True Knowledge - Blog

True (imprecise) Knowledge

I've just been looking at the knowledge addition logs and one of our users, Nomlas, is adding knowledge about the TV series The Clangers and Bagpuss.  It's nice to start the evening with a bit of nostalgia.  Other users have been adding the prehistoric aeons and eras, and lots of facts about Oscar winners.

Inside the company we've been getting our "levels of precision" knowledge organised.  Lots of things can be more or less accurate versions of other objects - for example the real number 1.9999 can be written less accurately as 2.  There are some less familiar examples too, such as colours.  If one person describes an object as red and another says that it is crimson then both descriptions can be true, but one is more precise than the other. 

Some types of facts need the data to be precise, but other facts can be true with varying degrees of precision.  For example, saying "I live in Cambridgeshire" and "I live in the UK" are both true because Cambridgeshire is a more accurate version of the UK, but if you're the political leader of a particular place then it is false to say that you're the leader of the place containing it.

This type of fuzziness was already working within the system for some classes (eg numbers, dates and places).  We've been trying to finish the job by deciding exactly what other types of objects can have a less accurate form and which can't, deciding which relationships between objects ought to permit fuzziness, and filling in the gaps in the inference to make it all work across the whole knowledge base.

Announcing the first True Knowledge Meetup (15th Nov - Cambridge)

True Knowledge would like to invite you to a casual meetup at B Bar (in Cambridge city centre) on Saturday the 15th of November from 4pm onwards for drinks and conversation.

© Andrew Dunn CC ShareAlike2.0

The event will be a chance for True Knowledge's Staff and Beta Testers to get to know each other over some food and drink.

Most True Knowledge staff members will be attending including William (the founder) along with members of the management, development and knowledge teams.

True Knowledge will be buying drinks for beta testers and there will (hopefully) be some True Knowledge merchandise available for free as well.

You are welcome to show up on the day without RSVPing although I would be grateful if you did drop me an email (or comment on this blog) to let me know you're interested in coming.

We have the top floor of B bar to ourselves.

Looking forward to meeting you all.

Best regards

Nick Franklin

Community Manager - True Knowledge Ltd

Finding B bar:

Location:

B bar is on Market Passage in the centre of Cambridge:

View Larger Map

Walking from the train station (1.2 Miles):

View Larger Map

Bus from the train station (10 minute bus ride):

You can get the Citi 1 or Citi 3 bus from the train station (make sure you get the bus heading north towards the city centre) and get off at Emmanuel Street.  B Bar is just round the corner from Emmanuel street.

Matt Young describes his first week as VP of Engineering

We are very pleased to welcome Matt Young as our new head of engineering.  Matt has previously worked in senior roles at Betfair, Sapient and Bloomberg (to name a few).  Matt brings a wealth of experience to True Knowledge and we are excited to be working with him.

For this post I thought I would also ask Matt a couple of interview questions.

Hi Matt, what drew you to Cambridge and True Knowledge?

Two things really: the product and the team.  What True Knowledge is building is something that has eluded many larger organisations: a search technology that can give you an answer to your question rather than just list web pages which might or might not contain the information you need. You can instantly see how useful that would be in all sorts of scenarios. Moreover, in the form of our beta site, we already have a proof-of-concept that it can work for a good number of questions and facts.

Equally, the other thing that's attractive about True Knowledge is the team that's been assembled here already (which we will be growing further over the coming year).  The people are all really bright, friendly and approachable, and come from a wide variety of backgrounds.  You always feel that there is plenty to learn from talking to your colleagues.

Please describe your first week at True Knowledge.

It's been fairly hectic but also very interesting and enjoyable.  Aside from meeting people and getting to grips with how the core technology works, we're adapting our development processes to cope with a growing team and starting work to scale our knowledge engine up to handle very large quantities of users and facts.

Unlike some previous roles where I've had to build tech teams from scratch, which can be slow going, I'm lucky here to be coming in to manage an existing team of very capable can-do people.  They have helped me get my feet under the desk very quickly and it already feels like I've been here a couple of months rather than just a couple of weeks.  There's a lot of work to do, and we're still recruiting (looking for strong C++ and PHP developers) to give us additional capacity to get everything done that we want to, but we manage to have fun at the same time.  People mostly eat lunch together, and we've already had a company curry night since I've joined, so it's very sociable.

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Recent knowledge work

Just got back in from a True Knowledge meal.  We've had quite a few new hires so it was really nice to see them out of the office and meet their wives.

Lots of knowledge been going in recently.  The Technology group have been putting in a few iPhone applications.  Did you know you can get a "koi pond" to recreate that aquarium sense of relaxation on your phone?

One of our top users, Jordan (username mindbleed) has been working really hard on Oscar winners.  They're working their way through all the categories and they've got as far as Best Supporting Actress.  Fernanda (username ferdf) has sent us a batch of facts all about basketball players which was terrific.

Thanks to everyone else who's been adding knowledge too.

True Knowledge welcomes Mitch Pender as Commercial Director

True Knowledge Ltd is delighted to be joined by Commercial Director Mitch Pender.  Mitch was previously at Envisional (another Cambridge-spawned tech-company) where he played a major part in their success as VP of Corporate Development.

The amount of phone activity has increased dramatically since Mitch came on board as he arranges meetings and builds bridges with other companies.  Next week he'll be touring Silicon Valley with William Reeve (chairman) and William Tunstall-Pedoe (ceo).

Mitch's first assignment has been to find True Knowledge a shiny new office as we have outgrown our space at the Innovation Centre...I'll do a separate post all about our new office once we've started moving.