The Coming Age of the Context Engine

People talk a lot about information overload, but I think the worst problem we have in information management today is memory overload -- the inability of the human brain to retain all the important information we run into in our careers.  There's more stuff we need to remember than you can possibly hold in your head.  The more successful you are, the more information you need to remember -- and the worse the problem becomes.

I think what we need is a context engine, an app that helps you recall the context around any bit of information in your life.  Unlike a search engine, a context engine indexes just the information in your life, and supplements your own memory.  "How do I know this person?"  "What's the agenda for my next meeting?"  "Who sent me that article last year, and where the heck is the article?"  A context engine will help you answer these questions quickly, anytime and anywhere you need the information. 

The product that I'm working on, Zekira, is a first generation context engine.  In this post I'll discuss the need for a context engine, how it would work, and our status with Zekira.  I'll also give some information on how you can help, if you're interested.


The trouble with information overload

Information overload is a hot topic with a long history.  The term was coined in the 1960s, and popularized in 1970 by Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock, according to an excellent article in Wikipedia (link).  But the idea goes back further.  Xerox implies that it invented information sharing through the development of the photocopier in the mid-1900s (link), And there have apparently been complaints about too much information for as long as we've had writing.  The Bible complains about the proliferation of books, the Romans worried about it, and so did the ancient Chinese.  Once Gutenberg got going with movable type, the complaints increased (link).

Information overload is a popular subject online.  The Wall Street Journal said Google returned 2.92 million hits for it in 2009; the same search today returns 3.76 million, an increase of about 770 references per day.

Prominent authorities opinig on the hazards of information overload include the New York Times (link), Wired (link), and none other than the big consultancy McKinsey, which says it is "killing productivity...and making us unhappy" (link).

The critics of information overload complain that it bombards people with so much data that they are stunned into stupidity.  They become low-grade data zombies, incapable of making intelligent decisions.

The answer, we're told, is to take in less information.  The experts tell us to delete e-mails and limit our exposure to information online so that we can reserve time for thinking deep thoughts and forming long-term memories.

Okay.  It makes sense that we should set aside time to think.  But I believe distraction isn't a function of how much information you bring in, it's a function of how much self-discipline you lack.  There's always something you can distract yourself with; if it's not e-mail it'll be Angry Birds.  You could have the same problem if you had five e-mails a day or five hundred.

I think blaming "information overload" for the problem of distracted people is like blaming "water overload" for the problem of drowning.  The fact is, modern society runs on the flow of information.  The more information you can handle, the more productive you'll be, and the further you'll go in your career.  Given the way the economy works, telling people to limit their information flow is a little like telling them to make themselves stupid.  Instead, I think, we should be increasing our ability to manage that information, so we can be more productive.


The real problem is memory overload

Once you step back from demonizing information itself, it's easier to identify the problems that we have in dealing with so much information.  I think the biggest problem in information management today is the limitation of human memory. 

Think about how you remember things.  It's usually through associations -- I saw it in the newspaper when I was at that cafe, I read it in that article on The Register while I was riding the bus, etc.  When people have more information to remember than their brains can hold onto, those chains of association start to break down.  You remember the fact that you once knew something, but can't recall the information itself.

As I talk with busy knowledge workers -- the type of people who manage the most information -- I hear stories about half-remembered information all the time.  You'll see a person and know that you've met them, but can't recall the details about how you know them or what you discussed with them.  Or a topic will come up and you'll remember that you read something important about it, but you won't recall where you saw it or how you could find that information again. 

Often you know the information is stored somewhere on a computer or smartphone or website, but you have no way to look for it in the moment you need it.  Even if you remember to look up the information later, it's usually extremely hard to find, and you can't take the time to do it. 

The more successful you become in your career, the more information you have, and the more overloaded your memory gets.  Of course it eventually overflows.  The problem is so ubiquitous that most of us don't even think of it as a problem; it's just a feature of life.  We shrug it off as a "senior moment" and uneasily move on.

But it has nothing to do with age; it's a function of experience.  Take all the information held by a mid-career professional and stuff it into a 20-year-old's head and he or she will have the same problems. 

When you add up all those "senior moments" across all the people they happen to, they constitute a huge loss in productivity among the busiest and most pivotal people in the economy.  The only reason we tolerate this situation is because we assume there's nothing we can do about it. 

But I think we can.  The combination of mobile technology, low-cost computer storage, and web services makes it possible to build what I call a context engine -- an app designed specifically to help you recall the information in your life, and all the context around it.

You'll use a context engine to quickly recall:
    -All the details of your relationship with someone -- how you met them, messages and documents you've exchanged, and meetings you've been in together.
    -The backstory to a meeting, including the messages that led up to it, attendees, notes and pictures you took during the meeting, and followup messages afterward.
    -A tweet or Facebook post or e-mail you saw months ago mentioning a great new restaurant that you want to try.
    -That report sent to you five years ago by some guy you met at a half-remembered conference in Boston.


How the context engine will work

A context engine needs to do three things with your information:  Collect, connect, and communicate.

1. Collect.  To build a map of all your information, the context engine needs to gather it from all the places where your information is stored.  That means, first, scanning the hard drives and other storage devices connected to your personal computer.  E-mails, contacts, and meeting records all need to be extracted from whatever messaging and calendar system you use.  For most mid-career professionals, that means digging into old Microsoft Outlook archives, called PST files.  Other documents -- especially presentations and word processing files -- need to be sucked in as well, along with the most ubiquitous file format in business and academics, the PDF.

But you can't stop with the PC.  The context engine needs to reach out to your web apps, to extract things like gMail messages, tweets, and Facebook posts and contacts.  And the information on your smartphone needs to be included, everything from contacts to text messages to pictures.

This process should be automatic and comprehensive.  Everything should be indexed.  You shouldn't be asked to choose which files you want to remember, because you can't know in advance what you'll need.

2.  Connect.  Once all that information has been collected, it must be organized.  That means indexing it not just by keywords, the way we would for a traditional web search, but by all of its attributes, including date, time, location, type of content, and so on.

This is a key difference between a web search engine and a context engine.  In web searches, we look almost exclusively for keywords, and we use the wisdom of crowds to determine which matches are most important.  That works great for searches of publicly-available content, but it breaks down when searching your personal archive.  You may not remember the right keyword for a document or message, and the wisdom of crowds is much less useful for ranking results, because everyone's context is unique.  Instead, a context engine needs to offer many search paths through the archive, so people can search using whatever bits of information they do remember about a topic.

The context engine should also present information to you in a way that lets you jump between bits of related data.  Say you're looking for the record of a lunch meeting.  You might be looking for it because you want to find the name of the person you met with, or some messages you exchanged with that person.  Or maybe you just want the name of the restaurant so you can eat there again.  All of that information needs to be cued up so you can jump to it easily.  Again, the goal is to help you re-create those half-remembered chains of association. 

Many of the products that in the past have tried to organize personal information (such as Google Desktop) have mimicked the keyword-centric searching we do on the web.  Web search is so ubiquitous that we're all a bit like the man with the proverbial hammer -- every problem looks like a nail.  But I think personal context requires a radically different structure to the database and UI.  It's not about searching for things, it's about navigating through your context.

3.  Communicate.  You don't know when you'll need to remember something, so the context engine needs to be available on your mobile devices.  In particular, I think a context engine is a killer app for tablets in business.  Imagine always having your entire information history at your fingertips in every meeting and every conversation.  How much more productive could you be if you had a perfect memory all day long?

I can't tell you how many people in Silicon Valley have told me sheepishly that they don't know what to do with their iPads at work.  They generally love them at home, where they access entertainment and informational content.  But at the office, particularly in meetings, they tend to turn into tools for covertly checking messages and browsing when the meeting gets slow.  Please don't misunderstand, I know there are many things you can do with an iPad.  But I'm reporting what I hear from a lot of iPad users.

Far be it from me to judge the way others fill their time, but I think the context engine would give you a good business reason to carry your tablet all day.

That means the database needs to be hosted in the cloud, which creates all sorts of important security challenges.  Having your extended memory hacked is utterly unacceptable.


Building the context engine

As you know if you've been following my earlier updates, the startup that I'm working on, Zekira, is building a context engine.  The company consists of four engineers plus myself, and we've been working on it for more than a year.  Zekira is the fulfillment of a dream for us.  One of us, Rudi Diezmann, has been working on personal search products since the 1980s.  Others of us first thought about this problem when we were working at Palm almost ten years ago.  We were looking at user problems a PDA or smartphone could solve, beyond helping you manage your calendar and contacts.  There was a group of customers who responded very strongly to any product that could help them recall information and the context around it.

But only recently have mobile computers and wireless networks become powerful enough to let you build a full-function context engine. 

The first version of Zekira is in early beta.  It runs on Macs and PCs, and right now it indexes information found on your computer and any storage attached to it.  Our goal is to take Zekira mobile, and to add web data sources, as soon as possible.  But we did the first version on personal computers so we could get started testing the database and search capability.  Besides, there are a lot of people with old Outlook and Office archives who would be happy to turn a context engine loose on them.

Zekira gives you a little search window that you can leave up on the screen, or minimize: 

After you do a search, your results appear in this window:

 The four stacks in the center show you all the items that matched your current search.  In this case, we're seeing things related to Tom Shannon, including documents that he wrote or that mention his name, messages you've exchanged with him, and his contact record.  Click on any of those items and you'll see information related to them.

The tabs on the left are filters that let you narrow the search.  Currently they let you search by time/date (the filter shown), name, word, document type, and folder: 

 You can combine multiple filters to do complex layered searches.  The filters are extensible, and we plan to add additional search tools in the future.

We're doing a crowdfunding campaign for Zekira on the funding website Indiegogo.  If you don't know how crowdfunding works, people can make small financial contributions to a project and receive benefits in return, such as a discounted copy of the program when it's finished.  Supporters of Zekira can also get access to the beta version of the program, and listing as a sponsor in the about box of the finished app. 

Corporate sponsors of Zekira can get advertising here on Mobile Opportunity, a unique offer since I don't generally accept ads (except for one tiny Google ad that gets me access to Google's excellent traffic monitoring tools).  The advertising sponsorship offer is a great way for a company that has a little bit of advertising budget left at the end of the quarter to help itself, and also help support a great product.  The ad offer is limited to three companies, and is first-come, first served.

If you'd like to learn more about Zekira, you can visit our crowdfunding site here, and our website here.  And here's a video of Zekira in action:



If you have feedback and suggestions for Zekira, I'd welcome your comments.  And if you like the idea, please help spread the word about our crowdfunding campaign.  The more support we get, the faster we can move on the project.

No matter what you think of Zekira, I hope you'll agree that the time is right for a context engine.  With that and an info pad, I'd be one very happy camper.

The Info Pad Creeps Closer

It's hard to believe that it's been four years since I first wrote about the idea of an info pad.  I thought for sure we'd have one by now, but to my immense frustration it's still not here.  We're gradually getting closer, though, so I think this would be a good time to revisit the idea.

As I explained in my original post on the subject (link), the info pad is a small tablet computer designed not for consuming content but for managing the information needs of a knowledge worker.  It's a business tool, not an entertainment device.  It has a stylus, so you can take notes and sketch on it, but it also acts as an extended memory, letting you access your old files, messages, contacts, and other important documents.

Mike Rohde drew a picture that captured the idea well (link):



For people who work with huge amounts of information, the info pad is a Holy Grail device.  It's the extended memory that captures what you're doing during the day, and lets you easily recall anything you need to know, whenever you need it. 

We studied the info pad idea when I worked at Palm.  There was a big audience for it, very distinct from the people who buy mobile devices for entertainment or communication.   Unfortunately, Palm got into financial trouble before we could do anything about it.  Since then I've tried twice to pull together a startup to build one.  The result was always the same: many people loved the idea (I can't tell you how many venture capitalists wanted to be beta testers).  But no one wanted to fund it, because hardware startups are viewed as incredibly high risk in Silicon Valley.  I was told to go to the big hardware companies and convince them to build it, but when I tried they were all focused on copying each other rather than creating anything new.

So I settled back and waited, figuring someone would eventually build it.  And I waited.  And waited. 

I'm still waiting today.


Signs of hope

Lately we've started to see some devices that raise my hopes.  The info pad isn't here yet, but I wonder if we're starting to see the first hints of it on the horizon.

The first is the Boogie Board, a tablet device that's literally a replacement for a dry-erase board.  It has a touch-sensitive monochrome screen, so you can write on it with a stylus, finger, or any other object.  Like a dry-erase board, you can't save pages or do much of anything else with them.  So it's not even close to an info pad.  But it currently sells for just $40 on Amazon, showing that basic tablet technologies can get to extremely low prices (link). 




A step up from Boogie Board is NoteSlate (link).  It's a tablet note-taker that works a lot like a piece of paper.  Like Boogie Board, it has a monochrome screen (no grays) and you write on it with a stylus.  Unlike Boogie Board, you'll supposedly be able to save pages, and share them with others via wifi.  The online illustrations of the NoteSlate prototype look nice, although text on its monochrome screen looks a bit blocky (I'd be a lot happier with smaller pixels and grayscale, so you could do some subtle anti-aliasing of lines).



This closeup shows the graininess of the writing in the mockup device.  The right software, and a better screen, can fix those jaggies.

The price will supposedly be $99, although that model may not include wifi.  It's hard to tell exactly what NoteSlate will do because it's not shipping yet, the developer is located in the Czech Republic, and the company's website is written in broken English.  Here's a sample:

Sorry if we were not able to response sooner all the great emails. When we have been preparing year ago all this, about bit weird NoteSlate device, we hoped this kind of exciting story becomes real, real product. We are going to make this thing real, also thanks to you, to produce open-source NoteSlate device and create unique NotesLate handwritten network. For 99$.

You don't have to speak good English to create a great product.  But the fact that the company can't afford to get an English native speaker to edit its website implies that it has very few resources.  That will make it hard to finish the product, let alone get it into retail distribution.  I'm amazed that such a small, early-stage company has managed to get so much press coverage.  Some websites even speculate that the product may be a hoax (link).  I was able to find an interview in Czech with the product's designer, Martin Hasek, and he gives some more details on the plans.  You can read Google's translation here.

NoteSlate has been nominated for an Index award, a design competition based in Denmark.  The online nomination gives more details on the product (link).  Reading between the lines, it looks like Martin is a designer who cooked up the NoteSlate idea.  He's apparently working with Albumteam, a Czech company that sells an electronic photo viewing tablet (link).  And there was a hint that the manufacturing might be done by another Czech company, Jablotron (link).  At this point I'm struggling to interpret auto-translated Czech blog posts, which is not a great way to get information, but that tells you how difficult it is to find hard details on NoteSlate.  (If anyone reads Czech and can give a better translation, please post a comment.)

The bottom line, I think, is that NoteSlate may be real, or may be caught in limbo.  When I was trying to get the info pad idea funded, I toyed with the idea of announcing it, getting people excited, and then using the excitement to get someone to fund it.  That felt too much like a pyramid scheme to me, but it's a possible approach.


High hopes for the Flyer.  There are several other upcoming tablet devices that bear watching, including the mySpark education tablet (link), and the Kno dual-screen device (link).  It's very hard to tell if any of these will actually ship.  But the device that has me the most excited is one that I know exists: the HTC Flyer, a new Android-based tablet computer previewed earlier this month.  The Flyer is a seven-inch Android tablet, very similar in looks to the tablets coming from Samsung and Motorola.  But there's one crucial difference: the Flyer comes with a stylus.

That sounds like a simple change, but actually it's a profound difference.  The iPad and most Android tablets can't tell the difference between a stylus and a finger.  If you try to write on them with a stylus, the screen will also sense the places where your hand touches the screen, and you'll end up with multitouch confusion.  HTC has paid extra for a touch sensor that can distinguish between the stylus and your hand.  Touch it with the stylus and you'll get ink on screen; touch it with your fingers and you can swipe, pinch, or do anything else you'd expect from a touch tablet.

HTC has also added a note-taking application to the tablet, so you can write on the screen during a meeting and save your notes to Evernote.  You can also record sound during a meeting, in a process that reminds me of the LiveScribe pen.

None of this is completely new -- Microsoft has been pushing Tablet PC systems for note-taking for the better part of a decade.  But they were extremely expensive, complex, heavy, and had very short battery life.  If you want an example, check out Asus' new $999 tablet PC, the EP121 (link).  In contrast, the Flyer looks to be the first product that marries the good ergonomics and usability of an Android tablet with reasonable note-taking.

What's missing.  Unfortunately, the Flyer has several very significant drawbacks.  The first and most significant is its price.  There have been several reports that the Flyer will see for about 700 euros in Europe, which is about $950 in the US (link).  That's an outrageous price.  When we studied the info pad idea in the US and Europe, the top price most people were willing to pay was about $499, and the demand sweet spot was $299.  At $950, the Flyer is going to be compared to full-function notebook computers, and it won't come off well in those comparisons.  Next to a notebook, it has very little memory, no keyboard, and few apps.  The price makes it an interesting curiosity for technophiles, not a mainstream product.

Maybe HTC is hoping for a big mobile operator subsidy that will make the Flyer more affordable.  Or maybe it's planning to strip out some features.  The announced version of the Flyer has a 3G cellular radio built into it, which increases its cost.  HTC says a WiFi version will come out later.  That might cut as much as $100 from the parts cost, which could translate to a couple of hundred dollars retail.  But still that would leave the device at $750, which is vastly too expensive.

I am also worried about the marketing of the Flyer.  HTC is positioning it as an ideal device for gaming, browsing, productivity, communication, and just about anything else except making espresso (link).  The message reminds me a lot of the old Palm LifeDrive (link), and we know how that worked out (link).

It's very easy for tech companies to fall into this sort of kitchen sink marketing, because they don't want to give up any possible customers.  But the messages tend to cancel each other out -- if the device is great for gaming and music, it sounds inappropriate for business productivity, and vice versa.  This also leads to bad design decisions.  If you build in graphics acceleration, 3D, HDMI video, dual cameras, and a stylus, the device gets too expensive for any single use.


Would your boss reimburse you for buying this?

It doesn't help that HTC has a clear case of iPad envy.  Their website even echoes some of Apple's iPad language:

Apple:  "A magical and revolutionary product."
HTC:  "HTC Flyer's magic pen transforms anything...Work or play, it's magic for the whole family."

The trouble is that Apple's already cornered the market on people who want a magical tablet experience.  HTC needs to play counterpoint to that, not imitate it.


Where the heck is Baby Bear when we need him?

I feel like Goldilocks.  Papa Bear (Tablet PC and Flyer) is too expensive and too loaded with features.  Mama Bear (Boogie Board and NoteSlate) is too limited.  What I want -- what's required to kick off the info pad revolution -- is a product in the middle on both price and features, optimized just for managing information.  At its current price, the Flyer is destined to sell very poorly.  When that happens, I hope HTC won't cancel the product.  Instead, it should strip out the 3G and the entertainment features, focusing it into a business tool that could sell for less than the magic $499 price point.  If Flyer doesn't survive, maybe NoteSlate or one of the other note-taking tablets will make it to market. I can always hope.

Once we get the right hardware, all we'd need would be the right software to make the info pad a reality.

We don't have the info pad yet, but we're getting closer. I am cautiously hopeful that I won't have to write this post again in another four years.

Reckless speculation about the Apple tablet

One of the easiest ways to embarrass yourself online is by making predictions for the record about an unannounced product. You're layering risk on top of risk -- not only might your predictions be wrong, but the information you're basing them on might be wrong as well.

But it's fun so I'm going to do it anyway.

Assuming that Apple actually announces a tablet product on Wednesday, here are four things to watch for...


What does it do, and who is it for? Aside from being cool, the tablet will need to solve some real-world problems for normal people if it's going to be accepted. In my opinion, there are two potential markets for a tablet, based on market research I've done in the past. One market is as an entertainment/browsing/content device, and one is as a business information-management tool (an info pad, a subject I wrote about here).

The worst thing Apple could do is try to target both markets with one device, in my opinion. The customers are not compatible, and they need a different mix of features. You could end up with a tweener that doesn't really delight any one group (can you say Palm Pre?)

Based on press reports, and friends who have links to Apple, it looks like they're going for the entertainment market. I think that's wise -- it's a natural fit with Apple's relatively young, creative image. It also leverages the infrastructure Apple has already created for the iPod.


Watch the infrastructure. Another problem Apple could solve is a major malfunction in the market for content products (magazines, books, short stories, video, etc). Content creators today have a couple of choices -- give their stuff away online, or pump their materials through a traditional distribution system that absorbs 85% or more of the revenue on overhead, distribution, printing costs, mailing, etc. Either way, creators often get shockingly little reward for their hard work.

What creators need is a system that will let them bypass the current distribution system entirely, selling directly to consumers and pocketing most of the revenue themselves. They could actually charge less money per copy, sell in smaller quantities, and still make more profit.

Apple could create that billing and distribution system. Or it could create a system that attempts to reinforce the power of today's content middlemen. The key question will be how easy it is for a content creator to sell something through Apple directly, and how big their revenue cut is. If Apple shares 70% or more of revenue, and lets anyone create their own content, the floodgates will begin to open.

This could have an enormous impact on the content industries. Ultimately it would give much more power to content creators, at the expense of publishers and other middlemen. And it would enable consumers to get a wider variety of entertainment and information than they can today. (I wrote about some of the possibilities here. That article is old now, but the situation has barely changed in the meantime.)

So, even though I am intensely interested in the Apple tablet's technology, I am even more interested in the business model around it. That's where the real revolution could happen, in my opinion.


Ignore the first 100 days' sales. A company of Apple's stature is almost always able to drive significant sales in the first three months of availability, especially when creating a new category product. There are enough fans and early adopters to virtually guarantee a sales spike early on. The big question is what happens after the enthusiasts have bought.

Remember, the original Macintosh 128 was quickly snapped up by about 70,000 drooling enthusiasts (including me!). We bought even though the computer had ridiculously little memory and almost no software. Picture a word processor that can't create a document longer than 10 pages. I paid $2,500 for that! After the first three months, Mac sales flattened, and didn't recover until Apple fixed the shortcomings of the product.

So I expect a sales explosion in the first three months. In fact, if there isn't one, the product is in deep trouble (see Apple TV). But even if it sells out at first, that doesn't mean much until we see at least six months of sales data. Preferably nine.


Price is a huge unknown. Here's the story I heard from my Apple alumni friends: There is a gap in Apple's product line. Apple has the iPhone and iPod Touch at around $300, and it has the iMac and MacBook at about $1,000. It needs something in the middle, and the tablet is expected to fill that gap.

The price point I heard from my friends was about $600. Lately the price rumors have gone higher, and I don't know what to think about that. Could be true, could be wrong, could be Apple leaking a fake price so they could "surprise" people with something lower. All I know is that at $1,000 they are in conflict with the low-end Macs, and at $300 they are in conflict with the iPhone, and my friends are adamant that they won't do either.

But even if the price is around $600, I think there is a problem: In all the market research I've done on mobile devices, the latent demand for a tablet device is centered at prices of $199-$399. You can skim a very small percent of the users at $499, but even that is a stretch. A price of $600 or higher is way beyond the comfort zone of most potential customers for a tablet, no matter how great the device is.

It scares me on Apple's behalf. You can get into deep trouble when you design a product around your business needs rather than the customer's feature needs. You start rationalizing things: "We know we ought to sell it for $300, but that doesn't work for us, so we add a bunch of extra features that ought to be worth $300 more, and we plan a big marketing campaign, and we convince ourselves that the product is so special that people will feel compelled to open up their wallets. It's just a couple hundred dollars more, after all..."

Nonsense. Some products have natural price points, and it's very hard to change them. Great marketing and great features get you a 10-20% premium, not 100%.

So watch the price on Wednesday. If it's in the $300-400 range, I am very comfortable with Apple's chances. If it's over $600, I will be very interested to see what special magic Apple has put into the product. I think they'd need features on the order of burning bushes and loaves-and-fishes in order to sustain a price of $600 or more in the long run.

But for the record, I'd be delighted to have Apple prove me wrong.