Trexy Wins Best Speciality Search Award

Nige and I attended the Online Information Awards last night.

We were shortlisted in the category for Best Speciality Search alongside these companies:
- Exalead
- Vivisimo
- Factiva Search 2.0
- Nexidia Rich Media Search

It was great to hear Trexy announced as the winner. Both Nige and I went up to collect the award as they played James Bond music in the background. It was like the Oscars for the Infomation Industry.

"The Goo" helping with Version 2

We're busily working away on version 2 of Trexy. Behind the scenes we use a system called The Goo to help stick things together. It helps me to traverse all the software artefacts that make up Trexy: templates, Perl modules, tasks, ideas, bugs, pages etc. - and it remembers a trail too.

If you want a new feature for Trexy, let us know (support@trexy.com) and we'll try to stick it in the next version!

A great night at Greenwich

Last night Nigel and I attended the final round of the British Chamber Awards at the Old Royal Naval College.

Being the winner of the Innovation Award through Technology for the London and South East Region, we were up against nine other companies for the national title.

Although we did not win, we really enjoyed the evening and were impressed by the stunning surroundings of the painted hall.

Trexy in ASIDIC Sum Up

The fall edition of the The Association of Information and Dissemination Centers Conference newsletter has just been published.

A summary of Nigel's presentation can be viewed here.

Vienna Round-up

Here is a photo of Nige and I doing our presentation at the YPT conference last week.

It went really well. During question time, a representative from Yahoo! asked how we rank the results. This provided a good opportunity for Nigel to discuss the goat trail, which we hadn't mentioned in the talk itself.

This means that the more people accessing the trail over time, the more relevant it will become in the results.

We were also lucky to catch up with one of our Trexy pubtrailers while we were in Vienna. And we had a great night out.

Double Act

Trexy gets a chance to take the stage today. Nigel and I will both be speaking at the Yellow Pages Today conference at 14:30.

We'll be sharing the latest Trexy search developments and give a quick Trexy demo.

Fingers crossed it goes well.

Staying Ahead in Search

Nigel and I are at the Yellow Pages Today Conference in Vienna. The theme of the conference is staying ahead in search, and both Nigel and I will be speaking tomorrow about search technologies and how Trexy compares with other search engines.

As the search engines and online directories industry gets increasingly competitive, it is interesting to see what the leaders in commercial search are currently doing to stay competitive. So what are some of the things that make Trexy competitive?

1. Trexy is the first search engine of its kind to interoperate with thousands of other online databases to remember searches.

2. Trexy gives the user the power to share their trails with others as well as follow in the footsteps of other searchers.

3. Trexy allows users to suggest and add new search engines to the Trexy database in real time.

It is exciting to tell our story alongside so many bigger search engines in the search industry.

Internet Librarian Videoclip

Here is a recent clip from when we visited the Internet Librarian Conference in October.

Click here to listen to me talk about Trexy. I am featured 7.40mins into the clip.

The video was complied by Erik Boekesteijn.

Trailblazer Authority

Kleinberg's HITS algorithm (later Google's PageRank) captured the idea of 'authority' based on the number of links to and from a page.

Google's algorithm has since moved on - large scale link spamming has seen to that - but the essential idea of attaching authority to a page is still important.

There is another type of authority though - the authority of the searcher who knows what they're looking for. Have you ever had to 'power walk' behind a librarian who knows exactly what you want? Having someone with expert knowledge of a repository or information space helps provide real authority when it comes to information retrieval. Librarians are natural trailblazers.

Traditional libraries might be under threat by new technology - but the job of librarian still needs to be fulfilled. There will always be searchers with expert knowledge of a repository and its contents - passing this expertise or 'authority' on is the way to optimally access the underlying information.

There's an idea:

TrailBlazerRank = Trailblazing Authority.

The Sins of Search: Sloth

Let's face it we're all a bit lazy sometimes and we expect a lot from a search engine.

Faced with a search box we typically type in 2.5 words and with just this small amount of information the search engine is off ploughing through billions of documents. It's amazing that anything useful comes back at all. The result page appears, and a high proportion of users aren't even prepared to scroll down - trying another search seems easier. A lot of users aren't even bothered to go to page two!

Recently social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us have popped up. But for the majority of users bookmarking and tagging a page sounds like too much work! It can also be really tricky to correctly tag a page. Ask two librarians which category a book belongs to and watch the sparks fly! Tagging a page properly takes time - which is something most of us don't have.

Trexy is designed with laziness in mind. It automatically tags a page for you with the search terms you used to start your trail. When you think about it your own search terms make the best tags. It's these same terms that you or somone else is likely to use when searching for the same thing.

So we're all a bit lazy - but that's human nature - and Trexy is designed with human nature in mind.

Heads Up for Innovative Search

Nigel is invited to speak at the upcoming Online Information conference in London. The Enterprise Search Solutions Seminar will inform online information and research professionals about how new social search tools impact and assist our community.


Nigel's talk includes how the Fathers of the Web, scientist Dr. Vannevar Bush (As We May Think), Ted Nelson (hypertext) and Tim Berners-Lee (interlinking data and WWW) have influenced the current trends of information retrieval and search.

Nigel will also discuss current search engine applications and technical developments that lead to how we currently view, retrieve, and remember information online and the possibilities for the future.

Trexy's innovative search technology has made Nigel a popular speaker at key industry conferences such as Linux World, Internet World and Ad:Tech.

Following Nigel's talk on Wednesday, 29 November, we will be off to the International Information Industry Awards 2006 ceremony where Trexy is shortlisted in the Best Specialist Search Product category.

Fingers crossed!

Flag and Bell Quiz Fever

Last night's Flag and Bell ended with another trivia tie-breaker.

Competition soared as regulars Raz and Andy fought it out with the old scissor, paper, rock to win a Linux t-shirt.

It was once again great to see so many new faces. Hope you can all make the Flag and Bell Christmas Special in December.

The Sins of Search: Vanity

Go on ... admit it! You've searched for yourself on Google.

The "vanity search" is often the first thing someone will type in when they test a new search engine. "Can it find ME?"

For Trexy.com this means a lot of first time searchers will be sadly disappointed, unless their name happens to be "Paris Hilton" of "Britney Spears" - it is unlikely a trail will already be in the system. So the challenge for us is to let the first time searcher know that, this is how Trexy is meant to work and encourage them to blaze their first trail.

After all who needs the "vanity search" when you can have an anonymous "vanity trail"?

Women & Technology Awards 2006

Last night I attended the Blackberry Women & Technology Awards ceromony in London.


I was a finalist in the Best Women in Technology - Small Business Under 250 Staff category.



The Blackberry Women in Technology awards look to honour the success and competitive advantage women have achieved through the way they use technology.

I had a lovely time and met some inspirational women in technology.