Speaking at ECIR

I'm really looking forward to sharing Trexy.com with the ECIR Conference here in London this afternoon!

I've got my presentation, posters and handouts at the ready ... now all I need is a soap box.

800,000+ Trails

Wow that came quickly!

Now let's see how quickly we can get to 1,000,000 Trails!

Trexy Inflates in Record Time in Munich

Thanks to our new electronic inflator, Trexy was fully inflated in 3 minutes - a 17 minute gain on the old one!

Trexy at SES Munich

We had a great time exhibiting at the Search Engine Strategies in Munich last week. We met some great people and had another successful pub trail.

Sven spoke in the session "Der deutschsprachige Suchmarkt – neue Player stellen sich vor!" and introduced Trexy into the European market.

Here are some interesting German articles about Trexy at SES:

http://www.at-web.de/blog/?p=505

http://www.ojobuscador.com/2006/04/03/trexy-guarda-tues-huellas/

Trexy has Landed

Click here to listen to a radio interview with Meg and I by landed.fm.

Visitor from Planet Microsoft

We've had many TrailBar downloads from Google but it seems Microsoft like the idea of trailblazing too ... ;-)

search@skippy:~> whois 207.46.98.142

OrgName: Microsoft Corp
OrgID: MSFT
Address: One Microsoft Way
City: Redmond
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98052
Country: US

NetRange: 207.46.0.0 - 207.46.255.255
CIDR: 207.46.0.0/16
NetName: MICROSOFT-GLOBAL-NET
NetHandle: NET-207-46-0-0-1
Parent: NET-207-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS1.MSFT.NET
NameServer: NS5.MSFT.NET
NameServer: NS2.MSFT.NET
NameServer: NS3.MSFT.NET
NameServer: NS4.MSFT.NET
Comment:
RegDate: 1997-03-31
Updated: 2004-12-09

RTechHandle: ZM39-ARIN
RTechName: Microsoft
RTechPhone: +1-425-882-8080
RTechEmail: noc@microsoft.com

Trexy on Tour

We're going on Tour.

1st Birthday Blog

The blog is one year old today!

And what a year it's been ... we started the blog because we wanted to share a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into creating a new search engine: the trials and tribulations.

The past year has seen lots of perspiration and some inspiration. If you've been following along you'll know that the march to our BETA release was long and arduous. The battle with the bugs raged all year:

• Bugs Run
  
• Cluster Growing Pains
• Basket cases
• Day 4 Bug-a-Thon - Brain Drain
• KISS This Bug
• WebTrailBar War
• Got it!

We had some 'environmental' problems too:

• Wireless Wipeout
  
• Baton down the Hatches

But it has also been a lot of fun! During the year the team has more than doubled in size:

• A Special Day
  
• Welcome Sven
  
• Then There Were Five
  

For the first time there were more than two people at the office Christmas party!

All along Meg and I have pursued the dream of making a useful search engine that fulfills the trailblazing aspects of Vannevar Bush's 1945 vision.

It was really emotional when we finally hit the "Go Live" button: Trexy is off and Trailblazing.

But we didn't send Trexy out into the world without protection. We had already prepared the company and our research and development efforts were recently rewarded with some patently good news. It wasn't long before Google paid us the first of many visits.

The competition is fierce but The Goat is now well on its way! Looking forward to more trails and tribulations next year ...

More Trailblazers From Different Countries

The latest countries to start trailblazing are:

Poland
Japan
Sweden
Lebanon
Iran
Brazil
Thailand

To start waving your country's flag, download the TrailBar.

Hot Off The Press

We've had some interesting articles written about us since the SES conference in New York. You can check them out here:

Roundup: Search Engine Strategies: http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/article.php/3589231

A Goat Blazes the Trail at SES: http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=35919

Trexy – Rhymes with “Sexy”: http://blog.xodp.org/blog.html

Trexy - Suchanfragen speichern und teilen: http://www.at-web.de/blog/?p=467

Creating Trails in the Blogosphere: http://reblogger.wordpress.com/

Trexy Sees Trails with new Technology: http://www.adotas.com/2006/03/trexy-sees-trails-with-new-search-tool/

If you spot any articles about Trexy, it would be great if you could let us know.

Goodbye Jeeves. May The Force Be With You!

Nige and I say our farewells to Jeeves at the Code Red party in New York.

It's How You Throw It.

We had a great week exhibiting at the SES conference in New York last week.

It was the first time we've put our Cycle of Search board game to the test.

To win a soft goat, exhibition attendees needed to throw a hoop on one of the hooks on the steps in the Cycle of Search. So it is essentially quoits.

Standing over a meter away from the game, it was great to see all the different throwing styles.

Variations included:

• The overarm slammer - powerful throw that quite often sent hoops flying
• The gentle toss - timid throw that sometimes fell short of the game
• The upsidedown shaker - dramatic inverted underarm throw
• The reverse frisbee toss - emphasis placed on spinning.

We were glad that people could play it in their individual ways and win.

We designed the game so conference attendees could take the Cycle of Search for a spin and think about the psychology behind how we search for things in everyday life.

To play the game we asked people to give us their business card, given we gave out over 350 goats, you can imagine we have a bit of follow up to do.

Trexy on Show

We've had an intense two days! Here's a quick summary:

• Trexy has been well received and the media is beginning to pick up the story
• Met lots of partners, old and new
• Meg did an interview for the Washington Post. We're both doing a radio interview this afternoon.
• Hundreds of people stopped by our booth
• 350 Trexy soft toys have found new homes
• The first ever "Trexy Pub Trail" took place last night
  

The news is spreading around the blogosphere too:

• http://www.pandia.com/sew/181-trexycom-old-idea-gets-new-life.html
• http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-03-01-n56.html

Bye Bye Jeeves

Last night we had a great dinner with one of our partners and then it was off to a club called "Code Red" for the AskJeeves party.

By the time we got to the party it was well under way. We were wondering how Ask.com was going to say goodbye to Jeeves and it didn't take long for us to work it out. Two Star Wars Stormtroopers stood ominously on stage guarding a lifesize bust of Jeeves frozen in "carbonite". Bobba Fett stood guard too in a scene reminiscent of Han Solo's carbonite freezing by Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars Episode V.

We were a bit sad to see the end of a trade mark ... but then that's how the audience felt when Han Solo was frozen. Could Jeeves come back one day?

Meg and I couldn't resist getting one last photo of Jeeves. Coming soon ...

1 Day To Go

We've all made it to New York and amazingly all our "stuff" made it too. The team spent the morning setting up the booth and we're really happy with it.

350 soft Trexys have also arrived - that means we have to give out one every three minutes. Let's see how we go ... the booth opens for business tomorrow for two days. There are very few exhibitors with pure search engine technology, the majority of booths are selling complimentary pay per click products and services.

Tonight we're off to dinner with a partner and the AskJeeves party. I suspect 'Jeeves' is going to get his final send off ...

2 Days To Go

Thanks for all the well wishes! We're off to Heathrow. Hang on. Where is that Goat?

Got it!

Some of the biggest bugs have the smallest causes. It turns out the "monster bug" was caused by an invisible carriage return character "\r". Got him!

3 Days To Go

We spent most of yesterday tackling a "monster" bug. The Web TrailBar is primarily meant to demonstrate how Trexy works without the user needing to install a TrailBar first. Generally it works well but on some web pages it inexplicably locks up. Strangely it works everywhere except on the Trexy cluster. Normally we don't like to sleep on a bug but this one is nasty. For me the best time to kill bugs is between 5am and 6am in the morning - it's 5:35am now and I've got this one in my sights!

Apart from that everything is coming together. Meg just sent me an email from Australia. She's going to jump on the plane soon to New York. I'm ready to go to New York too but that bug isn't coming with me ... ;-)

4 Days To Go

The team has divided up all the "stuff" we need to take to New York. Rena is taking something that looks a bit like an electric guitar, Sven is carrying the "Cycle of Search Game" strapped to his back, Jennifer has lots of bits and pieces and I'm taking a 1.5 metre tall inflatable goat. I can imagine U.S. Customs pulling us aside for an explanation, "so what's all this about?!"

In more developments, the Yahoo adapter is turned back on after temporarily failing. If you want Trexy to adapt to your favourite search engine you can suggest it here. From time to time a search engine's adapter can break, if you find a broken search engine adapter email: support@trexy.com. It's good to see Yahoo back!

New Internet Explorer TrailBar

The "Sign In" feature has been added to the IE TrailBar. Click here to download the IE TrailBar.