Exalead joins ACAP pilot project

French search software provider, Exalead, has joined the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) Pilot project to validate the initiative. Validation should be complete by November 2007 at which point a working proposal will be presented at the project’s final conference.

Gavin O’Reilly, president of WAN, one of the pilot’s sponsors says: 'The involvement of Exalead is a vital and exciting development for ACAP, which is now well on track to fulfil its original objectives.'

ACAP itself aims to create a new, open standard to enable owners of content to speed machine-interpretable permissions.

The project is developing a system that allows the owners of content published on the internet to provide information relating to access and use of their content in a form that can be recognised and interpreted by a search engine ‘spider’. This should enable the search engine operator to systematically comply with the content owner’s policy or licence.

Software business Exalead has developed a unified search technology platform featuring a navigation system that adapts to user habits. According to Francois Bourdoncle, Exalead’s co-founder and chief executive officer: 'This collaboration will benefit the online publishing and media industries. Being a part of this project allows us to help finalise this critical standard.'