Udi Manber, Google's VP of Engineering, gave a brief 15 minute presentation at Supernova today entitled Search is a Hard Problem. He explained that with an audience like Supernova, he imagines we understand to some extent how difficult a problem it is, but it's probably a harder problem then we even appreciate. He laid out three reasons why this is the case:

• Scale and diversity are almost beyond comprehension
• Expectations and needs will continue to grow
• 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before

I found the third point quite amazing. I would think with the number of queries that Google processes, they would have seen a much higher percentage of the queries before.

A Deeper Understanding

Next Udi explained that there are three levels involved in trying to deliver relevant information back to users:

• Users and Queries
• Models
• Languages

Users and Queries

Udi gave some examples of Google's ability to understand the different between two very similar queries. For example, Google understands that 'GM' stands for 'General Motors', while 'GM foods' is actually 'genetically modified.' If you search for 'B&B AB', Google knows that is 'bed and breakfast in Alberta', while 'Ramstein AB' is 'Ramstein Airbase'.

Google also will recommend queries that may deliver better results. For example, if you query 'Types of dogs' it will give results, but also suggests 'breeds of dogs' as a better search.

He then explained that they still can't find all the answers. As a fun example, he said the query "Why Search is Hard" is actually a very difficult query for Google to parse.

Models

Next Udi reviewed some new Google search functionality, which while not live yet - will be soon. Apparently, Google is going to start trying additional queries based on certain user queries. For example, the query "How much does it cost for an exhaust system" will pull up results from "cost of an exhaust system." Beyond just removing certain general words, they are also interpreting the question as part of the model; for example the following two queries:

• ‘overhead view of bellagio pool' to 'bellagio pool pictures'
• ‘fedora 5 losing network connections' to 'fedora 5 network configuration’

Different Queries for Different Locations

Finally, Udi talked about how results need to be different when the query is conducted in different locations. For example, the query 'government' needs to return results about your countries' government. I haven't tried this in other countries, but here in San Francisco the first result is for the US Government.

He also reviewed a tool at Google.com.eg, which actually takes a query in another language, translates it to english, runs the query, and then returns the results in that language. You can actually view the page in that language. There are a whole suite of language tools Google seems to be leveraging at: http://www.google.com/language_tools

I'm surprised there aren't more copyright issues here, but I'm not a lawyer. For an example, here is the Read/WriteWeb homepage translated into Arabic. Apparently, when Udi was demoing this for Larry Page, he asked why the images weren't translating. Obviously, there is still work to be done, but it is quite amazing.

Conclusion

After listening to Udi's talk, I must agree that while I thought search was complex, I probably underestimated some of the areas of real difficulty. It is amazing to step back and think about how conceptually complex this is. It sheds new light on many of our challenging experiences around the AltSearchEngine's Day without Google.

(InfoWorld) - The beta build of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" that Apple handed out to developers June 11 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) has leaked to the Internet and is being downloaded by users of PirateBay, the Swedish torrent tracker.

Last Monday, CEO Steve Jobs spent most of this 90-minute WWDC keynote address touting the upcoming OS, which is set for release in October. Eight days later, the beta labeled build "9A466" was uploaded to PirateBay. The first upload on Tuesday didn't take -- there was only one "seeder," the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file -- but the second yesterday is being downloaded and assembled, according to comments left by numerous users.

As of late yesterday, only four seeders were available, with 181 "leechers," or computers that have downloaded only part of the complete torrent. By 3 p.m. today EDT, however, the numbers had climbed to 44 seeders and more than 1,500 leechers.

The beta was also posted to the private, invitation-only torrent tracker Oink yesterday, according to CrunchGear, a tech blog. But when CrunchGear exposed the leak, Oink pulled the beta. That sent downloaders into a verbal rage during which they vented their collective spleens at the blogger who outed Oink. "Go [expletive deleted] yourself you [expletive deleted] rat," ranted one.

Based on the PirateBay listing, the Leopard 9A466 beta weighs in at a bit more than 6GB. But the exact byte count worried a user tagged as "konelli."

"It's definitely not my intention to spoil the party, but how do we know that this is the real thing? Last time I checked, the WWDC version was supposed to be 6.94GB (or 7,450,640,384 bytes). This is, well, less. Has anybody finished downloading who could confirm that this is genuine?"

Apple was asked if it planned to pursue the person or persons who leaked the build to BitTorrent, or what actions it might take against PirateBay.

It did not immediately respond with comment, however. The first question is especially important in light of past history. The last time an under-development version of Mac OS X ended up on BitTorrent, the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker brought out its lawyers.

In December 2004, Apple sued three men, as well as 25 others identified only as "Does," for releasing a developer preview of Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, via the BitTorrent file-sharing network. All three were members of the company's own Developer Connection, Apple claimed, and had illegally leaked their copies of Tiger. But after several Apple notables, including co-founder Steve Wozniak, pleaded for leniency in blogs and other online postings, Apple backed off a bit.

During a 10-month span from March to December 2005, Apple signed a settlement with the three named defendants: students Vivek Sambhara, David Schwartzstein, and David Steigerwald. Each promised to never again release information about the company or its products, while media accounts reported that Schwartzstein and Steigerwald also distributed repentant statements and paid damages to Apple.

"We are pleased that Mr. Steigerwald has taken responsibility for his actions and that we can put this lawsuit behind us," Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told the Associated Press in March 2005 after the company settled with David Steigerwald, then a 22-year-old North Carolina college student.

Calls for end to illegal monopolies

AMD boss Hector Ruiz today called for an end to “illegal abuses” by Intel - the AMD competitor that controls 80 percent of the worldwide x86 microprocessor market.…

(InfoWorld) - New technical details about Apple's iPhone leaked to the Web by a University of Washington technology group but since yanked from the school's site confirmed that the device will not support Adobe's Flash, will rely on QuickTime to display audio and video, and can keep only eight Safari-displayed Web pages in memory at one time.

The University of Washington's emerging technology team posted information gleaned from an iPhone session at last week's WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference). The nitty-gritty details spelled out during the "Designing Web Content for the iPhone" presentation, according to the team, include:

* No support for Flash, Adobe's multimedia Web content format.

* No Java.

* JavaScript runtime limited to five seconds.

* QuickTime used for audio and video.

* A maximum of eight documents loaded in Safari on the iPhone.

* Links to video on a Web page take users directly to full-screen playback.

* Support for PDF through Apple's own DisplayPDF code, not Adobe.

* Multiple gestures automatically available to Web sites viewed through iPhone without any additional coding, including pinching content to shrink, double-tapping to zoom, and two-fingered scrolling.

Although the blog entry has disappeared -- replaced by a message that reads "The topic you are looking for have been deleted" -- the page was still viewable in Google's cache late Tuesday with a text-only version also available.

Oren Sreebny, director of emerging technology at the school, said it wasn't Apple that called for the deletion. "Someone else in our organization who had [also] gone to WWDC, pointed out that it was probably in violation of a nondisclosure agreement. We didn't want to get into any trouble, so we removed it," said Sreebny. Apple requires all developers attending WWDC to sign an NDA that bars them from revealing any conference content except for CEO Steve Jobs' keynote.

Earlier this week, the owner of a Web site that provides gas prices at local stations said his server logs showed several iPhone-equipped users had visited the URL using a browser identified as Safari Version 419.3.

"[That's] the 'old' Safari, not the 3.0 beta," said the unidentified site owner. That information matches what Sreebny's group had posted; according to the WWDC session notes, the iPhone version of Safari IDs itself to sites as Version 419.3.

The GasApp.com site owner also reported that Safari on the iPhone was running in 320 x 396 resolution for the Web viewing area. "But I don't know if that includes the controls at the bottom or not," said the site operator.

The iPhone goes on sale June 29 in the U.S.

A new bugfix release of Symfony framework have just been announced over the Symfony's blog. Symfony 1.0.4 fixed bugs include :

• fixed sfBrowser keeps previous Dom is response is not XHTML (#1853)
• fixed generator themes in the project data directory do not override data in plugin directory (#1813)
• fixed $request->hasError() should return true on errors with empty message (#1864)
• fixed bug for adjacent CSS selector
• fixed a bug in URL generation for route names having a star in the middle

Download Symfony 1.0.4 from the project's website, or using PEAR with : pear upgrade symfony/symfony

Emprise Corporation have just announced today the immediate availability of Emprise JavaScript Charts v1.0. EJSChart is a pure JavaScript charting library which utilizes the <canvas> element and VML to provide cross-browser compatible, interactive Web 2.0 charts.

EJSChart takes web charting to a new level by incorporating such features as automatic axis scaling, zooming, scrolling, smart ticks and Ajax-driven data loading. With its fully documented API, support for multiple chart types and data retrieval methods, EJSChart is extremely quick and easy to implement in any web site or web application that requires graphical display of data.