PHLAT is a project from Microsoft Research�s Redmond lab that attempts to streamline the process of sifting through the exponentially growing avalanche of information with which PC users must cope.

In a technical report entitled Fast, Flexible Filtering with PHLAT�Personal Search and Organization Made Easy, researchers Ed Cutrell, Daniel Robbins, Susan Dumais, and Raman Sarin set forth their goal and the reasoning behind it:

�We created PHLAT,� the document states, �with the desire to build and deploy an interface that would make finding personal information easy and intuitive no matter what users may remember about their content.

�We believe that personal search will be every bit as important in the evolution of [personal-information management] as Internet search has been for the World Wide Web.�

PHLAT grew out of an earlier project at Microsoft Research called Stuff I�ve Seen, which indexed content on a computer quickly and provided an interface to enable that content to be manipulated effectively. The Stuff I�ve Seen project provided the impetus for the development of Windows Desktop Search.