Searching inside Companies

Working for a large company can be tricky sometimes. Definitely when it comes to meeting a colleague you don't know. You only know his or her name and the meeting room.

Of course most companies have who-is-who databases with a picture of the colleague you're meeting (Yellow Pages). So now you can do some facial pattern recognition besides looking for the meeting room.

Can't this be done in a better way? Micello seems to have asked this too. They want to be the Google Maps of the inside of buildings. So Google Maps helps you find the address. Micello takes it from there and helps you find the location you're looking for after you went in the front door. For example: you're looking for a store in a shopping mall. Google Maps will take you to the mall. Micello will take you to the shop in the mall.

Now extend this to companies. Search (in general) in enterprises is usually not very well implemented. This also goes for finding locations insides companies. Micello could help solve this issue. It could map the inside of the company.

And take this idea one step further. What if you linked this application to Sharepoint or (internal) Twitter? Then you could project information on Micello like: where are the experts in a certain areas located, where do they meet, where do colleagues write about a certain topic, etc. All of a sudden you're not only search for the location (of a colleague); you're looking for people that could help you solve certain problems or work with you on a topic.

I think Micello has an promising proposition. I do hope it will be integrated in Google Maps or so someday. Because, as most knowledge workers, I don't want yet another tool to keep an eye on.

Tags van Technorati: search,expertise location,social networking