Dear Jeremy:

Zenodata has been around for some time, and while the concept is interesting, I believe it will be a few years before their vision is realized.  In my company's service area, southwestern Pennsylvania, there is only a handful of counties which are just now beginning to image documents.

I visited their 'site a while back, and they claim that their system will "generate a complete and accurate abstract sheet in less than ten minutes..."  They make it sound as if this is all done independently of human supervision.  A pretty bold statement, if you ask me.

I guess my number one concern is, how does a computer program know which instrument relates to a given tract and which one doesn't?  Even though it is theoretically possible to create an electronic image of every single instrument ever recorded in a given jurisdiction, the indexing and cross-referencing of those instruments would be a monumental task at best.  Such an endeavor would be very labor intensive, something most county recorders' budgets are ill-equipped to afford.

As to your question of why we don't like it, well, let's see, after investing eight and a half years of my life perfecting my craft, building my business, establishing good will with my customers and working my tail off to make sure they always get the very best search product available, not to mention spending all that money on office equipment, rent, fuel, parking, tolls, insurance and continuing education, there's someone who comes along claiming to have a machine that does my job better, faster and cheaper than I can, hey, what's not to like?

Hope that answers your question,

Scott L. Perry, President
Jireh Business Information Solutions, Inc.