SBIR Phase I: The Natural Finder

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project addresses the problem of finding and analyzing information within emails and files. This problem is particularly felt by knowledge professionals and enterprises that want to leverage growing email archives for business or discovery. A new user interface that works with existing search engines and databases, and enables the user to search email more naturally will be investigated. The approach enables the user to: search by who-when-what, receive real time feedback while constructing a query, select which results to keep or discard from the view, and merge items from different queries. Email is a primary conduit for business communications and document transmission: an increasing number of professionals and enterprises retain email instead of deleting it, either to build new knowledge or for regulatory compliance. Providing superior user interfaces to email search will significantly enhance the ability of professionals and enterprises to successfully find information, reduce time spent in searches, increase the ability to analyze and discover archives, build new knowledge and business, and cut costs. If successful, the technology holds the promise to apply to other search problems databases, social networks, blogs, and the web as well. This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).