PHAROS
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This article or section contains information about scheduled or expected future software. The content may change dramatically as the software release approaches and more information becomes available. |
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| Platform for Search of Audiovisual Resources Across Online Spaces (PHAROS) | |
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| Developer: | PHAROS consortium |
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| Use: | Search Engine for Audiovisual resources |
| Website: | pharos-audiovisual-search.eu |
PHAROS IPA: ['feə.rʌs] (Platform for SearcH of Audiovisual Resources across Online Spaces) is the name given to a planned (and currently being developed) European Internet multimedia search engine led by the Italian system integrator Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA.
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[edit] The Platform
The PHAROS platform, co-financed by the European Commission and relating to the development of an audiovisual search engine, began in January 2007 and will continue for three years. PHAROS investment entitles more than €14 mil. with €8.5 mil. funded by FP6 of the European Commission, under priority 2 Information Society Technologies.
The PHAROS consortium consists of a highly regarded group of academic and industrial players with proven track records in innovation and commercial success. PHAROS involves 13 partners, including large European players that will help ensure future project sustainability and subject matter experts who will manage the highly focused technological components.
The organization of the project effort will be coordinated by Engineering SpA, within a management team comprised of FAST as the Technical Director, being responsible for all technological aspects, L3S Research Centre as the Scientific Director who is responsible for the Context and User Technologies, and France Telecom who is the Innovation Director being responsible for validating key project results in a real-world showcase scenario.
Francesco Saverio Nucci, PHAROS Project Director from Engineering SpA, said:
| “ | "We would like to explore and advance the state of the art in cutting edge technologies for an audiovisual search engine, supporting European Innovation in the field. PHAROS provides an enabling integrated platform which may be used to build fascinating B2C, B2B, or even C2C applications, often referred to as Web 2.0 resources." | ” |
Philippe Rozes, Head of Orange’s Labs Technologies, explained:
| “ | "France Telecom is responsible for integrating and testing this demonstrator on a platform specific to this project, developing publication and subscription protocols for the platform, and is contributing to the analysis of social media for indexing and personalisation." | ” |
Prof. Wolfgang Nejdl, Head of the German L3S Research Centre, stresses the need for personalizing the search experience:
| “ | "With a few hundred thousand hits available for almost every query, putting the most relevant results first is an increasing challenge. Different users and communities have different expectations about what should come up first, and information needs change depending on the current task and context of the user of our PHAROS search platform. We will therefore also focus on user and context technologies in PHAROS, and will include innovative algorithms supporting user centric searching and robustness against spam. Our innovations will also build upon social network and blog analysis (important aspects in new Web 2.0 environments), which provide rich information about user preferences, and enhance user experience with the PHAROS audio visual search platform." | ” |
[edit] Developers
[edit] Fast's history
In 1999, Fast, technical director of the PHAROS project, launched the technically advanced AlltheWeb search engine. Their aim was to index all the publicly-accessible web. Their crawler indexed over 2 billion pages by June 2002[1] and started a fresh round of the search engine size war. Before their purchase by Yahoo!, the database contained about 3.3 billion URIs.
AlltheWeb had a few advantages over Google, such as a fresher database, more advanced search features, search clustering and a completely customizable look.[1] [2] [3] In February 2003 Fast's web search division was bought by Overture. In March 2004 Overture itself was taken over by Yahoo!. Shortly after Yahoo!'s acquisition, the AlltheWeb site started using Yahoo!'s database and some of the advanced features were removed, such as FTP search.
Currently, Fast is delivering search technology for YouTube, among others.
[edit] List of Developer companies and institutions
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[edit] European Commission gift
In december 2006, the European Union Research Fund of the European Commission gave €8.5m to the project. Bjørn Olstad, Fast's CTO and designated Technical Director of PHAROS said:
| “ | "This research fund is validation of the key tenets and concepts behind PHAROS, and we would like to thank the European Commission for its confidence in the project. We look forward to developing the next generation multimedia search in cooperation with such a highly regarded group of partners." | ” |
That was a few weeks after the German partners of the controversial Quaero search engine project left the french, and decided to develop a parallel project called Theseus.
[edit] Name
The Lighthouse in ancient Alexandria was called Pharos. The Greek and Latin word for lighthouse and thus the etymological origin of the word for "lighthouse" in many romance languages, such as French (phare), Italian and Spanish (faro), Portuguese (farol) and Romanian (far).
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b
- ^ Fast Search & Transfer (2006-06-25). Fast launches ALLTHEWEB.COM Alchemist customized search tool. Press release. Retrieved on 2006-12-17.
- ^ (2002-06-17) "AllTheWeb Now A Better Search Experience Than Google". Microdoc News. Retrieved on 2006-12-17.
