Blog at WhatiSS

WhatiSS is not available for a while

2011-10-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

WhatiSS is a question answer search engine making use of Yahoo BOSS. Now Yahoo added pricing policy for their search results, changed their API and even limited the max number of search results to 50.

I built this for fun after leaving my first job. The site won Windows Azure DataMarket contest.

WhatiSS was initially a custom search engine for QA sites. Later added some contextual ranking, removing in-appropriate links, also added TrueKnowledge, WolframAlpha API's.

I shut down the site on August last year after discovered that the top results are misleading or completely wrong according to some search queries. I found that the answers posted in certain qna sites are completely wrong, which lead to shut down.

The site is down for the last few months. I also have another idea about WhaiSS. For the time being i am taking down the site.

Thank you Lord Jesus Christ.

Linkedin April Fool

2011-04-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

Today is April 1 and what Linkedin is recommending.

Einstein, John Watson. Well i know i been April Fooled.But okei , so everybody out there take it as a joke.

Save all tabs in Firefox 4 ?

2011-03-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

Where is the save all tabs feature in Firefox 4 ?

I dont want to waste your time, that feature is available in Firefox 4 and disabled by default.

How to enable it

type about:config in the URL field in Firefox and type Enter.Proceed by clicking on button 'I'll be careful.

There you find a textbox 'Filter:' in the window.Now type 'browser.showQuitWarning' in the textbox and press enter.

You can see it is set to false by default.Right click and Toggle it.

Now that feature is ready, so now you can save all the tabs in your browsing session and continue with it when you open Firefox next time.

[you might find the article dead simple, targeted towards no-techies too]

Happy browsing.God bless you

WhatiSS on a roll

2010-08-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

Hope some of you already came to know from the home page itself that the site is on a roll.Our core search feature is not up-to the mark and our users are complaining about in-accurate answers [pretty much negative and false based] for the questions they are searching for.So we thought of going for a new change.

We thought of building a kb that stores fact which will make use of meta-data.But there are limitations.We will certainly look into such an option to make sure that the answers we found while crawling is true,which doesn't require any human intervention.

But sometimes truth is even represented as false.Like the 2012 prophecy,it is really a false thing.But a lot of qa sites where people argue and answer with lot of fake,false facts.Even Wikipedia got an article about the phenomenon.

So how would we counter such an issue.The only way is we need to write true facts our own.

When people search for such thing we have to notify them - you are searching for a question/face that don't exist or the answers you will get will be wrong because you are searching for something which is wrong or something which doesn't exist.

The question search engine we build using BOSS done a good job in finding the answers to similar questions that is being asked,answered before.But the ultimate aim of the product is to lead the users to sites for correct/accurate answers.

But we are unable to provide the accuracy of the answers.Well we found people used to post fake,false things that doesn't exists or completely wrong and hence we thought of going on a roll for an interesting change.

Lets wait for the new WhatiSS

More BHP with MVC

2010-03-11T23:26:00.001-08:00

ASP.NET is where i started web development for my academic project.Well its something cool at that time because the learning curve is pretty steep.

However at some point,one may ask for more 'power to you' because of the limitations.And thereafter searching for new and better alternates - PHP,RoR,Java etc..But nothing works for me as ASP.NET.all are bad world for me.

I like ASP.NET WebForms,But limitations is something i don't want.i try to use custom controls which is somewhat manageable.

But then came the MVC-the most customizable one ever from MS.Things changed.[know a little via Struts] and now i really got that additional BHP i am asking for 'Power to you'.But still i need more..,may be it will mature with time.

Its pretty interesting to work with MVC.Our Basics comes to the rescue most of the times.

I rem the days ,my PL doesn't allow me to hack much more.Well that's the reason why i like MVC more than ever.

Just like you n me,i too asked 'which one is better - Web Forms or MVC'.So its all about BHP.

Google Search Q&A

2010-03-04T11:06:00.000-08:00

Google added a new search engine option to filter only Q&A sites.It is such a great feature from Google as the search company is not leaving a little space for competition.

The new feature will be really worthy if one is only looking for answers from Q&A sites.

Latest firefox 3.5.3 [slow ,problem loading page]

2009-10-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

Hello

this is a surprise - the latest firefox (3.5.3) is behaving like never before and it feels like we're using dial up.Isn't it.

Firefox -Problem loading the page

Its so painful,i found some of the users switched to older version.( like Windows XP)

This is a work around to avoid page loading problem.

type about:config in your url field and click on button 'I'll be Careful'
Right click and choose New -> Boolean
type network.dns.disablePrefetch and then click OK
choose true, click OK

--

[edited for the easiness for less techies]

Also my jquery script stopped working in 3.5.3

this is the script

$("input[name='country'][type='checkbox'][checked='true']");

and i replaced it with

$("input[name='country'][@type='checkbox'][checked='true']");

ref: url

visit whatiss.com

WhatiSS is down

2009-08-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

WhatiSS is down now.Hope it will be back soon.sorry for the down time..

What will be it?

2009-06-16T02:35:00.000-07:00

Its everywhere the new search engine What.

Users don't need a name they just need results.But why still Whats.

There are a lot of What's out there may it the name or the technology.The new What is decision engine from Microsoft.And other What's like semantic,question answer etc.

But its not just a What in the end.Its a lot of What's in the end.

"Semantic search engine should understand the search query.If there is a ambiguity it will ask and clear it before executing query.The advantage is it will be more precise and the relevancy of getting targeted link is pretty high"

This is something that i wrote for a semantic search engine post.But don't call it a semantic search engine.It's a mistake.Call it something.

We cannot build a search engine on the top of one technology.

Well Google too not build on the top of one technology but its the page rank the core technology that ultimately changed the search landscape.

Well putting up some Whats is not the thing here.

It's not in Google

2009-06-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

I am talking about search engines..the new re-branded Live search-Bing.

I think its hard to take on Google with a Bing.Even you offer something better than Google its hard to change people habits.

Bing is not trying to solve any any new problem.Well just like(But its not Google) is the exact description Bing have.Well a search engine that's not Google.

But the real thing- there is enough problem out there to solve.The world calls Google as the internet db.If its not in the Google its not in the internet.This need to change.If somebody can give different results (like It's not in Google) like real time search there will be hope.

If the battle between Bing and Google is so fierce then probably it will lead to the deadly collapse of one.

If any search engine want to succeed they want to identify the problems the Google users are facing.

Bing comes with a good GUI and with some more usability than Google.I am sure that Bing will succeed, but there will be a new player that will change the entire concept about search engine.

Ask with ads on Home page

2009-05-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

Almost all search engines have a simple search interface and there is no room for advertisements for a simple GUI home page.The search engine home page is always free of ads.

But Ask.com comes up with ads on its home page.Well its a really tough decision.But the ads placement is good and doesn't interfere with the search interface.

It will be a really a great move if it pays off.I am wondering about the millions of dollars search engines gonna make if they put ads on home page.So obviously we will see it on almost all search engines.

Well the days are not so far.We will see almost all search engines putting ads on home page.

The ask.com also carries a question and answer search feature which is similar to whatiss.

Feedback

2009-05-03T20:11:00.000-07:00

Can you give some feedback please?

What do you hope to see here in the future?

What is WhatiSS

2009-04-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

What is WhatiSS (NOW)

Currently WhatiSS is just a custom search engine built using BOSS.Well some tweaking in results,that's it.It fetches answers from different qa sites like yahoo answers,wiki etc.

What will be WhatiSS

Anything..! yes anything that helps you getting your questions answered.The most important thing is make it easy and fast to find out what you're looking at.

We have seen qa sites emerging that answers thousands of questions every day.But people used to ask & answer the same questions again and again.Boring huh..!With WhatiSS you can see whether the question is already asked/answered.

When will it out

It will be soon out there.but if how soon is your concern..we're sorry because time will tell.

Easy lookup on wikipedia

2009-04-21T07:36:00.000-07:00

An auto-suggest like feature for easy look-up of Wikipedia articles.

Behind the search

2009-04-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

Search is the last most important thing that changed the way weuse information.We start exploiting search as much as we can.

People stop navigating and start using search engines even for visiting home pages.

Still we are running out of relevant results.But where the content ???.The biggest problem with search is getting,showing the exact result the user needs for a few keywords.

We know at different places,people use different words to identify the same thing.Just like that different people express different keywords to get the same thing.So people used to say...semantics can solve the issue..yes of course to some extent.But how come it can infer some complex things put by users??.

We're back

2009-04-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

I know it is not fair.I once again apologize for the service breakdown.

Service Down

2009-04-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

The service is down for the moment.Hope it will be back as soon as possible.

Happy Whatissing

Any Feedback

2009-04-02T19:59:00.001-07:00

@WhatiSS new design up there and some more functionality.

I have seen Ask giving some similar service.But their index is not upto the mark.I have also seen Answers giving something similar but via Google Custom search.

I thought what makes WhatiSS special??Just a question answer search engine..'No' that's what everyone say the first.But the truth is for the moment WhatiSS is something ordinary which need to be special to _____.

Why i come up with reference look up is not a big question?.People are trying everything so they expect someday something will work.I also thought of adding dictionary,thesaurus etc.But i am unsure whether this will work.

I know that the most important thing to do is missing..and what is that?

WhatiSS Revamped & some more features..

2009-03-07T21:50:00.000-08:00

WhatiSS look and feel -most of the feedback i received is regarding look and feel.Well i know people want something looking good..but not much overwhelming.

There are some big changes in design..and some more features will be added.The release will be on the coming week.

I noticed that most people don't try to use the site if they found that its not looking good or welcoming or something not interesting.The next action is closing the window.

Well no body can blame on users because that's what an user is,he don't want to waste his time.most of us are introduced to hundreds or more sites every month.What we do if the site cannot offer something valuable?

Some people say why people start using Google??.the thing the Google design is an industry standard at that time when most of them are accessing internet via dial-ups.

the name - WhatiSS it?

2009-02-23T06:04:00.000-08:00

yes..the name-WhatiSS it??

You all might think that i chose the idea and found the domain name.But that's not true.Its my habit of checking the availability of domain name when some good name..comes into my mind..

I have no idea what should i do with the domain name..i thought of creating an mirror for Wikipedia and make money via ads.But that's not a simple thing for me as i don't know PHP very well and is hard for me to customize mediawiki and even i do so the result a useless product..!

Well i try pondering for new ideas...and the result is somewhat this..I know this is not a great thing..But the best is about to come..Just watch out.

The very first blog

2009-01-09T04:14:00.000-08:00

oye welcome again

i once shut this blog,but later people around me start talking...having a blog for a site is essential..made me reopen this...i dont know whether i shut this again...

This blog has some significance as this is all about whatiss.com.But who knows the future of whatiss.com and this blog(shut and reopened).Its all gods sake..he is the real idea maker and i am just doing it.

So..here it ends..