Primal Fusion is using semantic technology to help you with "thought networking." What that means, apparently, is that it helps you gather relevant materials from across the internet in order to put together a term paper or research project.
The company is showing its offering at the DEMO conference this week. Here's how it works: You enter a topic such as "social networking." Then it presents you with a series of words that are contextually relevant to that topic. The words are in the shape of a tag cloud, where the words are bigger if they're more relevant and smaller if they're less so. When you click on a word, it brings up a series of articles or other words that are relevant.
Peter Sweeney, founder of the Waterloo, Canada-based company, started on the technology 10 years ago and launched the company four years ago. The company has raised $5 million in both venture capital and debt funding to date and is looking for a $16-million round. It has 32 employees. Competitors include Metaweb Technologies, Radar Networks and Siri.
"It's a platform for bringing your thinking online," he said. "Make the Internet work for you."
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