Inform Technologies Bows News Aggregator

Startup company Inform Technologies is expected today to unveil a beta version of its Web-based news aggregation platform. The program attempts to combine a variety of tools--aggregation, browsing, and research--that consumers use to read daily headlines, in a form that's accessible for users who aren't necessarily tech experts.

Inform's engine culls content from news sources around the Internet--including mainstream media outlets and blogs--and breaks down the topics discussed in each article into categories such as people, places, industries, and products. Then, using a mathematical algorithm, the engine clusters articles into like-topics and stores the information in a large database. So, if a user wants to search for articles that discuss both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the search can be easily constructed, and the results are returned relatively quickly, because the appropriate data is already compiled and stored in Inform's database.

"We strip out all the HTML from all those pages, join the text into one string, and then we put it through an engine that we've put together. It crunches that content down to an essence or a mass, so we can describe it mathematically," said Inform CEO Neal Goldman. "What you end up with is a database that is universal across all the content."

At the top of each article is a set of pull-down menus, each with different topics that the articles discuss, allowing users quick access to searches for articles about the same topics.

When users find the articles they're looking for, Inform renders them in a browser window, allowing the publisher's ads to be seen. Inform itself is also ad-supported on the areas of its site that don't display content. Goldman said the ads on the site will eventually incorporate behavioral targeting, based on the interests the users express in their news-gathering habits.

The beta service is free, but Goldman said that a premium offering may be in the works, which could construct customized news pages based on the users' preferences.

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