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The brand new web-app Powerset is a semantic search engine that aggregates information from Wikipedia as well as other sources. As the search engine understands natural English language to a certain extend, it is able to reply to questions – e.g. if you ask Powerset "Who invented the web?", it will answer "The Web was invented by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989." and point you to a bunch of relevant articles.

On first sight, Powerset might seem like a combination of Wikipedia and the concept of ELIZA ("what is ELIZA?") or todays chatterbots, but it is much more than that. It offers an ass-kicking interface for browsing and searching Wikipedia. The search engine even extends Wikipedia's functionality by generating outlines and linking to further relevant information. It resembles ideas from Berners-Lee's concept of the Semantic Web and is in some ways similar to the knowledge database Freebase (actually, Powerset also aggregates data from Freebase).

Apart from all that, Powerset is a great example of slick interface design and information architecture. Try it yourself: Ready. Powerset. Go.

Dieser Tage erschien die erste EP der neuen und heißen mannheimer Band Luis & Laserpower! Das freut mich besonders, da ich daran nicht ganz unbeteiligt war.

Photo: Splashed Wall by Kirk Butterfield (cc)

Interesse geweckt? Den Song "Gib mir mehr!" könnt ihr zur Zeit umsonst bei regioactive runterladen. Außerdem touren Laserpower gerade durch Deutschland. Hingehen! Alle!

Initially I've planned to blog in English, but to be honest, right now I'm a bit too lazy. After all, I'm much more eloquent in German :-). As this topic has been covered elsewhere before, this article is just a summary anyway. If you stumbled upon this page but don't understand German, a good starting point for you is Preloaders in AS3 by Keith Peters.

Für ein kleines AS3-Projekt, an dem ich gerade arbeite, benötige ich einen Preloader. Wie sich herausstellte, ist das gar kein so triviales Problem wie man denken könnte – wenn man nicht mit Flash arbeitet, aber auch auf das Flex-Framework verzichten möchte. (more...)