This week we received more than 15 new submissions to the BOSS Mashable Challenge. Today, we highlight 5 of them, in addition to the applications we’ve already covered (see here and here). New submissions are being accepted through October 5th, at which point 10 applications will enter the voting round. To submit yours, follow the instructions posted here for your opportunity to win either the $2,000 grand prize or the $1,000 for runner-up.

Today’s coverage includes PopGist, Duck Duck Go, Surf Canyon, PlayerSearch and Truevert. Check them out:

The Final Submissions Showcase

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100 word description from developer: “PopGist develops the novel search ranking algorithm based on auto discovered and topic focused expert pages, and the innovative result presentation interface with discussion threads. Given a list of search result, PopGist discovers topic specific expert pages, fetches pages in the result list, analyzes them in multiple dimensions and detects spam pages, then reranks and presents them in threaded format. PopGist improves the relevancy of the existing search engines and provides better user search experience.”

Screenshot:

100 word description from developer: “Duck Duck Go is a new general purpose search engine.  We combine results from Yahoo with even better results from human powered sources like Wikipedia.  Human powered results are better because they are guaranteed to be relevant as well as have titles and descriptions that actually make sense.Consequently, at Duck Duck Go you get consistently better results for most topics without missing anything.  We also developed a simpler search experience with less clutter, less spam, and less ads.  And you will find improvements like keyboard navigation, result highlighting, site icons, related topics, abstracts, and more.”

Screenshot:

100 word description from developer: “Surf Canyon accelerates the search experience on Yahoo! by enabling you to find relevant information buried in the results. Employing “real-time implicit personalization” that leverages the BOSS API, the application observes behavior signals in order to determine what you want and then goes as deep as page 100 of the result set to fetch it. With tens of billions of web pages, it has become increasingly difficult to put all of the relevant results on page one, so Surf Canyon goes and finds those that are not. The software is available as a browser extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer.”

Screenshot:

100 word description from developer: “Player Search is a vertical search engine for sports that searches local and national news, video, photos, stats and more for content targeted to individual professional, collegiate and Olympic athletes.  Player Search leverages Yahoo BOSS APIs for its site search and news search categories as well as photos from Flickr.  Player Search searches the full spectrum of on-line sports content from mainstream sources such as Yahoo and CBS Sports to local newspapers, team websites, and sports blogs as well as the latest video highlights from ESPN, NFL Network, MLB.com and many others.”

Screenshot:

100 word description from developer: “Truevert is a true vertical semantic search engine. Truevert knows that a “green” search for “carbon” is intended to be about global warming, not physical chemistry. Truevert is based on patent pending modeling technology, not an ontology or dictionary. It learns the meaning of words as people do–from their context. Truevert works in any language. It is easily extended to other verticals with minimal effort (typically less than an hour). Verticals can be as broad as you like (consumer products)or as narrow as a single person.”

How do you win?

Build a kickass mashup – search engine or any other Web app – using the BOSS API and any other data sources/technologies. If you are not developing for this contest, what are your thoughts on the submissions showcased above?

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Announcing the Yahoo! Search BOSS Mashable Challenge ($3,000 in prizes)BOSS Mashable Challenge Continues - Deadline ExtendedCheck Out BOSS Mashable Challenge SubmissionsThe BOSS Mashable ChallengePopGistTuneChimpTall Street

Source:Mashable!

There’s nothing wrong with a healthy discussion, but there’s everything wrong with a topic that’s obsolete, or better put: in a normal universe, it would be obsolete. I’m not blaming the bloggers who are discussing them; it’s obvious that some of these topics are still relevant, but the problem is that they shouldn’t be. They should have been dead and buried years ago. Let’s see what they are and drink to their quick demise.

1. DRM

OK, why the hell are we still talking about this thing? Everyone knows that the idea of digital rights management which tries to artificially remove your rights to use a product you’ve legally purchased is preposterous, idiotic, and should be abandoned. Hell, even the record companies got it, and heaven knows they’re at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to not screwing up your customers. Yes, I know it still exists; could the suits who are still pushing it in their products *cough* Spore *cough* stop doing that crap before they a) get fired and b) their companies go bankrupt? Thank you.

2. Linux replacing Windows

Every now and then I still see this topic popping up, together with the inevitable praise for the latest version of Ubuntu (what is it nowadays, Obese Ostrich?) and detailed how-to descriptions on how to do absolutely everything you do on Windows under Linux, only 100x cooler.

Guess what? It ain’t gonna happen. Decades have passed, folks, and it hasn’t happened. Microsoft sat on its ass for 6 years, and then they came up with Vista, which sucks, and it hasn’t happened. Hell, if anything is going to replace Windows, it’s going to be Mac OS, or some yet undetermined weird OS from Google.

3. The death of e-mail

Yes, it sucks. Yes, 90% of it is spam. But unfortunately, it’s not going away, despite the fact that every now and then someone proclaims it dead. As much as we’d all like a better, safer, less restricted and more intelligent e-mail, we’re going to be stuck with this one for quite a long time.

Is it cause for grief and despair? Not really: there are plenty ways to communicate on the internet, most of which are far more advanced than e-mail, and that’s probably precisely the reason why no one is trying to replace e-mail as such. We use it only for what it’s good for, and we’ve moved as far as everything else goes.

4. RIAA lawsuits

Ok, I know why we’re talking about these. Because the RIAA is evil, and because the insane “john doe” lawsuits still keep coming. What I wonder is how long this charade will go on until the legislature wakes up? Let’s repeat, in short, what these lawsuits are. Here’s a handy quote:

“A complainant may first attempt to get the subscriber information by simply asking the ISP for it. However, most ISPs will be reluctant to give out this information without a court order. The complainant will then have to issue a claim against “John Doe” (at which point they become a “plaintiff”), and will then have to ask the court for an order requiring the ISP to disclose the identity of “John Doe”“.

Yes, that makes sense. We can’t coerce ISPs into giving them personal user info, so we’ll first just sue no one in particular, then we’ll get court orders for these yet undetermined people, and then the ISP will give us all the data we need to sue their pants off. Talk about gaping loopholes in the law. I sincerely hope that these lawsuits will soon be an ugly memory of the past, never to be repeated again.

5. Microsoft/Yahoo/AOL merger

Yes, it’s the biggest IT news of the year. And no, it didn’t actually happen. So, us IT bloggers and journalists are forever bound to write about it without any real news happening, a job not entirely unlike that of Sisyphus. Trust me, if I never read another story about Microsoft buying Yahoo or merging with AOL, or any similar combination, it’ll be too soon.

And, you know what? Every young interesting Web startup brings more good to the world than the possible mating of these tired dinosaurs probably ever will. Everyone pretty much agrees that no option is good for any company, but this is what big business comes down to today: eat or be eaten, even if whatever you’re eating tastes like crap.

6. Apple rumors

Apple holds several yearly conferences in which they announce new products and services. Due to their extreme secrecy, it’s pretty much safe to assume that no one will be sure of what any new product will exactly be like until it’s officially out. Apple’s products are almost always very exciting, so one would expect that they will spark rumors several days or weeks before these events, right? Right. Nothing wrong with it so far.

But not every god damn day! The insane frequency of Apple-related rumors and their signal to noise ratio makes it totally useless for anyone to follow any of it except the hardcore Mac fans! And yet, every slightest detail visible in (obviously fake) “spy shots” of Macbooks and iPhones is analyzed to the latest detail and reported upon ad nauseam. Sometimes I wish other companies were as cool as Apple so we’d at least get a little variety here.

Have any particular tech topics you’re sick of? Please, share them in the comments!

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