Reflections on Emerging Technologies: Dunno - Personal Research Assistant

Your own personal research assistant

iPad view

Back when I was and undergrad at UC Berkeley, I had a work-study job as a lab assistant. One of my many jobs was to be available and when Dr. Valcana said "Go to such and such library and get me every article for the last three years on so and so." I ran and spent the rest of the afternoon rooting through journals. I found a wonderful app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS yesterday that performs that job for you while you do other things.

The app is called Dunno and is available at all of the Mac App Stores. I've only used it a couple of times but I am intrigued with its utility; particularly for writing blog posts, presentations, training documents, and a host of other uses.

The way it works is that you write a note about a subject you are researching in the box on the left-hand column and go away to do something else. Dunno does the leg work and sends push notifications (or not, your choice) when the research is completed. Articles, images, and other information it finds are displayed in a series of collapsible windows on the right side.

Dunno syncs in real-time across your devices so you can ask it to find information in the morning from your computer, check the results at lunch on your iPhone, and prepare a presentation in Keynote on your iPad later. The developer cautions that it's a work in progress and that features are being added and refined constantly.

Best part is that for now, it's Free. See more at: http://www.wedunno.com/desktop.html or search "Dunno" on the App Store.