How often have you read a report and scribbled (or typed) all the key points into an outline or mind-map? Or maybe just scribbled notes. Then you want to go back and re-read important bits of the original document. It all takes time. And you still have this nagging feeling that you might have missed something important.

Well, for years Cirilab has been producing search, retrieval and categorization software that most effectively finds and pre-digests textual information on your behalf. It calls the core technology its Knowledge Generation Engine. Vice-president Arnold Villeneuve says, "Our technology helps people cope with information overload by allowing them to use information triage techniques to locate only the information they need and avoid the rest."

A few weeks ago, it announced the adoption of its core technology by information management and visual thinking solutions company Mindsystems Pty Ltd for use in its ThemeReader product. You can right click on a document - pdf, doc, html etc - and see it summarised as a mind-map. The software handles 26 different file formats at the time of writing.

Here is an extract from a map created by pointing at pdf of Jevon MacDonald's "New Enterprise Software" report.

Additionally, the results include: a synopsis of the original document based on its major themes; a detailed summary based on major and minor themes; a document navigator which finds all occurrences of a given theme; plus a link to open the original document.

Each synopsis has theme terms hyperlinked to the appropriate point on the map. When a map link or a text link are clicked, the source material relating to that term is thrown up a new text window.

For anyone whose job involves a lot of reading and research, this software bears investigation. It does need Mindjet MindManager, although the resulting maps can be shared with people who have the free Mindjet MindManager Viewer. You can try ThemeReader and MindManager free for 21 days.