mentioned in any given text the greater one’s confidence in selecting the correct context for each.

Returning to the example above, had the sentence been:

“Apple’s iPhone, answered Steve, is my favorite accomplishment”

We’d have little doubt as to which “Steve” and which “Apple” the sentence refers to. The mention of the iPhone grants the context we were missing before.

One of our platform’s greatest assets is that it approaches text holistically.

Rather than examine every word or sentence separately, we look at much larger segments of text in order to search for the clues that will enable us to find the correct context for all the ambiguous terms encountered.

Grammar is a powerful tool for understanding meaning

“Grammar, Yoda teaches, a powerful tool for obscuring meaning is.”

Conversely, when used correctly (i.e. not in Star Wars), it’s a very helpful tool in helping us understand context and meaning.

By incorporating a model of the English language’s grammar into our platform we were able to improve its understanding of context even further.

Content matching

We use our ability to accurately understand what a “thing”, not only to choose its appropriate meaning in the context of the text in which it’s mentioned but also, to help us retrieve matching and useful content accurately. To date we’ve already mapped hundreds of sources for:

• News
• Articles
• Images
• Videos
• Realtime data
• Facts
• Events
• Geo-data
• Product specs

We use all these sources to retrieve the content we match for every entity. Our platform enables to extend this content repository easily, and we continue to add more data to it on a regular basis. We’re even capable of utilizing content provided by our publishers as a source (see the screenshot below for an example of how this is implemented on film review blog HeyUGuys).

What’s next?

It’s our intention to develop our content syndication abilities further in future so as to assist our bloggers and publishers in achieving distribution and getting more traffic to their sites.

As more sites and blogs install our widget we believe that the content they hold will gradually become one of the most interesting content assets we have access to, but that’s already material for another post…

The editors of the HeyUGuys blog use Headup as a "related post" widget to drive traffic internally to other posts on their blog

Image Credits: Spencer E Holtaway, johannes pape

A chat with Dennis Amith - The J-ent blogger who's career precedes the web

With all the excitement involved in ensuring our new platform support was working ok, I hardly noticed how quickly this week went by.

Anyway…

It’s Thursday again and I’m still committed to my New Year’s resolution to interview one cool blogger using our widget every week.

This week’s guest is one of the greatest experts on Japanese and Asian entertainment online today and his involvement with the web dates back to 1993 and the pioneering days of BBS.

It is my great pleasure to have as our guest on the Headup blog today Mr. Dennis Amith – founder and Editor-in-Chief of
J-Entonline.com

|
|
|

Mike:
Hi Dennis, it’s an honor having you as our guest.

Dennis:
It’s my pleasure.

Mike:
While preparing for this interview I learned that J-Ent refers to:

“…popular forms of Japanese entertainment but more specifically a shortened term to encompass popular Japanese television dramas, variety shows and music shows from Japan”

Wikipedia

I’m curious as to your initial attraction to the field and how you got involved in it.

Dennis:
As I was finishing my high school education in the early 90’s, I was really into videogames and comics.
A friend introduced me to Anime (Japanese animation) and from there on I was hooked.

I first became proactive when I created the nt2099 BBS back in 1993, which was basically dedicated to featuring the things I was interested in at the time. It was mainly about Japanese animation, entertainment, pop culture and Euro Demos. Because there were so few of us at the time, it was amazing to see the demand for our content.

In 1996, J!-ENT went online. Since then we’ve been focused on covering entertainment and pop culture worldwide.

Mike:
I was wondering about that. I know the NT2099 comes from “Neo-Tokyo” but I have no clue as to what the name refers to.

Dennis:
“Neo-Tokyo” is a reference to the classic Japanese animation film “Akira”. I added the “2099” because I wanted the name of my BBS to pop out from the crowd of sci-fi and tech BBSs that existed at the time.
I guess it just stuck and eventually it became the name of my business.

Mike:
You’ve been at the online content game pretty much from the very beginning. What got you started way back then?

Dennis:
For me it was the need to find and spread information.
Back in the BBS years, getting information wasn’t easy, especially on a 2400-baud modem. When I think back at how we did things then, it’s hard to believe that obtaining information was so difficult. Especially when I think how easy it’s all become now.
I remember scanning magazine pages from Japan, waiting forever for files to upload and delete. My phone was constantly busy with people looking for data. I imagine the phone bills for those people who were calling me long distance were probably sky high.

Obtaining information today is much easier in comparison. All the exclusive content we were busy chasing back then is easily accessible from YouTube, Wikipedia and other sites and applications as well.

It’s an exciting time as more and more people are exposed to entertainment and pop culture from countries outside their own.

Mike:
How did you get into publishing and blogging?

Dennis:
I think it all began with my college experience as editor-in-chief for the Asian newspaper. That position was my first serious experience at managing a publication. It helped me focus and hone my professional skills and turned out to be a great opportunity for expanding my network.

I figured, since I already had entertainment contacts on the Asian side, that by focusing on developing my US contacts I’d be in a position to make connections between both communities. That’s how I began interviewing celebrities.

Over the years I gradually became known in this respect and started getting requests from individuals and media companies all over the world. Gradually the range of topics I was covering expanded from my original Asian niche into global entertainment and pop culture.

As far as the blogging itself is concerned my motivation was efficiency driven. You simply can’t meet peoples’ expectations any other way in terms of the content they’re looking for. The restrictions we had on how much content we could provide via print no longer apply to our online articles. The evolution of SEO and RSS subscriptions have had a crucial impact as well.

Mike:
Do you feel you’ve contributed to the growing awareness of Japanese and Asian entertainment?

Dennis:
Absolutely, but it’s not just me. It’s a global collaboration of a community of people that brought it about. Personally, it’s gratifying to see how our work on J!-ENT has been acknowledged at music conferences, as well as in books and publications.

Today Anime, Manga and other forms of Japanese entertainment are considered a part of mainstream culture all over the world. Our focus has shifted to showcasing entertainment and pop culture from other countries.

Mike:
As a veteran you have a truly unique perspective. What insight can you share with novice bloggers?

Dennis:
If there’s one tip I can give it’s that if you’re passionate about something…do it. It’s all about being proactive and persistent.

Mike:
You’ve been doing this for a long time. Do you know if you’ll keep it up?

Dennis:
Tomorrow never knows. We’ll see (laughing).

Mike:
I’m curious as to how you found us

Dennis:
I saw your website while looking for ways to further syndicate the public information featured on J-entonline. Since your widget compliments what we have on J!-ENT, I decided it would make a nice addition.

Mike:
What’s your prime motivation for using Headup widgets?

Dennis:
I like your widgets because they enable my readers to familiarize themselves with the entertainers I write about and their work. People might not know who a specific talent is but thanks to Headup they can read the information, catch a video, hear a song and tweet about it all at once without ever leaving my site.

Mike:
What features do you feel are missing from the widget?

Dennis:
I guess I’d like to have control over the color of the markings. Access to stats would be nice too.

Mike:
I think you’ll be pleased to hear that both your requests are scheduled for release in the next few weeks.

Dennis:
Cool!

Mike:
Thanks for everything Dennis.
It’s been a pleasure speaking to you. For what it’s worth, insofar as promoting awareness to global entertainment is one of your goals, I’m glad to confess I definitely feel I’ve been enlightened.

A new Year – A new Headup

If you’ve been using our widget for a while, or if you frequent our website regularly, you may have noticed that recently we’ve been making quite a few changes.

These first two weeks of 2010 mark the culmination of a series of developments we’ve been working on under wraps for quite some time in response to the feedback we got from you. Thankfully these developments have finally reached a level of maturity we feel comfortable with and we’re making  more and more of them accessible to you almost daily.

Before I proceed to tell y’all what’s new I’d first like to take the opportunity and say THANK YOU to all the great people* who’ve been supportive of our efforts all this time and gave us the feedback we needed in order to improve.

5 reasons why your Headup experience just improved:

1. The quality of our markings has improved significantly due a massive overhaul the system underwent. I’ll be writing more about our new marking system in the days ahead so if you’re into Semantic Web, NLP and all that jazz stay tuned…
2. We’ve added new types of content to the mix of complementary content we provide and the quality of the existing ones has been improved.
3. Widgets now display a feedback button that enables users to report whether the widget is useful in their opinion. The feedback gathered this way helps us improve the quality of our markings.
4. Access to the publisher dashboard allows registered users to customize and tweak their widgets’ performance.
5. Support for all major platforms is now available. Regardless of what platform you’re using you can now add Headup to your site easily and quickly.

*  Thanks great people for all your support:
AreYouScreening.com
JeffPulver.com
Jewlicious.com
InsideGossip.co.uk
RuhaniRabin.com
OfficialTwitters.com
OffTrackPlanet.com
EarthyReport.com
FamilyInsights.net
HeyUGuys.co.uk
J-Entonline.com

Image credit: Optical illusion