Leverage Your Friends’ Knowledge with Illumio

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Because I am known as … er, frugal, friends often ask me where to find the best buy for a particular item. They also use me as a source for troubleshooting their PCs, recommending software, etc. etc. Next month privately held Tacit Software plans to introduce a service that will simplify such brain picking of friends and associates, called Illumio.

However, Illumio is not a search engine, like Google or Yahoo. The system works by transparently distributing a request for information on questions like “Who knows John Smith?” and “Are Nikon digital cameras better than Olympus?” to the computers in a network of users. The questions can then be answered locally based on a novel reverse auction system that Illumio uses to determine who the experts are.

Tacit’s top achievement in its software for connecting people and expertise may be in a design that keeps personal information private.

Because the information used to determine if someone is an expert on a particular question stays on local computers, Tacit’s executives said Illumio would avoid potentially troubling privacy questions. The Illumio software is installed on users’ PC’s, where it is connected through a software interface to either Microsoft or Google’s desktop search programs that index local user content, including documents and electronic mail. Source: The New York Times via News.com

We Say: The collaboration space is big and growing. Privacy is a big issue, however, and despite the assurances regarding the privacy aspects of Illumio, however, I’ll probably wait to see some real-life reviews before I even consider opting-in to such a service.