Refinder by Gnowsis

Gnowsis is a Vienna based start-up developing the next generation enterprise social software. We support a collaborative, task-oriented work culture in flexible teams. Our wish is to increase the productivity of knowledge workers. We analysed the situation of many people in various work situations to come to the solution designed in Refinder. 

Refinder is the intelligent social software to collect and share information. Work together with colleagues, partners and customers and connect to enterprise systems. 

Why Refinder?

Collaborate with co-workers.
Bring your teamtogether and discuss on topics and tasks. Keep an overview on the activities ofco-workers. Join to find new insights and give feedback to others. Stay to askquestions and get answers.

Bringthings together.
Collect information from different desktopand online applications in one place. Discoverrecommendations for related content. Connect people with documents,emails and other files. Let Refinder find the relevant.

Connectto enterprise systems.
Support a collaborative, task-oriented workculture in flexible teams. Connect Refinder to your enterprise applications, supportkey processes, measure the change. Give your team a secure online workplacethat youmake your own.

Refinder is based on open standards and the idea of the Semantic Web and the Social Semantic Desktop.It works on desktops, mobiles, in the cloud and on-premise. Plug-ins for enterprise systems and common desktop and online applications are available.

Leo Sauermann - CEO, Founder
Leo published the first version of a semantic desktop in his diploma thesis in 2003, and since then he did not stop evangelizing it. Together with Stefan Decker and Ansgar Bernardi he initiated the NEPOMUK Project at the DFKI in 2004. Being a respected scientist in the field of the semantic web, Leo Sauermann initiated the RDF conversion toolkit aperture.sourceforge.net, the semantic desktop gnowsis.opendfki.de, and many more. He finished his PhD in computer science and helped explaining what URIs are by editing the Cool URIs for the Cool URIs for the Semantic Web IG note for the W3C's Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) group.

Bernhard Schandl - CTO, Founder
Bernhard has been a researcher at the University of Vienna since 2004, and has been actively driving development towards the semantic desktop in the SemDAV and MobiSem project. He finished his PhD thesis in the field of semantic desktop infrastructures, published numerous papers about semantic technologies and is giving multimedia and semantic web technologies lectures at the University of Vienna and the University of Applied Sciences "Technikum Wien". He is also an active musician.

The team further involves 2 experienced depelopers and 2 people with experiences in marketig, sales and business development.

Refinder is offered as an Enterprise Social Software solution for a monthly fee or a license. The targeted price per user is EUR 15 (incl. VAT) per month.The package can be extended with op­tional connectors and plug-ins for ap­plications. The fully-functional product can be tested in a two-month trial pe­riod prior to purchase.

Marketing and sales activities are ex­ecuted in three phases.

1. Enterprise sales by a dedicated team, which offers Refinder either as managed service, or for in-house deployment at the customer’s site. Targeted segments: Consulting, Research, Manufacturer
2. Direct sales on the Web targets professionals and teams in SOHOs and SMEs. Marketing is based on online activities (blogging, networks, press, ads) and informal viral spread using Refinder’s group features. 
3. Sales via SaaS marketplaces (e.g. Google) and cloud service eco­systems provided by TelCos and ISPs.

Refinder augments existing applications with plugins and does not change the way people work. Within their emails and files, the links to other things are available. 

In December 2010 the public BETA version launched. Since then more than 1100 users registered. In November 2011 an Enterprise 2.0 BETA will be launched. 

Refinder combines integration of data from different applications and col­laboration within groups. The unique feature of Refinder is semantic infor­mation processing, which enables the discovery of contextual relations within the information overflow, and auto­matically shows information that is relevant for the current task. This re­sults in quicker and better decisions by knowledge workers.

Refinder simplifies, accellerates, and enhances knowledge work. For this, it offers three core features.

• Collect any digital content, like emails, contacts, events, files, and web pages in Refinder using appli­cation plug-ins.

• Curate an integrated overview on projects, meetings, and tasks, using collections, comments, and seman­tic relationships. Relevant informa­tion is being recommended and found through grouping, searching, and filtering.

• Communicate information within a group by sharing and comment­ing. Refinder helps to stay in touch with the experts in a field. Sending, publishing, and exporting informa­tion closes the information life cycle. 

Refinder is positioned in the Enter­prise Social Software market. However, other providers lack the seman­tic information processing that Refinder offers, and therefore fail to distinguish relevant information (signal) from the in­formation overflow (noise).On the other hand, existing semantic platforms solve specific aspects of knowledge or docu­ment management, but fail to address social work and communication require­ments.