Ann Hunt is describing Primal‘s ability to let people create what she calls “idiosyncratic ontologies.” It wants to let two people have differing tags and ontologies about the same objects, and see the shared and social point of view. From the Primal site: “The Primal Semantics API helps users find material of interest in a larger collection of information. It organizes responses into hierarchies of concepts, with broad topics leading to more specific ones.” Ann stresses that it’s cool to bring together individual points of view and semantic networks.

Bob Smith of ISYS Search Software says that most people don’t find what they’re looking for on Google the first time they search. Google is an ad company, not a search company, so “you shouldn’t buy your next search service from an ad company.” Today, we need search everywhere, for everything. Bob then pitches us on Isys.

Brian Cheek of TigerLogic says he’s in the search enhancement business. Links make problems for searches, he says. Google instant preview helps a little, he says, if it’s for a site you’ve been to already. He focuses on YoLink, which provides more intelligent searching and browsing within particular domains. It’s a browser add-on that’s available for incorporation into apps by developers. YoLink mines links, extracting content from them based on your key terms. You can check-of the returns of interest and publish them directly into a Google Doc or tweet them. You can explore a set of links without having to browse to each of them.

Categories: misc dw