

Khan Academy + Instant Search = Khan Instant - bjacobso
http://www.khaninstant.com/

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aik
Great interface, however: I don't find myself trusting the results when it
populates differently depending on how quickly I type a word. Typing
"chemistry" at different rates gives different results, including some results
that aren't related to chemistry (such as banking). By the way I type
generally between 70-140+wpm depending on the word.

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bjacobso
Thanks for the feedback! I'm "threading" the search to not block the browser,
maybe typing fast can interfere with correctly restarting the search. I will
investigate!

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empire29
Cool in concept, but your search algorithm leaves something to be desired.

Your app reminded me I wanted to watch Khan's videos on IPOs, so I type in:
IPO ... about half way down the list of ~50 results are the videos I wanted to
watch (An IPO, More on IPOs).. I actually had to do a Ctrl-F to find them in
the result list.

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empire29
bjacobso, what search utility are you using on the backend? -- Are you using
YouTube search? \- Or are you building your own index using
Sphinx,Solr/Lucene,etc. \- Or some combination of?

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bjacobso
It is actually all being done client side. I download a video list in json and
create a client side document store. I figured searching 1500 items wasn't
worth doing a server roundtrip. I then just search youtube for the title of
the video they choose.

I use quicksilver.js to match items. I probably need to increase the score
threshold to ensure more accurate results.

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mambodog
I was just thinking today that they (Khan Academy) should add an instant
search instead of the wall of links they have currently. For a user such as
one of us, the wall of links is ideal for a CTRL-F _find_ to quickly highlight
lessons on, say, vectors, but for non-technical users, this solution may not
come to mind.

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ewams
Thank you very much. I have been looking for a better search for KA and
instant results are a plus.

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tdupree
Nicely done! It would be nice if you would allow the user to fullscreen the
videos. I think adding "allowFullScreen: true" to your params object for your
js embed would add this functionality.

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InfinityX0
Can I get Instant Instant? Where I want to search for a general topic
generally and by typing in something, the instant search instant returns the
best instant search engine?

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sovok
[http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=instant+search+something](http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=instant+search+something)

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rokamic
Genius. Yep, I said it. But the initial video showed confused me when I did a
new search and the video stayed the same. Shouldn't the most relevant video
load instantly?

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bjacobso
I would agree, it is probably confusing initially. It would make sense to
follow the heuristics of other instant search sites. However, when I
experimented with auto updating the video it just didn't "feel" right. For
some reason I think a user selection model is a better UX in this case.

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rokamic
I think this is a great opportunity to do some A/B experimenting. You could
start a new thread.

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DanielRibeiro
Minor bug: "searching" for startup yields two of the same video, instead of
the two parts of Khan's presentation on founder equity.

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bjacobso
Thanks for the feedback!

Currently, it only "searches" the title of the video and the playlist name. If
I had transcripts of the videos (they may exist somewhere?) then it could be
WAY more relevant.

Some videos show up twice because the same video exists in two different
playlists. I'll fix it.

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dinkumthinkum
Try "linear algebra," it doesn't really yield good results.

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gojomo
Great idea. May want to turn off browser's own 'autocomplete' as its popup
results obscure the top of those in your page.

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bjacobso
Excellent suggestion, done. Thanks!

