Upstart Developing Search Engine for Engineers

Try searching the Internet for a complex algorithm using a basic search engine.

It isn’t easy, says Martin Shum, founder and former president and chief executive of ACT Networks. Ordinary search engines may be fine for gathering everyday information, he says, but for highly technical data they fall short.

Enter Shum’s entrepreneurial spirit. And, enter onto the online stage Aprisa Inc., a Westlake Village-based company offering a new level of search engine.

“There are a number of search engines on the market, and they are all based on the use of keywords to do searches,” Shum said. “We need a new class of search engine to help engineers search [for] technical information.”

Aprisa’s primary product, scheduled for unveiling early next year, will cater to Internet users searching for electronic, chemical, architectural and other technical information--all the way from the concept stage to manufacturing and marketing.

“It is invented by the geeks, run by the geeks, for the geeks,” said Shum, a former winner in the Greater Los Angeles Entrepreneur of the Year award program. “We are starting our business focusing on the global electronic engineering community in the discovery phase.”

Engineers need access to published documents, research, patents and the latest technology related to the products they are developing and looking to market, Shum said.

“If I want to design a voice system, what is the latest voice system algorithm out there?” he said. “It’s not that engineers don’t know how to do it, it’s that there are no tools to help them do it right.”

Shum plans to form alliances with leading research groups and manufacturers in the Silicon Valley to compile the information for the search engine.

“We will really be a cyber library for engineers, a very powerful search engine to find things,” Shum said. “We will truly be leveling the playing field [for engineers] not only around the U.S. but around the globe. If you think researchers and developers have trouble getting information in the U.S., how about India or China?”

Aprisa will charge a membership fee for companies wanting access to the search engine and an hourly fee for individual entrepreneurs and hobbyists conducting research.