Lab works on program that emphasizes context in Web searches

Many viewers were probably impressed when a character on "Star Trek" asked a computer for a cup of tea and it was produced immediately. Not Kristian Hammond. "I wondered why he had to ask," said Hammond, co-director of Northwestern University's intelligent-information computer lab. "A truly intelligent machine would anticipate that its operator wanted tea." That's the kind of smarts that Hammond and his colleagues put in computers — machines ready to answer questions you haven't yet formed... More...