Interview: Matthew Titsworth of CompanyDallas
I was able to squeeze in a quick interview today with Matt Titsworth, the manager of the CompanyDallas coworking facility. Although he’s a physicist by training, Matt’s also an ardent supporter of all things coworking, and he does a really nice job running one of the best coworking spots in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
Andy Hickl: Tell me a little about CompanyDallas. What exactly is a coworking spot, anyway?
Matthew Titsworth, Company|Dallas: A coworking space is a shared office for start-ups, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. It’s also a community where folks from different backgrounds can come together and be introduced to new people with different backgrounds. It’s a new way to work. As to Company|Dallas? Company|Dallas is awesome. We’ve got a great and eclectic group of members from all over the spectrum who do quite a variety of different things.
More from Matt after the jump…
Tags: companydallas, coworkingQuick Q&A on Extractiv
I had so much fun writing up my answers to Mark Johnson’s panel questions that I thought I’d put together another “mock” interview — with myself.
This time, I’m going to be tackling some of the more popular questions we get regarding Extractiv. As a brand-new start-up (only about 8 weeks old), we’re still finding our strengths, but I thought it’d be safe to share a little more about who we are — and what we’re trying to do under the Extractiv name. Want to know more? Write us at support@extractiv.com; we’d be happy to answer any questions you might have (or to show you a demo)!
(As always, the views expressed on this blog are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Language Computer or Extractiv or its subsidiaries or parent companies. Well, until we get the Extractiv Blog put together and start blogging there in earnest, that is.)
Interview after the jump…
Tags: extractiv, Quick Extractiv Q&A, semantic webRecap: Future of Semantic Search Panel @ Web 3.0
I had the good fortune on Thursday to be a part of a panel on semantic search at the Web 3.0 Conference. The panel was organized Mark Johnson(Bing/Powerset) and featured the likes of Connie Kenneally (TextWise), Will Hunsinger (Evri), Tim Musgrove (TextDigger), and yours truly (LCC, Swingly, Extractiv, etc.).
Mark put on an absolutely great panel. In addition to being one of the most knowledgeable people in our industry, he’s a natural-born moderator and a talented discussion leader. He’s got great journalistic chops too: definitely not one to shy away from asking the tough questions.
Since I wasn’t able to capture video of the panel, I thought I’d try to recreate my side of the discussion. Here are some of the questions that Mark asked — and the gist of the answers I gave. (Or would have given.)
More after the jump…
Tags: panel, semantic search, Swingly, web 3.0Introducing: Extractiv @ Web 3.0
Here’s Shion Deysarkar and me talking about how our new service, Extractiv, at this week’s Web 3.0 Conference in Santa Clara.
Don’t know much about Extractiv? Here’s our official blurb.
Extractiv is a new kind of content provisioning service which is making the Web truly actionable. Rather than simply passively “monitoring” the Web, our industry-leading data harvesting and content extraction goes out and delivers the information that really matters to you and your business. With Extractiv, it’s easy to build semantically-aware applications – regardless if you’re a newcomer to the Semantic Web or a deep believer in the power of semantic metadata. Let us show you what we can do for you!
Introducing: Extractiv from Andy Hickl on Vimeo.
Why I love California
Sunset over the Pacific. Snow-capped mountains and the Central Coast.
Learning more about Swingly and Extractiv
Wanted to post some quick breadcrumbs for people interested in learning more about the two early-stage startups coming from Language Computer.
Swingly (http://www.swingly.com)
- Who? Alpha-stage question-answering company capable of finding answers in the Web of unstructured text
- Our goal? Answer users questions from content locked up in text.
- Our advantage?
- Amazing natural language processing, semantic search, and question-answering technology
- Long track-record of building some of the best Q&A systems ever built
- Why you should pay attention: We have built the largest index of questions and answers ever created: we know the answer to more than 10 billion questions.
- Get an invite: http://www.swingly.com
Extractiv (http://www.extractiv.com)
- Who? Alpha-stage data harvesting and content extraction company
- Our goal? Making the Web truly actionable. Rather than simply passively “monitoring” the Web, we go out and delivers the information that really matters to you and your business.
- Our advantage?
- Incredible, scalable web crawling and data harvesting from 80Legs
- Access to more semantic types than any other content extraction provider
- Thousands of names
- Hundreds of attributes, facts, relationships, and events
- Customizable, trainable extraction which can scale up to any need (or any level of performance)
- Why you should pay attention: We can turn the unstructured Web (blogs, Twitter, etc.) into structured content you can use. (Usually in 30 minutes or less. )
- Get an invite: support@extractiv.com
Don’t Miss: “The Evolution of Semantic Search” @ Web 3.0
The Evolution of Semantic SearchThe potential for semantic search to take on the role of an all-purpose engine is dead. Building a search engine is just too expensive: a massive capital expenditure, a huge team, and a marketing campaign to hook users are beyond the reach for most companies, let alone a startup. And, the big players are already integrating more and more semantic technology, such as Microsoft’s acquisition of Bing and Yahoo’s SearchMonkey initiative. That being said, there are still many ways for semantic technology to provide value to smaller domains in search. It’s time we refined our notion of semantic search and discuss what’s next for semantic search startups.
ANDY HICKL
CEO
SwinglyWILL HUNSINGER
CEO
EvriModerator
MARK JOHNSON
Senior Program Manager
Bing at MicrosoftCONNIE KENNEALLY
CEO
Textwise
We’re slated to tackle the question of “what’s next” for semantic search — a worth topic, indeed!
But, I have the feeling that we’ll all be circling back to the more vexing problem of exactly how companies who have invested in semantic technologies can create real (sustainable, sexy, growing) markets for their products.
There’s no live feed, but I’ll get shakycam video up later this afternoon.