More Robots ...

Behind the scenes we have a small army of 'robots' helping us. This week three new robots came into being:

• Tara, 'The Task Master' - She looks after managing tasks.
• Burt, 'The Bug Buster' - Burt lets us know when reported bugs have been fixed.
• Data, 'The Director Dude' - This is Sven's first robot. Data is responsible for making sure the load balancer (i.e., director) is perfoming well.

Pumping Up The Power

Things were getting a little slow with our Internet connection over here at Ivory Wharf, so we've just upgraded.

Gone are the days of a meagre 2MB connection - bring on the power with 8 MB.

Bugs Go Virtual

Gone are the days of printing off a technical request form, filling it out and handing it to Nige.

As of today, there is a new tech regime here at Trexy. All bugs and technical requests will be logged electronically.

Crime Came Our Way Today

It all happened in a flash. The front gate of the office swung open and we realised someone had just taken the bike. We got up from our desks, rushed out the door and saw a hooded figure ride around the corner. Sven took off in hot pursuit of the thief but couldn't catch him.

In the panic, the door swung shut behind us and locked us all out.

Rena was left standing outside with no shoes and I was searching my pockets for my keys with no luck.

What a dramatic way to start the day. Bike stolen, locked out with no keys and no mobile phone.
Fortunately the Theatre Company across the road, The London Bubble, were able to help. I called Martin and within 10 minutes he arrived with another set of keys.

Phew.

We're Happy. He's Happy. Everyone's Happy.

Our new programmer Sven has just finished his first three month contract with us.

The good news is, Sven's happy to extend the contract for a further three months.

It'll be Christmas before we know it.

Taking the "Cycle of Search" for a Spin

The "Cycle of Search" is how I've modelled the way we search. First we consult our memories (MyTrails), if we don't know the answer we ask someone who does (All Trails), or we go find out for ourselves (Blaze a Trail).
Trexy is the functional expression of this simple model. It's been great to take the "Cycle of Search" for a spin. It's working! But now I just have to grease the cogs to make sure the process is as smooth as possible. For example, when I want to blaze a trail I want to jump straight to my preferred search engine. Also I don't want to stumble over my old trails if I'm in a trailblazing mood.

Trexy Comes to Life

Trexy has been brought to life, thanks to a number of contributors.

Follow the trail of Trexy's development...

Phase 1: Nige and I look for inspiration in nature.

Phase 2: One of our designers, Martin Tomuscheit, and I, create the first version of Trexy.

Phase 3: Nige's friend from high school and professional illustrator,

Matthew Schofield, lends a hand.

Phase 4: UK illustrator, Adz, suggests Trexy could wear a backpack. After all, Trexy's an adventurous trailblazing goat.

Phase 5: Adz helps to inject personality into Trexy's face.

Phase 6: Adz adds the final touches and we experiment with different colours. We also decide to create a flag of flags to help symbolise that trailblazers from all over the world can contribute.

Phase 7: Final Logo

Following in the Footsteps of a Trailblazer

Last weekend, we had friends visit us from Muenster, Germany.

Whilst visiting London, one of their requests was to see the 'Changing of the Guards' at Buckingham Palace.

Before setting off, we needed to check the times.

I normally would have gone straight to Google, instead this time I thought I'd check on Trexy to see if a trailblazer had already found the information.

I searched on Trexy's 'All Trails' for 'changing of the guards'. To my pleasant surprise, someone had indeed already found what I was looking for.

By clicking on the http://www.changing-the-guard.com/history.htm link, I was one click away from the schedule page and finding out the time.

A Visitor from Planet Google

Someone working for Google has just downloaded the TrailBar™. That didn't take long! ;-)

They downloaded a Firefox TrailBar on Mon, 10 Oct 2005 at 21:26:54pm from an IP address that is assigned to:

rgName:    Google Inc.
OrgID:      GOGL
Address:    1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City:       Mountain View
StateProv:  CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country:    US

NetRange:   64.233.160.0 - 64.233.191.255
CIDR:       64.233.160.0/19
NetName:    GOOGLE
NetHandle:  NET-64-233-160-0-1
Parent:     NET-64-0-0-0-0
NetType:    Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.GOOGLE.COM
NameServer: NS2.GOOGLE.COM
Comment: 
RegDate:    2003-08-18
Updated:    2004-03-05

TechHandle: ZG39-ARIN
TechName:   Google Inc.
TechPhone:  +1-650-318-0200
TechEmail:  arin-contact@google.com

OrgTechHandle: ZG39-ARIN
OrgTechName:   Google Inc.
OrgTechPhone:  +1-650-318-0200
OrgTechEmail:  arin-contact@google.com

So there you have it - a visitor from planet Google. I hope he/she comes in peace ;-)

Tour de Trexy

Rena and I are working on the Tour for Trexy today. We have decided to have two tours - one for the TrailBar and another one for the Trexy website. Both tours will demonstrate how to:

• blaze trails,
• access your private trails (My Trails), and
• how you can share and see trails from other users (All Trails).

We are aiming to have at least the TrailBar tour live on the site by the end of the day.

Tuning in the "Retrieval Algorithm"

Implementing an information retrieval system is a bit like tuning into a radio station - you have to ignore the noise and home in on the signal.

In our case a My Trails search is different to an All Trails search. The My Trails searcher is thinking, "what did I search on again? what keywords did I use?" The search must be very 'loose' so it matches easily. We're trying to help the user recall their previous trails quickly and easily.

On the other hand the All Trails search needs to be more precise as there are thousands of trails that could potentially match. The All Trails searcher is thinking, "I wonder if someone else has searched on this before? what would they have searched on?"

To help the accuracy of both types of searches we ignore a limited set of multilingual stopwords (e.g., and, the, a etc.). And if you want to be really accurate you can do "exact phrase searching". So if you're looking for something precisely then "put it in quotes".

We're pretty happy with the algorithm at the moment but this is something we will constantly tweak to tune in to the best signal! ;-)

First Feedback

It's been great to get feedback. We've had some really helpful observations, comments and suggestions. Here are some of the comments and what we're doing to solve them:

• "Welcome page doesn't tell me what to do" - we're adding a tour and more welcoming text.
• "My Trail didn't appear in All Trails" - bug! Now fixed.
• "Save As dialog box popped up" - investigating fixes for intervening HTTP proxies.
• "Can't do exact phrase searching" - good idea - we're going to add it soon!
  
• "Blaze new trail should default to an engine (e.g., Google)" - thinking about it.