Over three years in the making we’re finally releasing Assista (if you are not sure what Assista is, see this link). This release is not of a finished product (will it ever be?) but of what we have done so far. Our main objectives for this release are three-folds:

1. Results Speed: When searching for keywords, topics we wanted to be able to show results in less then five seconds. Google, Yahoo, MSN set user’s expectations high when it comes to speed and if we are going to make it, speed must be addressed.

2. Question Expansion Results Speed: Same as above. Speed is an important issue, we struggled with it for over a year, not so because we didn’t know what to do but because unlike the big search engines, we do not have their budgets, infrastructure.

3. Design: After many tries we decided to stick with basics. Design is not our forte so we rather focus on navigation, ease of use.

We still have allot to do, things like adding privacy policy, about us page, clearing some issues on front page (for example, some links in “recent searches” are to non existing results), fixing the sub-topics results, and more. We’re aware of it, we’ll work on it. At the moment we set a goal to go live before end of year and even though we can delay it (that’s the easiest thing to do in life) we rather put it out, get some real feedback, and improve as we go along.

Thanks goes to our world class programming team, Hitfarm’s Kevin Ham and Colin Yu, our good friend Chris Hartnett, “Hardware guy” Michael Wiesman, Recall Media Group’s Darren Cleveland, and the hundreds of others who believed in us over the years. It is that faith you give us that keeps us moving forward.

Feedback as always is most welcome, highly appreciated!

Cheers

Sahar Sarid and Jeff Bhavnanie
Founders, Assista.com

Read the complete post at http://www.conceptualist.com/fedclick.php?ref=http://www.conceptualist.com/2007/12/30/assista-goes-live-what-to-expect/&id=1259