Filtrbox

Filtrbox is out in private beta. It's a visual tool for filtering out specific content. The obvious app: ego surfing. From the site:

Filtrbox is an intelligent content and news monitoring service that does the work of monitoring the millions of blogs and online news sources for you. In one place. Stay competitive, save time, and keep everyone on the same page. Filtrbox is powerful and easy to use, and you can access the new content via the dashboard, email, or custom RSS feeds.

In practice, it's very easy to use. You search for a term and Filtrbox brings up three panes: a tagcloud of words that appear in the search results, a pane for refining the search, and a pane listing results. If your search is overly broad, you can drag tags into the appropriate spots to include or exclude them in the refined search results. This allows you to inductively refine the search until it looks solid. Then you can save the search and have it push results to your email box, dashboard, etc. Results are visualized in graph form.

Filtrbox is not a general search; it focuses on the blogosphere and online news. It is therefore well positioned for marketers, managers, etc. In an increasingly informated world, online identities are also brands, so Filtrbox could make a good platform for ego surfing as well.

filtrbox : home

Blogged with the Flock Browser