At a time when the valley's digerati are bemoaning a technology industry recession and the death of innovation, Mr. Hawken's Grokker software, which is intended to allow personal-computer users to visually make sense of collections of thousands or hundreds of thousands of text documents, is creating a buzz. The software is attracting significant interest from large corporations and universities. At the conference, Groxis employees began taking orders after people told the company that they were willing to pay for the program, which had not yet been released; 200 copies were sold that weekend. John Markoff on Grokker. Apparently, there are people willing to pay for things on the Internet. A New Company Tries to Sort the Web's Chaos |