SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 03/18/09 -- Exalead, a global provider of information access technology, today announced Exalabs, a free showcase site that lets people use state-of-the-art information access technologies. Exalabs features both web search applications that are immediately usable by general consumers as well as open source software projects used by search technologists. Exalabs will also feature the newest research examples of their cooperation with Quaero, the pan-European project for next-generation search funded by 200 million euros of research money.

Immediately available at Exalabs are web search applications Miiget, Voxalead, and Wikifier. With Miiget, users can quickly see the relationships between people along with pictures and biographical information. Voxalead allows people to search through the audio content and captions of video in multiple languages. Wikifier automatically integrates relevant information from Wikipedia into web page searches.

"Our research prototypes at Exalabs may become the foundation of tomorrow's great search applications," said Jean-Marc Lazard, Exalead Labs Manager. "We welcome feedback and cooperation from curious people, inventors, technology partners, and anyone that is passionate about innovation. Together, we can shape the future of search and information discovery."

Exalabs is also engaged in joint research with the OpenSem project to advance semantic analysis and indexing technology. OpenSem research is conducted with the cooperation of the European program EUROSTARS and is making it easier for people to access the wealth of diverse information on the Web.

Open source software projects available at Exalabs focus on making search more accessible to wider groups of people. The projects are primarily technical components that are used in other applications. Projects include MINIDOM, Aurochs, HTTrack, and MixER.

More information is located at the Exalabs main site http://Labs.Exalead.com.

About Exalead

Founded in 2000 by search engine pioneers, Exalead® is a global software provider in the enterprise and Web search markets. Exalead's worldwide client base includes leading companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Michelin, and American Greetings, and more than 100 million unique users a month use Exalead's technology for search. Today, Exalead is reshaping the digital content landscape with a platform, Exalead CloudView(TM), that uses advanced semantic technologies to bring structure, meaning and accessibility to previously unused or under-utilized data in the disparate, heterogeneous enterprise information cloud. The system collects data from virtually any source, in any format, and transforms it into structured, pervasive, contextualized building blocks of business information that can be directly searched and queried, or used as the foundation for a new breed of lean, innovative information access applications.

Exalead is an operating unit of Qualis, an international holding company, with offices in Paris, San Francisco, Glasgow, Milan and Darmstadt. Readers who wish to gain more information about Exalead can visit www.Exalead.com or contact (415) 230 3800.