Semantics News

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True Knowledge, a company based out of Cambridge, England, are the forerunners in attempting to bring ask and answer engines to the next level. Their mission is to solve a fundamental problem with search - computer’s cannot understand human language (Here’s where semantics comes in). This means that instead of actually searching for specific information the user is merely querying for possible related answers. Then instead of the engine displaying a potentially correct or relevant answer it displays a variety of places to search for the information you may want. So, instead of being an ask and answer search engine, the current programs are just search engines and True Knowledge intends to address that.

To begin, the True Knowledge platform encourages the user not to use simple keywords but full questions. By doing this, their program can understand the natural human language within your string of words - the who, what, when and where’s are essential to the query. Then in graphics that are pleasing to the eye the program outputs a extremely precise answer along with some other useful information. In conjunction to that the service then offers a list of related websites related to your query, just in case you aren’t satisfied with their answer. Personally, I asked the engine “Who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird?”, and its result was precise and obviously correct. Underneath the answer it shows the semantic process that the program went through.

True Knowledge in the early going was funded by its founder, other angel investors and East England Development Agency. Then in September of 2007 the company received its Series “A” funding of $1.2 million from Octopus Ventures. Recently (July, 2008), True Knowledge received its second series of funding and was totaled at $4 million. To date the company has received $5.2 million in publicly funded money from Octopus Ventures. The company currently has American VC firms circling to invest as True Knowledge’s valuation was $40 million.

I don’t think True Knowledge is the answer to search nor is it going to be the next Google by any means. I believe that search is sometimes meant to be more general than specific. However, if I am ever looking for “Where was Ghandi born and when?”, I know where to ask. True Knowledge is in Beta testing and has over 10,000 registered users. The program is set to go public in the first half of 2009.

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