Trying to find end-runs around Google

PHOENIX--Next up at Demo: a bunch of search technologies.

Transparensee allows search of structured data, as opposed to Google, which is known for text search (except for Froogle). The system can be programmed with the meaning behind data fields, so, for example, if you're searching for "four-bedroom house," you might also see three- and five-bedroom houses. Sliders at the top of a search result let the user indicate which fields are important to match, and which can be matched more loosely. This is a solution for content and commerce sites.

Nexidia searches audio data, like podcasts. If you are looking for commentary on a topic or person, you just type in the term, and you can find the audio clip queued up to where the term is mentioned. This is incredibly cool--It's like , but for audio. I have to check this out in the Demo Pavilion.

Kosmix automatically categorizes Web pages, like Yahoo does, but without requiring an army of people to do so. In the demo, the founders showed how search results for "prostate cancer" are broken out into categories like "Basic information" and "Expert Information: Journals." This makes it much easier to vet the relevance and sources in a search result. Like other companies here, Kosmix is pitching its technology not as a consumer search portal, but rather as a technology that other Web publishers can adopt.