Opinions

The second day of demos at DEMO has commenced, and I'm watching a presentation by Retrevo, a startup with a new search engine focused on helping focus with consumer electronics products. The site went live Wednesday with a public beta.

Use Retrevo to search for a particular product (say, the Canon SD700 IS, the Nokia E61, or the MacBook), and you get results focused on that item, sorted by tabs into Top Results, Reviews & Articles, Manufacturer Info, and Forums & Blogs. You might be able to find the same stuff on Google, but Retrevo does a good job of weeding out results you probably don't care about (such as shopping pages from obscure online stores) and targeting ones of interest (like reviews from major sites and product-specific blogs).

It also has a nifty preview pane that lets you peruse the pages it finds without leaving the list of results. And for many products, it finds, indexes, and previews PDF-format manuals, so you can search within the documentation for products you're considering or already own.

You can also e-mail search results to other folks--a feature that would come in handy for any search engine. If you buy and use gadgets (and I bet you do!), Retrevo is worth a look.