Start-Ups Focusing on Mobile Search Challenge Google/行動搜尋時代 Google有硬仗要打


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2015/05/29 第74期 訂閱/退訂看歷史報份
 
 
紐時周報精選 Start-Ups Focusing on Mobile Search Challenge Google/行動搜尋時代 Google有硬仗要打
Food May Be Too Clean For Our Own Good/抗菌當道 專家:美國食物乾淨過頭
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Start-Ups Focusing on Mobile Search Challenge Google/行動搜尋時代 Google有硬仗要打
田思怡/譯
A growing number of entrepreneurs are betting that the rise of mobile phones has created an opportunity to do what once seemed unthinkable: to challenge Google in search.

越來越多創業家看好行動電話的崛起創造了一個機會,去做過去難以想像的事:在搜尋領域挑戰Google。

One of those who hopes to take on Google is Bobby Lo, the founder of Vurb, a start-up in San Francisco's bustling downtown that has a new kind of search engine meant for mobile phones. The idea is to take several common queries — restaurants, movies — and group them into snippets of information and apps for related actions.

想要挑戰Google的人士之一是巴比.羅,Vurb的創辦人,這是家位在舊金山熱鬧的市中心的新創公司,擁有為行動電話設計的新型搜尋引擎。構想是選一些常見的查詢條目─餐廳、電影─把它們集結成許多片段的資訊,以及為相關行動設計的應用軟體。

Venture capitalists have plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into dozens of search start-ups because they say they believe the Internet giant cannot dominate search on mobile devices the way it has on personal computers.

創投資本家已把數以億計美元投資在幾十家新創的搜尋公司身上,因為他們說,他們相信這家網路巨擘(Google)無法以它在個人電腦上獨占搜尋的方式,在行動裝置上如法炮製。

Venture capitalists financed 27 search companies in 2014 and 33 the year before — the two most active years on record, according to CB Insights, whose data on the venture capital industry goes back to 1999. The biggest jump has been in mobile search companies, according to a report CB Insights released in March, particularly companies that use "deep links" to connect mobile applications the way websites are linked on the web.

CB Insights從1999年開始收集創投產業的資料,資料顯示創投資本家在2014年提供資金給27家搜尋公司,前一年是33家,這是紀錄上最活躍的兩年。根據CB Insights今年三月公布的報告,投資的最大躍進是在行動搜尋公司方面,尤其是比照網路上網站連結方式,以「深度連結」(deep links)去連結行動應用軟體的公司。

圖片來源/PREM KUMAR MARNI(CC BY-SA 2.0)

Each of these search companies has a slightly different take. Quixey, which has raised $135 million in venture capital, according to CB Insights, features a traditional- looking search box that helps people find information inside apps, as well as functions, such as a button to order a cab.

這些搜尋公司每一家都有稍微不同的特色。根據CB Insights,已集資1.35億美元創投資本的Quixey,特色是一個有傳統外觀的搜尋盒,幫人們在應用軟體內找資訊,以及功能,例如叫計程車的按鈕。

A company named URX is trying to link apps so that people can perform related actions by hopping between them. Other ideas include putting search inside mobile messaging systems or creating new home-screen applications that use past behavior to predict what a user might want next — a concept Google has invested in already.

一家稱為URX的公司試圖連結多種應用軟體,人們得以在應用軟體之間跳來跳去,執行相關的行動。其他構想包括把搜尋置入行動簡訊系統,或創造新的主畫面應用軟體,利用過去的行為來預測用戶接下來也許要什麼,Google已投資於這種觀念。

"If you ask 100 people whether search is broken or not, 99 would say Google is perfect; it's everything I need," said John Lilly, a partner at Greylock Partners, which has backed a search startup called Jack Mobile. "But if you ask them, 'How are you going to figure out what you want to watch on TV tonight or where are you going to dinner?' they would say Google wouldn't know that, that's not search."

資助新創搜尋公司Jack Mobile的創投公司Greylock Partners的合夥人約翰.里利說:「你若問一百個人,搜尋是否不夠完整,百分之九十九會說Google很完美;它滿足我的所有需要。但你若問他們,『你能想出今晚你要看什麼電視節目,或是你要去哪兒吃晚餐嗎?』他們會說Google不會知道這個,這不是搜尋。」

An entrepreneur named Mike Farmer is developing Leap.it, a visual search engine whose results are full of pictures and cuedup videos.

創業家麥克.法默正在研發Leap.it,一種視覺搜尋引擎,搜尋結果充滿圖片和隨時可播放的影片。

"The very moment you believe that the game is over is the very moment that the environment exists to introduce something completely new," said Mr. Farmer, who works out of his house in Kansas City, Kansas.

在堪薩斯州堪薩斯市的家中工作的法默說:「你認為遊戲已經結束的那個時刻,也正是引進某樣全新東西的條件存在的時刻。」

Behind the new companies is a conviction that people use mobile phones so differently than they do desktop and laptop computers that the search business is ripe for an overhaul. "Anytime there is a platform change, everything is up for grabs," said Keith Rabois, a partner at Khosla Ventures, which has backed a company called Relcy.

支持這些新公司的是一個信念,認為人們使用手機的方式,與他們使用桌上型電腦和筆記型電腦大不相同,搜尋業進行大整修的時機已經成熟。資助Relcy公司的創投公司Khosla Ventures的一位合夥人凱斯.拉波華說:「每當有平台的改變,到處都是可以抓住的機會。」

The most obvious difference with mobile is that people always have their phones with them , giving search companies lots of contextual clues — like location — for what they might want.

行動裝置最明顯的不同點,在於人們總是把手機帶在身邊,提供搜尋公司很多他們也許會想要什麼的相關線索,像是他們所在的地點。

That is the main idea behind Vurb. When someone uses Vurb to search for a movie, it returns a single page with reviews, cast members and nearby theaters, along with links to buy tickets and the option to call a cab. When a user searches for an old movie, the service fetches streaming applications like Netflix.

這是支持Vurb的主要概念。當某人用Vurb搜尋一部電影,會進入一個頁面,有影評、演員陣容和附近的電影院,以及購票的連結和叫計程車的選項。當用戶搜尋一部老電影,這項服務會找來串流應用軟體,像是Netflix。

"If I'm searching for a movie, chances are I want to do a couple of things related to that," Mr. Lo said.

羅先生說:「如果我搜尋一部電影,很有可能我想做幾件與它有關的事。」

This year, smartphone users in the United States are projected to spend 81 percent of their time on the mobile Internet inside applications, and 19 percent on the web, according to eMarketer.

數位市場研究公司eMarketer說,今年,預估美國的智慧型手機用戶會把81%的時間花在行動網路內置的應用軟體,19%花在網路上。

Of course, Google has no plans to cede its hold on search. The company has amassed 30 billion "deep links" so that its search engine can return information from apps as well as the web, and the company's engineers are busy reimagining its search business for mobile phones.

當然,Google不打算放鬆對搜尋市場的掌控。它已積聚300億個「深度連結」,如此一來它的搜尋引擎能從應用軟體和網路回覆資訊,公司的工程師正忙著重新構思它的行動電話搜尋事業。

The company's biggest bets have been a voice-searching tool, along with Google Now, an application that tries to predict what users are looking for by showing a stack of cards with timely information, using cues like coming events in the user's emails or recent activities on mobile apps and the web.

這家公司(Google)的最大賭注一直放在一種語言搜尋工具,以及Google Now,一種試圖預測用戶正在找什麼的應用軟體,藉由顯示即時訊息的一疊卡片,以及利用一些提示,像是用戶電郵中即將到來的活動,或是手機應用軟體和網路上的最近活動。

Aparna Chennapragada is director of product management in Google's search business. Like her start-up competitors, she is still unsure exactly what people want.

阿帕爾娜.陳納普拉加達是Google搜尋事業產品管理部門主管。就和那些新創公司競爭者一樣,她也仍不確定人們究竟想要什麼。

"Google Now is such an early effort," she said. "We're still trying to figure it out."

她說:「Google Now在萌芽階段,我們仍在努力發想。」

 
Food May Be Too Clean For Our Own Good/抗菌當道 專家:美國食物乾淨過頭
王麗娟/譯
With the recent recalls of millions of liters of ice cream as well as several tons of hummus, pine nuts, frozen vegetables and various meat products, you might think the American food supply is an unholy mess. It's not. It's arguably the safest in the world.

最近廠商回收數百萬公升的冰淇淋,數噸的鷹嘴豆泥、松堅果、冷凍蔬菜和多項肉品,有人可能因此認為,美國的食品供應亂七八糟。其實不然。它的安全性堪稱全球第一。

Yet despite continually improving processing methods and quality controls, the number of cases of food-borne illness has remained high since the 1990s, with the incidence of people getting sick from some pathogens increasing.

然而,儘管在加工處理和品質管制方面不停地改善,自1990年代以來,透過食物感染的疾病病例依然始終居高不下,因為某些病原體而病倒的病例甚至有增無減。

Some experts wonder if we've reached a point of diminishing returns in food safety — whether our food could perhaps be too clean.

部分專家不禁懷疑,美國在食安方面已經來到了收益遞減的那個點上,也就是說,美國的食物或許已經乾淨得過了頭。

Industrial food sanitation practices — along with home cooks' antibacterial veggie washes, chlorine bleach kitchen cleaners and sterilization cycle dishwashers — kill off so-called good bacteria naturally found in foods that bolster our health. Moreover, eliminating bad or pathogenic bacteria means we may not be exposed to the small doses that could inoculate us against intestinal crises.

食品工業衛生管理(消毒殺菌),以及在家料理使用的抗菌蔬果清洗液,含氯漂白劑的廚房清潔用品,消毒循環洗碗機,都會殺死天然食物中可增進人體健康的所謂好菌。而且,完全消滅壞菌和致病細菌,意味我們可能無法暴露於少量的細菌,以致無法保護我們的腸道免於出現危機。

圖片來源/North Charleston(CC BY-SA 2.0)

"No one is saying you need to eat a peck of dirt before you die to be healthy," said Jeffrey T. LeJeune, a professor and head of the food animal research program at Ohio State University in Wooster . "But there is a line somewhere when it comes to cleanliness. We just don't know where it is."

伍斯特「俄亥俄州立大學」教授兼食品動物研究計畫負責人傑佛瑞.T.勒瓊說:「沒有人說,人死前,必須吃進一堆汙垢,身體才會健康。乾淨這件事,其中有條界線,只不過我們不知道它在那裡。」

The theory that there might be such a thing as "too clean" food stems from the hygiene hypothesis, which has been gaining traction over the last decade. It holds that our modern germaphobic ways may be making us sick by harming our microbiome, which is the system made up of all the microbes — bacteria, viruses, fungi, mites — that live in and on human bodies.

食物可能有「過度乾淨」之嫌的理論,源自這十年來備受注目的「衛生假說」。它的立論是,現代人的潔癖可能破壞我們的微生物群系,使我們生病,微生物群系是所有存活於人體內外的微生物,包括細菌、病毒、真菌、蟲組合而成的系統。

A result of a diminished microbiome is an immune system that gets bored, spoiling for a fight and apt to react to harmless substances and even attack the body's own tissues. This could explain the increasing incidence of allergies and autoimmune disorders such as asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.

微生物群系減弱的結果,是免疫系統會覺得無聊,一心想戰鬥,因此易於對無害的物質產生反應,甚至攻擊自己身體的組織。這可解釋過敏和自體免疫性失常疾病如氣喘、類風濕關節炎、發炎性腸道疾病發病率越來越高的原因。

There is also the suggestion that a diminished microbiome disrupts hormones that regulate hunger, which can cause obesity .

另一種說法是,微生物群系減少會擾亂調節飢餓的荷爾蒙,導致肥胖。

When it comes to food-borne illness, the idea is that fewer good bacteria in your gut means there is less competition to prevent colonization of the bad microbes, leading to more frequent and severe bouts of illness.

至於食物感染性疾病,它的說法是,腸道內的好菌一旦減少,意謂防止壞菌入侵的競爭力降低,疾病發作將更為頻繁與嚴重。

Moreover, an underutilized immune system may lose its ability to discriminate between friend and foe, so it may marshal its defenses inappropriately ( against gluten , for example) or not at all.

此外,未能充分利用的免疫系統,可能喪失區分敵友的能力,因此以不當方式重新配置它的防禦能力(例如對付麩質),或者文風不動。

Animal experiments have lent some credence to the theory. Researchers at Texas Tech University in Lubbock have found that guinea pigs fed less virulent strains of listeria are less likely to get sick or die when later fed a more pathogenic strain. And anyone who has visited a country with less than rigorous sanitation knows the locals don't get sick from foods that can cause tourists days of toilet-bound torment.

動物實驗提高了這項理論的可信度。拉巴克「德州理工大學」的研究員發現,實驗天竺鼠先餵以毒性較弱的李斯特菌株,其後再餵以致病性較強的菌株時,較不易生病或死亡。此外,曾經造訪過衛生條件較差國家的人都知道,當地人吃了沒事的食物,可能讓觀光客飽受接連數天老跑廁所之苦。

"We have these tantalizing bits of evidence that to my mind provide pretty good support for the hygiene hypothesis, in terms of food-borne illness," said Guy Loneragan, a professor of food safety and public health at Texas Tech.

德州理工大學食品安全與公共衛生教授蓋伊.朗雷根說:「我們有這些誘人的證據,對我而言,就食物感染性疾病來說,它們為衛生假說提供了很好的佐證。」

This is not to say we'd be better off if chicken producers eased up on the salmonella inspections, we ate recalled ice cream sandwiches and didn't rinse our produce. But it raises questions about whether it might be advisable to eradicate microbes more selectively.

這並不意謂,若是雞農放鬆沙門氏菌檢驗,人們照吃回收的冰淇淋三明治,或不沖洗農產品,對我們會更好。但它提出了一個問題:或許更有選擇性的消滅微生物,才是正道。

 
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你一定不知道的高溫劣敗食物
日常生活中,常不知不覺就吃下高溫劣敗的食物,大家都知道油炸、燒烤物有害健康,但如烤番薯、杏仁果等,也是屬於高溫烹調的食物,吃下肚同樣有害健康。
 
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