Kaboodle makes sharing Web bookmarks easier

Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO: Web page bookmarks that help surfers return to useful Internet sites are undergoing a transformation as new tools emerge for users to categorize and share favourite sites automatically with others.

For, while Web surfing remains the essential gesture of our age, jumping from site to site is a broken way of keeping track of information.

Silicon Valley start-up Kaboodle Inc. offers a novel way for Web surfers facing information overload to keep a running record of useful sites and extract key details for personal use or to share with like-minded users.

Kaboodle -- short for "whole kit and caboodle", a collection of lots of objects -- allows users to create Web pages to manage personal research, do comparison shopping, make wish lists or plan travel.

"The process is pretty clunky of trying to look at a whole bunch of information by going from site to site," said Manish Chandra, Kaboodle's founder and CEO. "Each Kaboodle page represents a custom search result you have created," he said.

Kaboodle joins a host of rivals in an area known variously as collaborative search, social tagging or social bookmarking, where people point out interesting sites and help put the information found on them into meaningful categories.

The shared search craze recently reached a pinnacle on Del.icio.us, a site that has struck a chord with users keen to know where others are surfing on the Web. Other examples include diversified Internet companies such as Yahoo, with its MyWeb service, MyJeeves from IAC's AskJeeves and newer players such as Wink and JetEye.

"There are so many alternatives, my head is spinning," Forrester analyst Charlene Li said. "Kaboodle works by offering really simple social bookmarks."

Every time a user clicks to save a Web page, Kaboodle software studies the page to extract a headline, short summary, and the body of text or images -- and creates a summary page.

These summary pages can then become links for each personal reference or be shared with other users. The page can also be annotated by the user or other readers to add additional information. They can also be rated for usefulness. The user controls which summary pages become public or stay private.

Kaboodle can work entirely as a personal tool. The social aspect of sharing searches with others is just a side benefit.

The company employs 12 people and has attracted $1.5 million in investment. It was only incorporated in January, but the technology underpinning it was developed over the prior year, said Keiron McMammon, co-founder and chief architect.

"The technology learns in the background," McMammon said. "The system continues to get smarter and smarter over time."

He said the Web information extraction technology is based on theoretical work by Rajeev Motwani and Ashish Gupta.

Motwani is a Stanford University professor and co-author of the academic paper on Web search "pagerank" technology first published by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. Gupta co-founded Junglee, a data-integration software company that was acquired by Amazon.com, also in 1998. Both are investors in Kaboodle, Chandra said.