Ask Anything: Voke

[gus]

Hey, I have been working on a site called Voke, which you can find at http://somebots.com/voke. Basically, it displays information collected by a PHP-based bot using something similar to Google Suggest. It can also return dynamic data, but just simple weather and stocks for now.

I know it doesn't have a lot of information yet but it currently collects exactly 1 fact per minute so in a month or so our database will be big.

To use it, try entering something like "what is paper" "what is the weather for [zipcode] or "stocks for apple".

If anyone wants to help me work on this, that would be great, since as of now, I have written almost the entire thing myself.

Thanks. I think this has a lot of potential. What do you think?

[brandonsadkins]

http://wolframalpha.com has you beat on weather and stocks... and the fact that it has been marketed and talked about everywhere.

not trying to burst your bubble. just saying.

i'm just not certain why people would use this instead of just using google anyway. it seems to work well for definitions of words and phrases, but doesn't really understand much else.

A technical issue (XP SP2, Firefox 3) - Sometimes the "drop down" thing doesn't go away even when everything is cleared out of the query box. Not necessary for it to go away - other than if someone was wanting to see anything below the box.

[gus]

Thanks for your reply.

Yeah, I saw the wolfram alpha thing, and it's impressive, especially the way it processes math, but I think these are two different things. Remeber, mine is only a prototype and if it ever gets into actual production the whole thing will probably be completely recoded.

If you ask wolfram alpha what a cheeseburger is, it's not going to give you an answer. Hopefully this will if it ever goes into production.

[boldfire]

I'm impressed. Voke is to general knowledge / facts what Wolfram is to statistics by the looks of it. Good job!

[gus]

Thanks. If anyone has any ideas/reviews I would love to hear them.

[gus]

It's now fully updated, and doesn't use any databases but instead just fetches new data every time the user requests it. It works out much better and there are way more facts.