Given the glut of internet-connected devices (phones, tablets, smart fridges) we have at our fingertips, surfing the web has never been easier.
Recalling just what the hell we were surfing for, however, is becoming increasingly difficult.
To fix that issue without requiring us to, like, remember stuff, Napster cofounder Jordan Ritter’s startup Atlas Informatics has built the mother of all search tools. Modeled on the way we use our minds to remember details, the Recall search application constantly runs in the background and stores everything you see and click in a secure cloud.
When you use the app to look for something, it displays screenshots of everything you’ve seen (texts, tweets, Facebook posts) in thumbnail images that are grouped in “amoeba-like” clusters by type and made larger or smaller by how relevant Recall thinks the items are to your search. That display invokes the “associative nature of memory” — i.e., the way recalling one thing leads to remembering another.
“We build a latticework of memories based on concurrence, location, people, large pillars in our lives,” Holloway told Fast Company. “Human memory can be quite infinite, and we didn’t want to prescribe a structure for how you should remember things.”
If you’re curious, Atlas Recall is in open beta and can be downloaded for free for Macs and PCs.
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