"Wikipedia is a great way for us to showcase Powerset's functionality while giving people a faster time to satisfaction," said Barney Pell, co-founder and CTO of Powerset, as his company today unveiled a publicly available beta product that according to Pell reinvents how users search and discover information from Wikipedia.

Wikipedia serves a fundamental human need - a single destination to find a broad range of information, according to Pell. Powerset's breakthrough natural language technology is based on patents licensed from PARC (formerly Xerox PARC) and Powerset's proprietary research. The technology, which can be applied to any topic and any domain, reads and extracts meaning from every sentence in Wikipedia, he explained.

"This release is the first step in Powerset changing the way users search and consume web content," said Pell. "Unlike traditional search engines, which look for words, Powerset matches the meaning of the user's query to the meaning of sentences."

"We have focused on making Powerset able to read and understand documents on the web as part of a broader vision to change the way people interact with technology," said Scott Prevost, general manager and director of product. "This first product will make people's search experiences on Wikipedia and Freebase easier, more natural and more relevant."

There is a Powerset launch video here.