This is Internet On The Air. I'm Joan Silvi. Coming up...an easier way to find a needle in a haystack.

Funding Credit: Internet On The Air is a production of the University of Michigan School of Information and Michigan radio, made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

How many times have you tried to locate a file in your computer -- only to find that it's NOT where you thought? Considering the staggering amount of information available today, a user could easily get lost in a computer directory. But help is on the way.

A new application called Pad++ uses the zooming technique to look at large amounts of information while helping you pinpoint just what you need. It's not commercially available yet - it's still under development by a team of computer scientists at the University of Michigan, the University of New Mexico, and New York University. But the idea is straightforward.

Pad++ uses portals or "spyglasses" as a guide you through the maze by examining the information from several perspectives at once. For example, portals can highlight different sections of a document while still showing you the overall document layout. This helps you put the paragraph in context as you conduct your search.

Another special feature of Pad++ are so-called "magic lenses", which are used to translate information into different formats. For example, you'll be able to place a magic lens over a paragraph written in English and see the French translation. Or, place the magic lens over a spreadsheet and see it transformed into a graph. Another magic lens placed over the same spreadsheet changes the information into a bar chart.

The application could revolutionize the way we look at information. We'll be able to take in a large amount, while maintaining the precision of tracking down a specific reference.

To learn more about Pad ++, visit our Web site at www.si.umich.edu/iota. I'm Joan Silvi, for Internet On The Air.