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Information overload? Tech firms want to help
New services offer a hand wading through sea of information online
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PHOENIX - Despite powerful search engines, the vast and rising sea of information on the Internet often makes users feel like they're stuck alone in a rowboat when it comes to fishing out exactly what they need.
Even after someone finds an answer, the next person with the same question must start all over again. Sometimes, information is locked away inside a photo or other media file that's largely inaccessible to search engines that scour the Internet for text.
The problem with corralling results from today's search engines was a major theme at this week's DEMO tech conference, where nearly 70 companies were given six minutes each to show off their up-and-coming products.
"There's a belief that whatever it is I'm looking for is out there, but I have a really difficult time finding it," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of the elite show. "Search algorithms alone are falling short in being able to provide real context around information."
A startup named Plum unveiled a service that lets users group Web pages, e-mail, music, pictures and files from their desktop computers into online collections that can be kept private or made public for others to find.
Web pages can be added to a Plum collection by clicking on a browser toolbar button, which calls up a box for choosing a picture, adding a description and creating an identifying tag. Content on the PC, such as a photo, can be added by clicking in a small program that imports files from a variety of applications.
Public collections are analyzed by the service and others that might be of interest are displayed, said Plum co-founder Hans Peter Brondmo. Eventually, collection pages will contain relevant ads.
"It gets more and more interesting with the more users you have in it," he said. "We take a look at all this information that others are putting into their collections and we match your information with it."
The secret sauce is an algorithm that analyzes and tries to match content — not unlike how a shopping site makes product recommendations based on previous purchases.
A Plum page created by Brondmo's wife, for instance, displayed links to collections on party planning and cooking gadgets. Both topics are mentioned in her pages.
Designed to be totally open and easily editable, Plum collections can be e-mailed to other users and even syndicated as an online "RSS" feed. If you subscribe to someone else's collection, you can immediately see when content is modified or added.
Plum is undergoing private testing, and the company has not yet announced a date for public availability.
It's hardly the only company seeking to tap the collective intelligence of computer users. Others — such as the site del.icio.us, recently acquired by Yahoo Inc. — offer tools for aggregating and sharing bookmarks and other content online, though not quite to the extent that Plum promises.
"Our goal at Plum is to make collecting and sharing anything online as quick and easy as using e-mail," Brondmo said.
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