Bloggers mock Singapore’s attempt at a Search Engine
Singapore’s premier research facility, A*STAR (Agency for Technology and Research) has launched a competition called “The Star Challenge 2008″ last week to develop “a rich media search engine that will be smart enough to identify text, audio and video containing any word, even if that word, or search term, has not yet been tagged in the internet material”.
The prize money for this competition is set at USD$100,000 and participants will have eight months from now to build such a technology. An international advisory panel consisting of renowned experts from UC Berkeley, University of Washington, University of Columbia and National University of Singapore have been invited oversee the competition.
I highly doubt that this competition will really accelerate the ongoing research in this area as this has already been a hot research topic for quite some time now and progress would be at its full speed. Such a product in its commercial form will definitely be worth a few million and USD$100k seem so trivial in the scheme of things. I believe the winner of the competition will be someone who is already building such a product and sees this merely as an opportunity to get more research funds. John Battelle, who wrote the most successful book on the story of Google, and search technology blog, Search Engine Land, has both agreed that this competition will not have any notable results.
If you are interested to participate in the competition, register at the competition’s official website which in my opinion have a tat too much flash animations.
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First, why don’t ASTAR develop the search engine themselves? They have millions you know. ASTAR seems to be quiet down after Mr Yeo moves on. If the search engine can be developed, it will worth more than the prize money, as you said. Why would some developers give it away to ASTAR?
You need people and money to develop this kind of technology. Even if some existing developers are researching their engines now, won’t it be premature to expose their products during the competition, if they are to have commercial success.
I really find it funny that they have to re-invent the wheel.
well like what googlemania mention, it is not quite possible imo. first, its a tough job for 8 months and the most important question comes next.
if i develop something that good, why should i expose myself to the public via this kind of competition? i would rather seek funding from some VC in USA.
this competition isn’t going to work out. period.
Google already broke the video code. =.= A*Star is starting to make themselves look lame.
A*Star: “Hi world, we’re starting this competition to look for something that Google has already done years ago.”
Google’s already talking about cloud computing. What next, A*Star, $200K for the next social networking site ala FaceBook?
A*Star FTL.
Haha that’s a good one Daniel! But I think a new social networking site would be easier than a new Google, but as we’ve seen with Facebook, the problem so much be to get people on it, but to figure out how to stop it from fizzling out like Friendster, and of course, monetise it eventually.