This is the story about a 19 Year Old prodigy from U.C. Berkeley that was squelched by Google because he wanted to test the limits of search engine results and come up with a smarter and automated question answering system that was quick to the point.

Before Nick D’Aloisio created Trimit and Summly, a precocious 19 year old named Peter Nguyen was coming up with ways to change the face of search results forever in his dorm room. While on a missionary trip to China later that year, he had created a search engine algorithm called, “Insightlopedia,” which is now defunct due to a Google ban.

“The engine started out as a way for people to ask questions and receive answers immediately. I wrote algorithms by hand that scraped google and yahoo results, contextually generating a page that had the most relevant answers to a question.

“It was clean, and it was very useful for people. It wasn’t just a search engine in a search engine– it was ME choosing what was best for users. It highlighted the most important parts of any page or question, and these pages also included the most relevant Youtube/Vimeo videos that pertained to it. Many people were looking for Pokemon Black Edition at that time.

“I also scraped all the world’s top answer-question websites and came up with a list of questions to input into my system. There were about 750,000 questions that people regularly asked every day, and I have all the metrics to prove it. Every question that was answered by Insightlopedia was cached for others to use as well, and the keywords were noted on the very page.

“It was an SEO juggernaut. These pages included the best answers for every question imaginable, and answered every question thoroughly and thoughtfully. Strangely enough, it was made from search result snippets from Yahoo Search Results, which at the time were actually better than Google Search Results.”

17-Year-Old Summly Founder Nick D’Aloisio’s Immodest Goal: Change The Way You Read News

“So the code-savvy teen developed Trimit, an app that summarized articles into 140-character tweets. The app got the attention of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing, who invested $300,000 into Nick’s idea, which was ultimately refined in Summly. The Summly app first launched in December 2011.“

My Name is Peter Nguyen, and I did this– 3 years before D’Aloisio. I createdInsightlopedia in 2010. I did it better, smarter, faster, and I had over 500 thousand articles indexed by Google. Google didn’t even know it was Yahoo’s search results until someone complained that my search results were ranking higher than their original article.

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/websearch/1QghtTtW5fQ/Eub7kSzD6wIJ

Something needs to be done about this insightlopedia.com site. It’s total spam, and Google is punishing me and my websites for having links on THEIR website. Links I didn’t even put there! They’re just copying and pasting my URLs onto their sites! And when I use Google to search for one of my articles, the article isn’t listed, but insightlopedia’s link to my article is!

This is ridiculous. I’m flabbergasted. Is Google going to address this problem? We work damn hard on our content. I pay my contributors a lot of money to DO their research, to spend time WORKING on quality web writing, to learn how to write for people and to help them. I send them to seminars and put them through more school to get their language skills and web development skills up to par. And how are we rewarded for developing some of the best content on the web? We’re framed by a spam site whose only existence is predicated by the fact that they have Google ads instead of real content. I’m livid. Here’s a link to the example result: http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.getridofthings.com%2Fget-rid-of-morning-sickness.htm&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=42ea6e12edc6080

Insightlopedia was created for Peter and his friends. He took everyone’s input and criticism to heart, and sought to make a sincere and smart system that could answer questions immediately in the best way possible. Google erased that dream from the Internet archives. Now, Google, Ashton Kutcher, Yahoo, and Li Ka Shing are investing in a 17 year old that is doing the EXACT same things Peter was doing while on a missionary trip to China.

“I was helping people, but Google wasn’t helping me. I gave up my life to quit college and help create transparency in Chinese NGOs. The system today has over 300 organizations using it, and over 1000 projects completed.”

“I had over 500,000 pages indexed by Google, all of them a hybrid of Google, Youtube, and Yahoo search results. They answered every question immediately, and if it wasn’t in the database, the question was added to it. I MADE Trimit before Trimit was even made. I was penalized for it by Google, though, and I will never let them live that down.

“Google banned me for doing what Summly and Trimit do today —but 3 years ago. I had something huge, and I was making GOOD MONEY from it. Summly and Trimit also steal content from search engines and articles, framing it as their own. I learned that other people spend their hard earned money and time to generate unique and useful content. I then came to the realization that I had to stop, and Google made that even more apparent.

Insightlopedia was banned by Google’s search results on Peter’s birthday on February 24th, 2011. 2 years later, Trimit and Summly are doing the exact same things, but they are being praised by the very same companies that gave Nguyen a hard time.

“It made my birthday much less fun..”

“At the end of the day, I had an awesome time being the guy that no one knew about– but you probably used Insightlopedia at one point or another. It had that type of impact on all of Google’s search engine results.”

He is currently enrolled in the Masters of Information Systems program at Berkeley. Last semester, Nguyen created a system called TorB  for one of his classes. It aggregates news content and displays it very similarly to Summly. What’s amazing is that he wrote all the code in 3 nights. He also won the Berkeley PLAY Conference’s Hackathon with his award-winning LynxL Transit Engine.

In his spare time, Nguyen invents gadgets for disabled persons and gives them away for free. He created CrossBounding earlier this year, which aims to democratize Health and Fitness Training. He is a serial entrepreneur in need of investors and funding.

“Leading fitness classes is not just for Physical Trainers– everyone has the potential to help others. In everything I do, I want to give back to the people who helped me get there. I just wish people noticed me back then.. when I was truly doing revolutionary things. It’s sad that it took 3 years for people to realize the genius of it.”

Before Summly and Trimit– There was Insightlopedia.

Your thoughts?

You can reach Peter Nguyen for contact at ptt.nguyen@berkeley.edu

You can also learn about democratizing Health and Fitness Programs at crossbounding.com

via http://www.petertnguyen.com/2013/03/25/before-summly-and-trimit-there-was-insightlopedia/

It’s been a while since my last post, but I’m excited to be writing again! This week’s post is about Asians “Thinking They Know Best,” something I’ve seen a great deal in my 4.5 years at Berkeley and 22 years on earth. I’ve seen it with family members, colleagues, and co-workers; so here’s a little glimpse into how Asians deal with their inferiority complexes. 

Asians are certainly a different breed of.. um.. human. Instead of accepting gifts for their sentimental value, some Asians enjoy deconstructing and belittling gifts so as to not appear surprised, outdone, or gasp– thankful. This comes off as “high and mighty” to some, and downright ungrateful. Why does this occur?

Let’s start with an anecdote: Someone I know gave a jar of imported Korean Lemon Tea Mix to their friend a year ago for Christmas. Instead of saying thanks for the gift, the friend shunned her; looking at the ingredients list on the back and talking about how much sugar is in it. To make things worse, the friend said, “I can make a better one than this.” How are you supposed to respond to this? You simply can’t, the Asian already believes they Know Best. Next, I will introduce someone who became someone that “knows best.”

At Fountain Valley High School, I led the Media Production team for 3 years. In those three years, I had invited an Asian friend to join the program with my recommendation. He was very willing to learn, and I taught him everything he knows (to this day) about software like Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects. After giving him some tutorials that had helped me in the past, he started becoming “wiser.” He would always ask, “is the new effect you used just the one on the tutorial?”

How was I supposed to respond? I had clearly given him the ingredients and told him I had learned the tutorials. This guy thought he was better than his Sensei, and accordingly… Knew Best as well.

Fast forward to college– I saw a Facebook update from a friend about Adobe Master Collection, and how cool it is that Berkeley students get it for free. Some smart ass thought he would comment, “anything you can do with Master Collection, I can do with Python and Java.” Being someone that does in fact know about how difficult media production is, I suggested that he show me something he did in Python and Java that rivaled some of the clips I did in high school. Two days later, no answer.

I then asked how it was possible that he could do Video Production, Video Editing, Sound Production, Graphic Effects,  and everything else Adobe had spent millions on with Java and Python. After calling him out for boasting about his competency in Java and Python (), he still had no answer– And then got defensive. He had become a victim of his own “Thinking I Know Best-ness.”

He said that he deserves to be “full of it” because all the greats like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were full of it (truth is, that’s correct– but these guys were amazing as children and teens, and were known geniuses by the time they were in college). He then gave stupid workarounds like “taking screenshots every second of a video clip using Python, and then editing it in a Java application.” What’s the difference between doing that and editing it on Adobe Premiere?

Hint: It’s much faster, efficient, and easier to do on Adobe’s Master Collection software. I would be surprised if he were able to do a simple motion tween without spending hours. 

Similar to the ungrateful Lemon Tea receiver, this Berkeley EECS student had become so obsessed with their skills and know-how that they couldn’t just accept that someone had given them the means to accomplishing their tasks with much less effort. Do you know what that Lemon Tea Mix receiver did a year later? They brought their version to my friend and said, “I made the Lemon Tea Mix.. and it’s better than what you gave me too.” (It was actually sweeter and less healthy).

Ridiculous.

Take Home Points: The only way to make an Asian more humble is by being knowledgeable yourself. If you challenge them, they will fold and become defensive. If you don’t, they will rub it in your face. At the end of the day, that sort’ve requires that you “know best” as well. Thus, the cycle continues.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s post!

I’ll try to get a new post in every week or so. Stay tuned!

Best,
-Peter.

Today marks the first day of the Lunar New Year, which is celebrated by nearly a fifth of the world’s population. Family members gather, connect, exchange red envelopes, and play lottery games in Vietnam. In China, people customarily prepare by buying new clothes and cleaning their homes (to ward away bad spirits).

2012 is the Year of the Dragon

Happy New Years from everyone in the Stuff Asian People Like family! We look forward to continuing to provide information about Asian Culture for years to come. There are many changes coming to Asian Central in the upcoming year as well, so stay tuned!

What do you do during Lunar New Year in YOUR culture? Comment Below!

January 12th, 2001 — TinyNewPlanet has just released their Chinese English Blocks, a simple but effective means of teaching children Chinese Mandarin.

China is increasingly becoming an economic power in the world, so learning Chinese is more important now than ever. This 12 block set features numbers and animals of the Chinese zodiac in simplified Chinese characters and their English equivalent. It is made of replenish-able rubberwood and comes with a carry pouch.

Check them out at TinyNewPlanet and show your support for Mary, a mother herself (and SAPL reader).

SAPL endorses this product because it is an amazing way to teach children language competency. America is one of the few developed nations where learning languages is not very emphasized. If we do not realize the importance of language learning, we lose our heritage as well.