Jim Karpen Tips

August 2001

I'm impressed with Albert. Like the Ask Jeeves web site, you can ask Albert a question using regular English, and the site will try to find web pages that have the answer.

I asked Albert, "What's the average temperature in Ankara in August?" The first item on the list was way off--a web page giving the average temperature in Florida. But the next three gave me exactly what I asked (30 degrees Celsius in August.) Item four even had a weather map with the average temperatures in various regions in Turkey. It also had a table that showed the major cities and the average temperature month by month.

I wondered how would Jeeves compare. Frankly, there was no comparison. Jeeves responded, as he always does, with more questions. The first of which was "What is the weather forecast for Ankara?" I clicked on that and arrived at Weather.Com, a slow site that required several more clicks before I could get the answer. Albert just seemed much better at ferreting out a specific answer.

But let me waffle here. As with every Internet tool, each has its strengths and weaknesses. Jeeves did a good job of immediately locating a general tool that I could use. And I think that that's its strength. Albert, in contrast, seems to simply be looking for a specific answer, wherever it might be found.

Albert, which is really just a demo offered by a company that markets intelligent searching software, did quite well on the second question I asked: "What's the population of Iowa?" Again, the first answer was off, giving me info about Iowa City. But the next results were right on, giving me the population and also finding pages that had very interesting information on population. One of them gave the population from each of the censuses done from 1900-1990, including total population as well as population by racial group. It also had interesting lists such as the 10 most populated counties, 10 least populated, 10 largest cities, and even population by ancestry group. (The largest ancestral groups are German and Irish.)

If you can't think of a question to ask Albert, it offers to generate a question for you. No doubt these are simply taken from questions people have asked in the past. Oddly, Albert didn't do so well when I tried this feature. It failed to answer the question "Where can I find fan pages for Garrett Maggart?" And understandably it failed to answer the question "What time is it in Auckland?" But it did a good job of answering "What is the weather forecast for the city of Clovis, NM?"

If you have a burning question, give Albert a try.

© 2001 by Jim Karpen, Ph.D. (#279)