Thanks, Now I don't have to search in 2 places.

that's the idea :), glad you like it equanimous, do let me know if you have any feedback.

We are making updates to it all the time as well; most won't require you to update the add-on as the changes are done 'server-side' but occasionally we will roll out a new version of the add-on that will need to be manaully updated while we're still in 'experimental' mode.

Once we are out of experimental mode updates can happen automatically from within Firefox.  We released a new version of the experimental plugin yesterday...version 0.1.2:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11738/

I noticed that the plugin is not always updated with true knowledge.

I just added a answer to "what can cause tinnitus" but it don't show

up when seaching on google.

Yes, the plugin points to our "staggered" servers that are a little behind the live servers for performance and robustness reasons. The knowledge you added should show up in plugin answers in the next few days.

Well, now I have used the plugin a couple of  days.

I think there is a problem, becouse when I make a search about something

i would typical like to find some facts about it.

Ex. I might search for  "fannie mae" when I would like to find Fannie mae's stock symbol.

All true knowledge tells me is what fannie mae is, but if i search for "fannie mae" i proberly

already know that.

I this case I think the plugin could be much more useful if i had a link saying 

"list all facts about Fannie mae"

There's a little progress in the direction of showing more stuff on the plugin - try "where can i buy a lawnmower in cambridge uk".

But my point is that a typical google search for this would be "lawnmower cambridge"

where google asumes you means Cambridge , Massachusetts.

Here It would actuly be nice If TK could pop up and ask which cambridge do you mean ?

What we want to do ideally is remove ambiguity automatically.  E.g. if the user is coming from an IP address located in the UK then we assume they mean Cambridge UK when they say "cambridge".

Of course some of the time this won't be possible...(what is the user was in Canada, then which Cambridge do we pick?)

in these cases we have 4 choices:

1. keep quiet
2. present the user with a choice
3. pick an answer at random
4. Show both answers and both interpretations at the same time

We haven't yet decided exactly how the add-on is going to react when we can't automatically remove ambiguity in an intelligent way.  We welcome suggestions though.

I think the golden rule should be to let the user find the right answer with as little interaction as posible.

So, 1 and 3 wouldn't allow the users to find right answer, so those option would not be relevant.

I think you should use 4 when the answers is one-liners.

like in: what is the population of Cambridge

Here TK does a good job, but the plugin gives one answer and don't tell you which Cambridge it is talking about.

When the answers is not one-liners you should give the users a choice.

A

I'm afraid I haven't got as far as actually using the add-on, because downloading it doesn't seem straightforward:

On the Firefox Add-ons page for Google Enhancer - True Knowledge, I tick the box and the 'Download Now' button turns green.
I click it.
The File Download box asks if I want to save the file or find a programme online to open it.
I click 'Find'.
The Windows File Association page appears, saying 'File Type: unknown'.
I click 'Windows Live Search'.
Which, if any, of the links that now appear am I supposed to click?

You need to be using the Firefox browser.  Once you have download it you drag the file over any open Firefox window if it doesn't install automatically.  If you click the download link while using Firefox though it shoud just take you straight into the install steps.

Let me know if you are still having problems.

Best,

Nick

Silly me - I hadn't noticed that I wasn't in Firefox to start with. I've downloaded it now.

If, while in Firefox, I search Google for places, eg: Bahamas, Bromsgrove, Blorenge, the add-in doesn't appear, but in the TK website the answers appear. Yet things like names of politicians work in both places.

Rose

Hi Rose,

We try to only ever return ansers through the Firefox add-on when we are confident we can add-value to standard search results.  Because of this there are a lot of questions that won't produce results when asked through the add-on that will produce a result when asked on TrueKnowledge.com.

We are still in the process of tuning our algorithm to try and ensure that we 'but in' whenever True Knowledge is capable of adding real value to regular results and 'stay quiet' the rest of the time.

Thanks

Nick

I think it would be very interresting to know how often the plugin is quiet and how often it replies.

Do you have some graphs of this ?

@equanimous: We're currently butting in with an answer for around 8% of queries.  This figure is a lot lower than our main site as with the Firefox add-on we want to be extra careful that we only interupt users' normal search experience when we are very confident that we can make a real improvement to regular search results.  So a lot of questions that we can answer are suppressed for the add-on.  This percentage will likely creep up as we improve our algorith for deciding which questions 'add value'.  For now though we are airing on the side of caution.

@saurabhloyolean:  We did consider a userscript but there are a few advantages to releasing an add-on that made us decide to take this route.  I'm a big fan of Chrome and once Google releases the Chrome extension api we will think about doing a version for Chrome - for the very short term however, we are only supporting Firefox.

It doesn't work for me and it never did :( I installed the latest version of the AddOn but it does not display anything. Even for the search terms from the screenshots. I don't even see the loading animation I selected in the preferences. (Using FF 3.5b4)

Thanks for reporting this...I have managed to reproduce the problem.  I have updated the plugin's credentials to say that it is not compatible with 3.5b4 and we will be releasing a new version that is compatible with 3.5b4 soon.

Nick

Just wanted to say that the AddOn works flawlessly with FF 3.5b99 (the preview version released through the update mechanism of FF 3.5b4). As it didn't work with 3.5b4 I was very surprised to see it working in 3.5b99 :)

@chrigi: I've just uploaded a new version to Mozilla's site.  The only change is that it now works with Firefox 2 through to the latest beta version of 3.5 (e.g. 3.5b4)...We tested it thouroughly on quite a few versions of Firefox but I couldn't find a copy of 3.5b99.  If you could confirm that the new version works with 3.5b99 that would be a great help.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11738/

I use the mac version of http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/3.5b99-candi... and it works.

cool thanks, good to know

Simply: I've found that I never explicitly try to use this add-on with True Knowledge in mind, because it's easy enough for me to just use True Knowledge in those cases. But it's really very cool what this surprises me with in my regular searches! And I think it's starting to change the way I search.

Consider that success.

Having entered the browser wars during a period of utter stagnancy, Firefox’s success can be largely attributed to its pristine timing. In the years preceding its existence, a heated competition for browser usage share had taken place.

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