Think of NewsMaps.com as a visual Table of Contents. It shows you what information is available, but links you directly to the originating site to read the article or posting. You always see the original document, exactly the way the publisher intended.

NewsMaps.com is operated by Cartia, Inc. and is powered by Cartia's ThemeScape technology. You can learn more about Cartia at www.cartia.com.

How the Technology Works

The concept of NewsMaps is simple: the greater the similarity between any two documents, the closer together they appear on the map. Concentrations of documents about a similar topic literally "pile up" to form peaks, and the distance between peaks shows how closely the topics are related. For example, a map of news articles about technology might have peaks labeled "Internet" and "E-Commerce" in close proximity, but relatively distant from a peak labeled "Keyboards."

While the concept is simple, the technology that makes all this possible is extremely sophisticated. The underlying software, ThemeScape, uses advanced algorithms to examine and extract informational content from unstructured text such as news articles and newsgroup posts. Topic recognition is completely automatic and content independent; the software is able to organize virtually any collection of unstructured documents, from technical manuals to movie reviews.

To accurately determine content, the algorithms look beyond individual words and focus on the context created by the surrounding text. For example, the text surrounding the term "board" would identify whether its usage referred to lumber, an executive team, or ships at sea. The software automatically recognizes these nuances and organizes the documents accordingly.

The Information Landscape

The results of this visual organization fundamentally change the way we look at information. Instead of reading, you actually see information and absorb it at an astounding rate. Within seconds, you know what topics dominate the news and how they relate to each other. You can instantly tell which search results are most relevant to what you want to know. And when you find a topic of interest, every document relating to it is in close proximity.

A NewsMap shows you hundreds - or thousands - of documents at once, extracted from different sites, and fully organized by content. To put this power in perspective, consider the next best alternative - reading it all yourself.

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