Tag Archives | AltaVista

Goodbye, AltaVista. I Loved You Once, But I'm Happy to See You Die

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 16, 2010 at 3:30 pm

If you were going to compose a list of the ten greatest technology products ever, it would be a plausible contender. If you were compiling a list of the ten greatest Web services and didn’t include it, I’d tell you your list was wrong.

It’s AltaVista–the first great search engine. Probably still the second greatest one ever, after you know who. And as Liz Gannes of All Things Digital is reporting, it’s apparently going away due to downsizing at its current owner, Yahoo. (Other victims of Yahoo’s death panel include the once-great Delicious and AllTheWeb, the bland Digg clone Yahoo Buzz, the could-have-been-neat MyBlogLog, and stuff I can’t identify, such as Yahoo Picks.)

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TechCrunch Disrupt Winner Qwiki Creates Video Profiles on the Fly

Posted by David Spark on October 4, 2010 at 9:04 am

David Spark is a veteran tech journalist that’s been covering the TechCrunch Disrupt conference for Yammer. Check out more of Spark’s coverage on Yammer’s blog.

Remember the search engine AltaVista? Ever wonder whatever happened to it? Nothing. It’s actually still a search engine. You’ve just completely forgotten about it and haven’t bothered to actually go to the site and check it out. But it’s still there and it still searches the Web. Why not take a look now?

The reason I mention AltaVista is because its cofounder, Louis  Monier, is also the cofounder of Qwiki, a very cool search application that creates video stories on the fly based on your searches. The technology incorporates open resources such as photos on Flickr and descriptions on Wikipedia to create its instant video slideshows. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, says Monier, explaining that this is just a first demo of a technology with lots more to come. Unfortunately I couldn’t coax that “more to come” out of him when I stopped by Qwiki’s booth before the service won the “best of show” award at TechCrunch Disrupt to get a demo of his application.

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