A special issue of Lingvisticae Investigationes “Named Entities: Recognition, classification and use” is expected to be available in September 2007. It reflects well some of the most recent research directions:
The issue also presents a survey of the domain.
For YooName early enthusiasts, we’ve open a CafePress shop.
The first buzz machine I remember is Intelliseek BlogPulse (now Nielsen BuzzMetrics’ BlogPulse). A “buzz machine” gathers daily news and ranks people and/or other entities according to their popularity. The rise of this kind of technology was clearly due to the availability of blog and newspaper RSS feeds, providing direct access to massive daily textual content. A “buzz machine” can also be built from a search engine query log, from which the most frequent people queries define key people.
Nowadays, there are lot of buzz machines. The question is “who’s hot today?” Interestingly, there is no clear consensus:
Blog/news-based buzz machines:
Nielsen BuzzMetrics’ BlogPulse: Harry Potter, Michael Moore, President Bush, Gordon Brown, Avril Lavigne.
pmeme (in the tech news): Piper Jaffray, Gene Munster, Steve Jobs, Ed Colligan, Vanessa Fox.
TextBlg: Jesus Christ, Lucius Malfoy, Lord Voldemort, Colonel Sheppard, Don Imus.
Query log-based buzz machines:
Google Hot Trends: Knute Rockne, George Gipp, Cristie Kerr, Ernie Harwell, Natalie Gulbis.
Yahoo Buzz Index: Chris Benoit, Serena Williams, Paris Hilton, Bryce Dallas Howard, Beyonce Knowles.
AOL Hot Searches: Ann Coulter, Nancy Grace, Liz Claiborne, John Stamos, Christina Ricci.
Technorati popular searches: Noelia, Ron Paul, Frank Rich, Paris Hilton.
Note the nonexistent intersections, apart from the ubiquitous Paris Hilton.
YooName - named entity recognition 