About
Synopsis
Conversant is a colloquial search engine intended specifically for conversation. In contrast to a typical web search engine that returns a list of web pages that potentially contains information the user is looking for, Conversant returns only a few sentences chosen specifically for the purpose of quoting in conversation. The goal of the conversant application is to limit the number of non sequitors and dead-ends in conversation by providing loosely bound topical information that acts as a catalyst to stimulate conversation. Hence, people become more conversant with conversation itself.
Theory
As instant communication and trends of hyper-activity and short attention span continue to dominate the cultural landscape, the art of conversation is
The original intention of Conversant was to be a WAP-enabled application that could facilitate conversations away from computers. A typical scenario is that of a group of people engaged in lively chatter. In larger groups, a thread in a conversation can be dominated by a few people who know the most about the subject at hand, whether it's sports, politics, etc. The other people in the group may either be interested but don't know enough to contribute or are interested in steering the discussion to a new topic. Conversant was designed to help these people by delivering interesting sound bites about the given topic or fodder to use as a segue between discussions.
Relevance
Behind the scenes, Conversant leverages a combination of conventional search engines, more clever than smart page filtering, and genetic algorithm-based page parsing technology. Parsing language has long been a goal of computer science. The technology behind Conversant addresses one aspect of language parsing, which is identifying syntactical structure in unstructured text.
Vitals
- Year created: 2001
- Language: PHP
- Platforms: Web, WAP
- Site: http://conversant.muxspace.com
- More about the technology.
