OLONGAPO CITY--How do you get an answer? By asking a question, of course.

But until a few years back, one searching on the Internet--where an average of 1.5 million websites are created a day--had only to rely on keyword matching and boolean logic (algebraic system with two bases, used in computer processing) to find answers.

That was before Ask Jeeves came along.

The name Jeeves reminds us of a cartoon character butler who had answers for everything.

The aim of research and development of new technology in the field of information technology now is "humanizing the Internet, making the Internet more approachable, more usable to I think like my mother who knows nothing about computers," David Warthen, chief technical officer and co-founder of Ask Jeeves, told students of Comteq Computer College here.

Warthen, a guru in the fast developing information technology industry, visited the city recently and gave computer students a glimpse of what could be the future of the Internet.

Ask Jeeves allows users to search for data in the Internet using plain English language. This feature makes the search more defined and user-friendly. Indeed, why type "c-o-m-p-a-c-t d-i-s-k" when trying to find out how CDs work, when Ask Jeeves can take your queries in whole question form like, "How do compact disks work?"

In 1995, search engines like Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos and Infoseek were already on the Internet. Before these search engines came along, browsing the Internet used to take a lot of time and many errors, resulting in having to define or narrow your field of search one word (category) at a time.

Years ago, if one wanted to learn when the first Ford Model-T was produced, one had to type in "cars," then narrow the search to "vintage" or "classic cars," then to manufacturer, country of origin, etc.

Otherwise, the data one would get would be overwhelmingly huge, and of absolutely no use in answering the query. The answer is there, of course, if you could find which one it is.

"Really, the experience with those services did not really add up to what was being presented as the future of the Internet," Warthen said. "The sheer mass of data available on the Internet was making traditional search methods less and less effective."

Warthen and his former employer, Garrett Gruener, smelled an opportunity.

"We decided to pursue a better way of searching for information in the Internet. So the scheme we devised was a question-and-answer service where you ask a question in plain English and the system will attempt to answer with questions that the systems knows the answer to," he said.

Their concept entailed having to create a huge knowledge base encoded by what they call their "knowledge people," basically anticipating the most frequently asked questions on any subject under the sun.

From a base of having only answers to 30,000 questions, they now boast of answers to over 7 million questions. And the list is growing at a fast rate since they now claim over 3 million hits on their website a day.

Beginning with only 3,000 questions a day in its first month of operations, Ask Jeeves answered nearly 2 million questions a day in mid-1999.

Warthen said the company now receives as many as 3 million inquiries a day.

How is it done?

This is the answer given by the askjeeves.com website:

First, Ask Jeeves attempts to understand the precise nature of the question by using a natural language processing technology to determine both the meaning of the words (semantic processing) and the meaning in grammar (syntactic processing).

Then Ask Jeeves' answer processing engine provides the question template response--that's the list of questions users see after they ask Jeeves a question.

When the user clicks on a response, the answer processing engine retrieves the answer template that contains links to answer locations.

Finally, Ask Jeeves' database links to more than 7 million answers that contain information about the most frequently asked questions on the Internet and provides a selection of most probable correct answers.

The company has two advertiser-supported, free websites. These are Ask Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com or www.ask.com) and Ask Jeeves for Kids (www.ajkids.com), a website designed and edited for children.

In 1997, the company launched the "Powered by Jeeves" licensing program, which licenses the technology designed to provide corporate websites with a "smart" service agent interface. The company easily got as its clients industry giants Compaq Computer, Dell, Network Solutions, IOmega, BellSouth Corp. and Microsoft, to name a few.

After all, companies employing thousands of people to man 24-hour technical support hotlines stand to save a huge amount with the adoption of this technology.

Lightning struck twice for Warthen who said he was fortunate to have finished college during the exciting period of the PC revolution in the 1980s and to have started Ask Jeeves during the Internet revolution of the 1990s.

In an inspirational speech before a gathering of computer students here, Warthen described cyberspace as "the new frontier and that the excitement and activities in cyberspace have not shown signs of slowing down."

He advised students to excel as there are "abundant opportunities out there for innovation and for doing things smarter and making supply chains more efficient."

He said his company has just established an office in the United Kingdom and plans are under way to adopt the technology to various markets and languages in other parts of the world.

The founder of Ask Jeeves credits the success of their venture to a great team of people, persistence, perseverance and belief in one's self.

Who would argue with success? The innovation they have introduced proved to be very rewarding both to Warthen and Gruener, his cofounder and former employer.

From a modest investment of $250,000, four employees and a "roach-infested office" in California in 1996, Ask Jeeves has grown to 400 employees and a book value of $3 billion in less than four years.