ePrécis for Abstracts and Indexes

The ePrécis Web site showcases technology that creates abstracts from any text document. In this Web site search, web sites relevant to your search requests are analyzed by ePrécis and results are returned in a typical search format.

Richard McManus provides a background description in ZDNet about this technology, with more focus on its comparison to Google as a search engine or in relation to OWL semantic Web approaches.

According to the ePrécis white paper by James Matthewson:

“ePrécis is not a program per se, but a C++ language application programmer interface (API) that can be embedded in any number of applications to return relevant outputs given a wide variety of natural language inputs. In addition to plugging into Web browsers or search engines, it could plug into word processing programs to automatically provide abstracts, executive summaries, back-of-the book indexes, and writing or translation support.”

You can get this white paper from the ePrécissite or download a macro to embed within MS Word to create your own abstracts and indexes.  (You will also need the Microsoft SOAP 3.0 package installed.)  Check it out; it’s kinda fun, and generally pretty impressive in creating useful abstracts.  You should also try the searches from the ePrécis Web site.  Hint: For best performance, use long or technical queries (more context).