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P-ZOOM REVIEW

Tired of hunting through pages and pages of search results, trying to find that one useful site amid all the garbage? With p-ZOOM, a $40 browser add-on, you can sidestep a great deal of this tedious process. When you type a keyword or phrase into one of the leading search engines, p-ZOOM sorts the results into a series of relevant categories, making it much easier to find what you're seeking.

When you visit Google and search on "Stanley Kubrick," for instance, p-ZOOM sorts Google's results into ten major categories, ranging from Film and DVD to Biography. Clicking on a category reveals subcategories, which reveal further subcategories, and so on.

p-ZOOM creates its nested folders on the fly, using information gleaned from site titles and synopses generated by the search engine. The categories aren't always as relevant, as well organized, or as self-explanatory as they could be, but depending on what you're searching for, the app can certainly cut down on the number of links you have to look through.

The process is reminiscent of Groxis's Grokker, a standalone metasearch tool. But whereas Grokker organizes its nested categories within a graphical interface, laying them out like dollops of paint on a palette, p-ZOOM uses an ordinary Windows tree structure. You navigate through the hierarchy of categories much as you would in Windows Explorer.

Installing p-ZOOM adds a single button to the top of your Web browser. When you click on the button, a new pane appears on the left side of the browser, much like in Onfolio. If you then visit Google, MSN, or Yahoo! and type in a keyword, p-ZOOM automatically sorts the search results and displays the hierarchy of categories in the extra pane.

Once you find a subcategory you'd like to explore, you can select it with your mouse, and all the links within that subcategory will appear in the main body of the browser. You can also save your searches and return to them anytime you like. You simply save the hierarchy of nested categories, or you can download and save the actual Web pages within those categories.

The rub is that p-ZOOM requires a hefty amount of processing power. The company says you'll need at least a Pentium III processor and 128MB of RAM. On a Pentium III with 192MB of RAM, p-ZOOM took only a few seconds to generate a list of results.

If you've got the right hardware, p-ZOOM is worth the price. It's a good way to cure those Google blues.

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