Stories about: Runaware

For Pacific Sunwear of California, selling sportswear on the Internet sounded like a surefire idea, until company managers realized something: Most of their potential customers didn't have credit cards.

Whoever coined the term search engine got it exactly right. AltaVista Co., Excite Inc., and their rivals do indeed resemble engines: awesomely powerful but decidedly inhuman. Rather than speaking plain English, they comprehend only keywords, ANDs, ORs, NOTs, and punctuation marks. Misphrase your query, and you may get an avalanche of irrelevant links or no results at all. And even though a few sites let you ask questions in simple English, it's clear that you're talking to a none-too-bright automaton.

Runaware AB, a Stockholm-based startup, has launched a vendor-independent Web site that allows users to test drive software applications over the Internet.