The New York Times" reportsĘ that Israeli start-up Quigo Technologies Inc. is posedng a growing challenge to Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) in the competition for contextual advertising business.
Quigo was co-founded in 2000 by CEO Yaron Galai and Oded Otzhak. It was financed by private investors after Israeli venture capital funds refused to invest in it. In 2003, it raised $12 million, from GlenRock Israel, Highland Capital Partners, and the Disney Corporation fund Steamboat Ventures. Quigo develops marketing technologies for content-sensitive focused search engines. The company's solutions create automatic links and enables advertisers to retrieve relevant web-based content.
Telephone software claims it can tell if you're lying
Knowing if someone's lying to you by simply listening on the phone is the promise of a software that can be downloaded, for free, on the internet.
To run the KishKish Lie Detector, you have to be using the internet-telephone service Skype which is free only some of the time.
In a very simple red light/green light display, the program claims to uncover potential un-truths using voice stress analysis."There are eight emotions in the human body, only one a polygraph examiner is concerned with, it's fear." Bruce White invented the Axciton Sensor Box, one of four generally-accepted polygraph machines. The box monitors breathing, pulse, blood pressure and what's called GSR, the electrical resistance of the skin. It does not monitor the voice. Moreover, polygraph tests have long pauses between questions since the subject's tell-tale reaction can be several seconds after his or her answer. "Free-flowing conversation is not suited to polygraph or voice-stress or any other methodology," White adds.
In the two decades John Swartz has been a polygraph examiner, he says accuracy has reached almost 99-percent. That's not so with the technology underlying the KishKish program. "Most of the studies I've seen on voice-stress analyzers place its accuracy at no greater than chance, so that's just 50-50," Swartz said.
So, when that red light glows, it could be a lie or it could be the gospel truth.
For its part, KishKish says its lie detector program is for entertainment purposes only. The Israeli company says it may soon charge for the software, but for now, it's free.