AltaVista, LiveTopics, finding what you want, Richard Seltzer

Finding what you want even when you don't know what you want: the Live Topics bonus

by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com

Reprinted with permission from Internet Search Advantage, ZD Journals. http://www.zdjournals.com

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ALERT: LiveTopics is a powerful feature that was once offered through AltaVista. They later renamed it "Refine." It is now no longer available. The project, code named "Cow9," was a collaborative effort between researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation and François Bourdoncle of Ecole des Mines de Paris, www.ensmp.fr The underlying technology has enormous potential. This article will give you a sense of how it can be used. If this topic interests you should also check the slides beginning at www.samizdat.com/script/lt1.htm and related articles:

Unlike those of us who have unsuccessfully searched for a particular fact at the library, AltaVista Search is great at finding rare information. With AltaVista Search, the more specific and unique the desired information, the more narrowly you can focus your query and the quicker you'll get the answer you want. Before AltaVista Search, using Internet search engines was often a time-consuming chore. If your query was too general, it could take forever to narrow your search or sort through all the matches to get what you really wanted. In those days, you'd be better off going to the library.

In the early days of AltaVista Search, determining whether a query was specific or general was often a matter of personal style. Different people looking for the same answer would approach a search from totally different perspectives. Those who thought in specific terms were able to get immediate useful results from AltaVista Search. But for those who thought in terms of categories and generalizations, every search was a lengthy battle.

With the introduction of LiveTopics beta, however, your AltaVista Search queries can be a breeze, regardless of your search style. AltaVista Search is just as handy whether you frame your queries in general categories or narrow them to the minutest detail. This flexibility is possible because the same underlying index supports different approaches, ways of thinking, and associations. In this article, we'll look at a few examples of LiveTopics in action.

LiveTopics at work

When I purchased a new laptop running Windows 95, I wanted to be able to plug in my existing printer, a Canon BJ200. To do so, I needed the Windows 95 driver for that particular printer. However, when I bought my printer, Windows 95 didn't exist, and now I needed to find out where I could obtain the necessary driver. I could contact Canon or Microsoft--or maybe an office-supplies or computer/software store. It could take hours, days, or even weeks to track down the driver I wanted by using this search method, and I needed to use my printer with my laptop right away. So I went to AltaVista Search, and on the Simple Search page, I entered +bj200 +driver*. The first item on the list of matches was a page from which I could download the driver I needed. I had my printer running within five minutes. For this situation, I used a search style that comes natural to me. I thought in terms of specifics--the model number BJ200, being a combination of letters and numbers, was rare. A search for that term matched only that product.

If you were facing the same problem, you might use a different method to find the same driver at a different Web page using LiveTopics. If you think in terms of categories, perhaps the first query term that comes to mind is printer. When your search yields a half million hits, as you can see in Figure A, click on Tables.

Figure A: When you get 500,000 hits from the search term printer, choose the LiveTopics topics map.
[ Figure A ]

AltaVista Search then provides a list of 20 categories, each with subcategories. These categories aren't based on human prejudgment, like the Dewey decimal system in a library. Rather, they're statistically generated on the fly, based on the words that appear on the same pages as your query word(s).

Under the topic Windows, check the term drivers. AltaVista Search will automatically add that term to the query box at the top of the page as +drivers. Under the topic Laserjet, click on inkjet to add it to your list of search terms. As you can see, the topic inkjet includes the names of several vendors, but not Canon. So, go to the query box and type +Canon (as a shortcut). Now, submit the new query, shown in Figure B, and the second item on the list will take you to a shareware site with the Canon BJ200 driver.

Figure B: Your refined search adds three new terms to your first search.
[ Figure B ]

As this example illustrates, by using a different approach, you can get an equally satisfactory result.

Using LiveTopics with advanced searches

As another example, consider cooking. I've never been able to use cookbooks, because of my style of thinking. I simply don't know what the different categories of dishes mean. So for me, AltaVista Search is an enormous boon. Let me show you what I mean. I can go to the Advanced Search page and enter recipe in the Selection Criteria field. Then, in the Results Ranking Criteria field, I simply list all the ingredients that happen to be in my refrigerator. AltaVista Search will return a list of recipes. At the top of the page, it will cite several recipes that include all or most of the ingredients I listed. Further down the page, AltaVista Search will include those recipes with fewer of the listed ingredients. With LiveTopics, there's an alternative approach: I can search for recipe, and when AltaVista Search returns some 300,000 matches, I can choose the Way-cool Topics Map! and Topic Words, as shown in Figure C.

Figure C: The Topic Words for a search on recipe look like this.
[ Figure C ]

Now, I can choose one of the major topics, like beer (which will provide recipes for home-brewing) or chocolate and submit that search. Then I can go to LiveTopics again to drill down further--learning something about cooking terminology and the choices Alta-Vista Search offers at each stage.

Or I could start the search with a known category, such as +recipe +casserole or +recipe +dessert, and then see how that piece of the cooking world is categorized and inter-related. In either case, at some point I'll decide that I'm close enough and start checking individual pages in the match list or, armed with a new vocabulary and tantalizing ideas, I might turn to a traditional cookbook and use it much more effectively than before. Regardless of your search style, LiveTopics provides a handy way to broaden a search to uncover new and valuable information.

Another simple search with LiveTopics

If you're into video games, you might want to search for a specific game, such as Master of Orion from Microprose. Let's start with a simple search. Type master* of orion. (The name of the game is "master," but add the asterisk after the name so you'll catch all those pages where someone mistakenly calls it "Masters of Orion.")

In response to this query, AltaVista Search returns more than 400 hits. To find out if there might be software patches for the game, add +patch* to the original query. As you can see, there are several good sources from which you can download free patches.

Next, let's look for some tips on strategy. Type +"master* of orion" strategy tip* tactics advice guide reference. You'll then get about 100 useful hits. Now, with the latest and greatest version of the software and all the game-playing advice you need, how about a search for other Master of Orion addicts out on the Internet? To match skills with another player, refine your search as follows:

+"master* of orion" +live +player*

While this search query isn't very well-constructed and yields some useless matches, it does provide the names of some sites for people who like to play the game. That's all you need to test your mettle against some of the best players online. If you want other video games that are similar to Master of Orion, but you don't quite know how to categorize them, you'll need to frame your search differently. In this case, your task is to gradually broaden your search, then narrow it again to find a game you haven't tried yet. Specifically, do a search for master* of orion, as we explained earlier. When AltaVista Search returns the results, choose the Way-cool Topics Map! and click on the Topic Words tab. You'll see among the listed topics lots of games that are similar to Master of Orion, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D: You can see the names of related games in the Topic Words list in LiveTopics.
[ Figure D ]

If one of the names in the list strikes your fancy, you can do a separate search
for it. Alternatively, you can select a couple of the major topics, like multiplayer and wargame, then delete master of orion from the query box and launch a new search. This last approach provides more general results, but not so broad and amorphous as searching for videogam* (you'd use the asterisk to catch videogame, videogames, and video-gaming). Figure E shows the result of this final search.

Figure E: At this point, your refined search looks like this.
[ Figure E ]

In the first page of results, I found the Galaxy G Multiplayer Wargame Official Site, where I can sign up for a game with as many as 80 other simultaneous players. I also found other sites with reviews of games of this kind. All this information is right up my alley. You're bound to find some equally useful information in your searches!

Conclusion

Thanks to AltaVista Search LiveTopics, there are many paths through cyberspace. Some take you right to the destination quickly and simply. Some give you a broad overview of the territory, so you can decide which way to go. And some take you through fun and interesting locations, giving you opportunities to stumble upon unexpected wonders--information, like-minded people, and new kinds of online interaction--that match your tastes and interests, but that you may not have known to look for. As you try these techniques, please let me know about your successes and your frustrations. Send me your tips--the creative approaches you've tried--and your questions. You can reach me directly at seltzer@samizdat.com.

Go to Richard Seltzer's AltaVista Search tutorial

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