Trexy gets a mention here too.

Trexy featured in the 'Today in the library blog' too.

http://gsublog.govst.edu/mt/librarynews/

Trexy gets a mention in German

Trexy is making its mark in Germany too!

http://www.at-web.de/blog/?p=642

It's Official!

We really enjoyed the BCS Summer Party where Trexy was officially announced as a medallist of the British Computer Society (BCS) IT Professional Awards 2006.


Check out our press release and also take a look at what the BCS had to say about the awards.

Trexy Heats Up

It was a very hot week last week at the Rotherhithe office with temperatures in London reaching their mid 30's. This week is no exception.

As Jennifer quite rightly explains, "we feel like pizza's in a wood fired oven!"

We are eagerly waiting for our fan to arrive this afternoon in time for the expected 40 degrees on Thursday! Bring it on!

BCS Summer Party

Nigel and I are off to the BCS IT Awards Summer Party.

We are really excited that Trexy has been awarded a Technology Medal in the Services section.

The awards have been divided into 4 sections:

- Business Achievement Awards for Excellence in IT Management

- Technology Awards Individual Excellence Awards

- Professional Development Award

- President's Award for 2006

We are looking forward to meeting the other medallists.

Add an Engine

Here at Trexy we already record trails blazed on over 3,000 different search engines.

But now we've taken that even further by putting together a way for you to add engines to our database yourself without any hassle.

Using the new Add an Engine feature, it only takes two steps to add an engine to Trexy:



1. Enter the address of a search box into the form.
2. Enter a search into the search box when it has loaded into the form.

You're done! You can start blazing a trail. This is another step in our quest to make Trexy ever more useful. Stay tuned for more news as it comes...

University Partnership

I've just come back from an enjoyable day sharing ideas about trails with an academic from the University of Nottingham. We're going to write some papers together over the next year. It's been a while since I put my academic hat on and it was fun devising some of the research questions we need to answer and the best methodology for answering them. There are many avenues of research open to us but we both share a strong intuition about the fundamental nature of information retrieval: it's not about the information - it's how people use it that matters. If you like your ideas to come in academic form then stay tuned. I'm still looking to forge other research partnerships so if you're an academic interested in trails then get in touch!

SES London Video Clip.

Here is a short video_clip of Nigel and I at SES London.

Searching for a Missing Trexy

Yesterday, I received an email from a distressed parent regarding her tale of her two year old's missing Trexy...

Greetings from the USA. I'd stumbled (near literally) upon you guys at the SE Conference in NYC back in March. Took home one of your goats which quickly became the favorite toy of my daughter... go figure, guess this next generation (she's two!) will be blazing search trails with Trexy? We have however hit a dilemma in our relationship with this goat.

You see... Trexy went missing last night. Thus, leaving me to ponder the question of how to locate this beloved and rather explorative goat. Since Trexy is known to blaze trails, how will we know where to look? I have contemplated the missing person ads... though I haven't a current picture of the goat, rather straggly by this date after being snuggled and slept with by a two year old. He is a beloved goat nonetheless.

His bachelor adventure (not sure if Trexy is male, though we seem to have marked him as so), into the night caused quite a stir! While he was frolicking somewhere... my daughter, who doesn't quite talk, was desperately searching our house while calling out something that in its garbled form sounded a lot like "Trexxxxxxxxy".

Bedtime was delayed and a full search of the premises was launched. All of us searched, calling for Trexy... wondering where he had blazed his next trail to. So on to a serious solution to these hazards of mascot ownership.... how can we get another goat? Or perhaps a backup supply in general? The trail blazer that he is, how are we to ensure he won't run off again... I will be pleased to post links to Trexy, rants and raves everywhere I have the power to and my daughter promises to be a good goat owner.'

Regards,
Kristen

Don't worry. Trexy is on his way in the post Kristen!

Flag and Bell Gets Hotter

It was a stifling hot evening as we boarded the Queen Mary for our 3rd Flag and Bell event.

The river Thames was a great location to enjoy a drink in the sunshine with fellow techies and watch the sun go down.



For details of the next Flag and Bell in August visit: flag-and-bell.com

A LoveMark(R) for Perl

I had a great time at the recent Perl conference in Chicago.

Perl is my favourite computer language and there are thousands of lines of Perl code behind Trexy.

For a long time Perl's branding strategy has been confusing. This is a problem, not only in the mind of the consumer, but a law court will not uphold a confusing or deceptive trade mark.

In the absence of a clear branding strategy the Perl community adopted "The Camel" from the cover of a Perl book written by Perl's inventor, Larry Wall. The problem is, "The Camel" logo is owned by a book publisher, O'Reilly and Associates - not The Perl Foundation. Oops.


While I was at the conference I had meetings with Larry Wall and other Perl luminaries to see if something could be done about it. Fortunately they were quite receptive to the ideas in my proposal: "LoveMarks(R) for Perl".

Over the next six months I hope to see The Perl Foundation adopt my proposals.