内容简介：
【简介】 FAST Search is from Fast Search & Transfer ASA.
Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST) was formally established on July 16, 1997. FAST performs research and development out of its Oslo, Norway, headquarters and in the R&D subdivision placed in Trondheim, Norway. FAST has established a US subsidiary, Fast Search & Transfer Inc., which is responsible for world-wide sales and marketing, as well as customer support, engineering, and operation of the FAST Internet search engines. In addition, FAST owns a UK based content provider, FAST Web Media Ltd. FAST has more than 70 employees and 20 associated scientists from collaborating partners and subcontractors in Europe and the US. A majority of the employees in R&D holds or is pursuing a Ph.D. degree within the fields of interest.
The FAST shares are traded on the OTC market in Oslo.
Technological challenges
The massive growth of information made available through intranets, extranets and the Internet requires efficient ways of identifying and retrieving information. Furthermore, when the information is found downloading is slow. According to recent user surveys, two of the most important challenges related to the Internet are:
1. The desired information is difficult to find.
2. The downloading of information, especially images, is slow.
FAST aims at making the Internet more user friendly by making the search for information easier, faster, and more precise, and by speeding up the information downloading. FAST has two basic technologies:
Fast and flexible text and database search Fast and efficient image and video transfer Business Objectives
FAST shall provide:
1. The most advanced search engines with Unique speed and scalability Unsurpassed functionality Fully automated Superior performance-cost efficiency 2. The fastest transmission of image and video with Superior speed-quality trade-off Cross-platform compatibility
FAST Strengths
Highly qualified personnel
Majority of employees hold a Ph.D. degree Tight connections to major research centers Integration of state-of-the-art algorithms Reduced fixed cost Time to market Flexibility
Tailoring to various applications
What is All the Web, All the Time ? All the Web, All the Time is the trademark for FAST's Web search engine, http://alltheweb.com. According to the latest NEC article in Nature, the World Wide Web by mid 1999 contains about 800 million documents, but in our experience with the FAST Web Crawler, 40% of these are duplicates. None of the big Web search engine have so far been able to make more than 160 million documents searchable. In May 1999, FAST announced with Dell a catalogue size of 80 million documents. August 2, 1999, more than 200 million documents were made searchable, and it will hereafter continue to grow with the Web to 1 billion documents and beyond. Thus, with FAST Web Search you will be able to search All the Web, All the Time.
