Digital Equipment Corp. later this week will unveil a new interface for its popular AltaVista Internet search engine that is designed to be easier to use while returning better organized results.
The enhanced search tool, which will be available Saturday, uses customization tools and a "refine" function that breaks results into topic categories created in response to the user query.
The latter feature, which AltaVista Chief Technology Officer Louis Monier calls "dynamic categorization," is similar to a feature introduced last month by a new search engine company, Northern Light Technology of Cambridge, Mass.
Other search engine vendors also feature topic categories, but those are predefined.
The new AltaVista search tool will be available on the company's Web site (www.altavista.digital.com) on Saturday. Monier said the company will release a commercial version of the tool for intranets later this year.
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