Antarcti.ca Systems Inc., in Vancouver, British Columbia, is led by CEO Tim Bray, who is an XML and search engine pioneer. It hopes to have its technology incorporated into every Web site on the Internet as an alternative to today's search engines, Bray said. The goal is to give users both options through a button on a site's home page.
Users can choose whether they want a text-based search engine or to take the mapping route.
The technology, dubbed Visual Net, works much like a paper-based map in that users click on a region, such as Literature, and that leads them to a map containing more options within the category. From there, a user might drill into Russian Literature, then eventually to a specific author, such as Leo Tolstoy, then deeper into a specific work, such as Anna Karenina. Although the traditional search engine is geared toward people who are looking for a specific item or piece of information, Antarcti.ca's software is most useful for Web visitors that do not know exactly what they are looking for, according to Darcy Fowkes, an Internet infrastructure analyst at Aberdeen Group in Boston. Antarcti.ca is not entirely alone in the space. Vios, in Cary, N.C., for instance, produces what it refers to as a visual 3D interface for the Internet.