Sharing the wisdom of the world in 140 characters or less

Jul 21, 2009 14:34 GMT  ·  By

For too long have the deceased been discriminated against. Just because they may not be among us doesn't mean that they shouldn't have access to the same tools and benefits that the rest of us take for granted. Or at least that's part of the reasoning behind iWise, “Twitter for dead people,” as founder and CEO Edo Segal so eloquently puts it, which allows Twitter users to follow some very famous people with one common trait: they've all passed away.

Famous quotes have always found a good home on the Internet but iWise's approach is rather original. After you login with your Twitter credentials you will be able to follow any number of famous people who will bestow you with snippets of their wisdom in real time. The interface is very similar to Twitter's and, after you have chosen the people you want to follow, short quotes will populate your stream coming in real time and updating frequently. The service also lets you tweet the quotes you like the most and receive quotes to your Twitter account but only as a direct message. A free iPhone app is also available for a daily dose of wisdom.

But Segal has bigger plans for the service, with the Twitter integration just a starting point to attract the users, as TechCrunch reports. The founder of Relegence, a real-time search engine that he sold to AOL in 2006, Segal now heads Futurity Ventures, which the iWise project is a part of. He believes that the world's wisdom should be preserved and iWise's main goal is to organize and make available the one already online.

At its heart iWise is a search engine scouring the web for quotes and organizing them by author or subject. But there's a twist as a search on iWise will not only reveal precious gems from the people of old but also real-time results from Twitter. So for those who wanted to know what Oprah, Arthur Schopenhauer, Dave Matthews and old Italian folk wisdom had to say about a particular subject this is the place to do it.