It’s available for macOS and iOS now, with Windows 10 and Android on the way. Microsoft, Nathan Myhrvold, and Aspect Ventures ponied up $20.7 million for Ritter and his colleagues to pursue this dream of a “searchable photographic memory for our digital lives.” The open beta, which you can sign up for here, is - as you might expect - intended to shake out bugs, refine the interface, and learn what features users like, don’t use, never find, and so on. Atlas will work on a freemium model and advertising isn’t on the table without a guarantee of privacy, who would use the service in the first place? So they’re clear about who owns your data (you), what data they have access to (metadata, not content), and whether you can up and get out of there and leave no trace behind (yep). Google and Facebook make money by selling ads based on intimate knowledge of your activities. Ritter acknowledged that trust needed to be built, but as a former security engineer, he said he takes that side of things seriously.Īs for privacy, the company doesn’t want to look at your data. And you can choose to have Atlas integrated with Google, Spotlight, and other engines, so relevant stuff comes up when you do ordinary searches as well.Īll the data is backed up to the cloud, of course, and it may make some people nervous to have such an incredibly detailed record of their online life sitting on someone else’s computer. There’s the main interface that comes up on your computer, but the same collection of stuff will come up on mobile. I happen to have a pretty poor memory, but even if I didn’t, who wants to scrub through four different web apps at work trying to find that one PDF? Wouldn’t it be nice to just type in a project name and have everything related to it - from you and from coworkers - pop up instantly, regardless of where it “lives”? When you see it in action, it’s easy to imagine how quickly it could become essential. You can also tell it not to remember certain websites or apps, and you can temporarily disable it while you do your taxes, write secret poetry, and so on. There are filters for content type, date ranges, and all that in case you want to drill down. Maybe you want to send a slide deck and all the related media to a coworker, but the items are scattered across your laptop, desktop, Google Docs and Dropbox - search for the project and select the pieces you need all in one place. Maybe you remember seeing an article you wanted to read while you were at the airport, but didn’t think to save - search for “LAX” and there are all the things you did or looked at while you were there. Yes, you can easily block, delete, and otherwise control what it remembers.No, it doesn’t need access to those services or their APIs.On the web, on Facebook, in Outlook, on your computer, everything. It indexes and makes searchable everything you encounter on your computer and mobile - yes, every single thing. The other is, find me something I definitely know I’ve seen.”Ītlas Recall is intended to fill the second role better than anything out there.
“One is, find me something I’ve never seen. “The house of search is actually two houses,” said Ritter. Google searches the public internet Facebook tracks your private photos and friends Outlook has your contacts, emails, and appointments Spotlight knows your local files Spotify has your music and playlists - the list goes on and on.Īnd even if you know which silo your data is in, you still have to go there and muck around in it to find what you’re looking for - which Slack room did we put the meeting time in? Which thread had that attachment? Which playlist did my roommate say to check out?
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