New Products – Opencola’s Personal Knowledge Manager

[JackSpratts]

Paula J. Hane

November 18, 2002 — At the Internet Librarian conference earlier this month, one of the exhibitors, Opencola, Ltd., announced the release of Opencola PRO 1.0. The company says it is the first personal knowledge manager that allows users to improve knowledge by automating the collection of relevant information from a variety of sources, including news sites, multiple search engines, blogs, and other peers’ publicly shared documents. The desktop application is targeted to individual knowledge workers. In addition, the company plans to introduce Opencola ENTERPRISE next year.

Opencola has selected seven search engines that can be searched with a single query: Google, AltaVista, Yahoo!, AllTheWeb, NorthernLight, Teoma, and Dmoz. Users can add their own news sources or blog sites to include in the search and can also choose to search more than 3,000 news sources provided by Moreover. A folder is automatically created for each search.

Opencola PRO customers may access other registered users on the global Opencola Knowledge Network. Opencola analyzes similarities between peers on the Knowledge Network and can suggest a user in search results as a “relevant peer.” Opencola allows customers to set permissions for every item in every folder residing within Opencola. Users can browse folders designated as “shared” and download files.

Dan Keldsen, an analyst with the Delphi Group, said the initial release for individuals is merely a foot in the door to the enterprise market. He feels that Opencola’s product provides a significant demonstration of real business uses for a range of technology, namely peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing, the “global grid,” instant messaging (IM), semantic relevance, personalization, and agents.
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb021118-2.htm

- js.