Pictured are HeyStaks co-founders Dr Maurice Coyle, Prof Barry Smyth and Peter Briggs.
HeyStaks, the first spin-out from the new UCD-led CLARITY research centre, is one of four new initiatives to share the Eircom €100,000 Web Innovation Fund. With this award, HeyStaks and the other winners will be given the opportunity to develop their concepts through to production and, if appropriate, initial launch on the eircom.net platform.
The funding will enable HeyStaks to develop their new web-browser plug-in, which works with Google and provides users with the ability to create so-called “search staks” as a way of organising and sharing their searches.
When friends and colleagues carry out a search on a topic you have already searched, your previous results will be specially highlighted, leading to shorter, easier, more relevant searches for all concerned. The technology is also a potentially useful tool for collaborative projects among researchers and college students.
The HeyStaks technology was developed by a team of researchers led by Professor Barry Smyth and is being commercialised through NovaUCD. "Seeing research graduate from the laboratory to the marketplace is always a big step, but a very exciting one. It’s an important part of the innovation cycle within CLARITY,” says Professor Barry Smyth from the UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics and Director of CLARITY, the €16m Science Foundation Ireland research centre that brings together researchers from University College Dublin, Dublin City University, and the Tyndall National Institute.
“We are very excited about the potential of HeyStaks. It is a unique take on web search that we believe will greatly improve how people mine for information online. The Eircom Innovation Award gives us a real opportunity to accelerate the commercialisation of the new technology," said Dr Maurice Coyle, a co-founder of HeyStaks and a recent UCD graduate.
Interested parties who would like to participate in this beta release of the HeyStaks technology can find more information on HeyStaks.com in the coming weeks.
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