Factual’s Gil Elbaz Wants to Gather the Data Universe - NYTimes.com

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Factual’s Gil Elbaz Wants to Gather the Data Universe - NYTimes.com

Tom Johnson
We're talking about big, BIG data sets here:


Just the Facts. Yes, All of Them.

"AT 7 years old, Gilad Elbaz wrote, “I want to be a rich mathematician and very smart.” That, he figured, would help him “discover things like time machines, robots and machines that can answer any question.”

In the 34 years since, Mr. Elbaz has accomplished big chunks of these goals. He has built Web-traversing software robots and answered some very big questions for Google, along the way becoming a millionaire several hundred times over.

His time-machine plans, however, have been ditched for something he finds more important: trying to identify every fact in the world, and to hold them all in a company he calls Factual.

“The world is one big data problem,” Mr. Elbaz says from his headquarters, a quiet office 14 floors above the Los Angeles Country Club. He is a slim, soft-spoken man who weaves in his chair when an idea excites him. “What if you could spot any error, as soon as you wrote it? Factual is definitely a new thing that will change business, and a valuable new tool for computing.”....

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/business/factuals-gil-elbaz-wants-to-gather-the-data-universe.html?scp=1&sq=gilad%20elbaz&st=Search

--tom johnson

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Re: Factual’s Gil Elbaz Wants to Gather the Data Universe - NYTimes.com

Russ Abbott
The example data at the Factual website look like a lot of separate tables. They have no connection to each other. It's not clear how they keep track of how up-to-date the data is. Yet they seem to be attracting a lot of attention. Does anyone one understand what they are really doing?  How do they integrate all this data? How do they keep it up to date? Do they keep historical data so that they can provide historical information?  Why not? It's often as important as current information.
 
-- Russ Abbott
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  Professor, Computer Science
  California State University, Los Angeles

  Google voice: 747-999-5105
  vita:  http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
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On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 8:34 PM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:
We're talking about big, BIG data sets here:


Just the Facts. Yes, All of Them.

"AT 7 years old, Gilad Elbaz wrote, “I want to be a rich mathematician and very smart.” That, he figured, would help him “discover things like time machines, robots and machines that can answer any question.”

In the 34 years since, Mr. Elbaz has accomplished big chunks of these goals. He has built Web-traversing software robots and answered some very big questions for Google, along the way becoming a millionaire several hundred times over.

His time-machine plans, however, have been ditched for something he finds more important: trying to identify every fact in the world, and to hold them all in a company he calls Factual.

“The world is one big data problem,” Mr. Elbaz says from his headquarters, a quiet office 14 floors above the Los Angeles Country Club. He is a slim, soft-spoken man who weaves in his chair when an idea excites him. “What if you could spot any error, as soon as you wrote it? Factual is definitely a new thing that will change business, and a valuable new tool for computing.”....

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/business/factuals-gil-elbaz-wants-to-gather-the-data-universe.html?scp=1&sq=gilad%20elbaz&st=Search

--tom johnson

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org