HeyStaks Technologies, a new UCD spin-out company is one of four new initiatives to share the Eircom €100,000 Web Innovation Fund. With this award, HeyStaks and the other winners enter into an agreement with Eircom to develop their concepts through to production and, if appropriate, initial launch on the eircom.net platform. HeyStaks is the first spin-out company to emerge from the CLARITY CSET. CLARITY is a €16m Science Foundation Ireland research centre focused on the so-called ‘Sensor Web’, which combines researchers from University College Dublin, Dublin City University, and the Tyndall National Institute, Cork.

Prof Barry Smyth (centre) and Peter Briggs and Dr Maurice Coyle, co-founders of HeyStaks

HeyStaks which is a new approach to internet searching that helps people to share their search experiences with friends and colleagues has been developed by Professor Barry Smyth and colleagues from UCD’s School of Computer Science and Informatics. HeyStaks, which is a new web-browser plug-in, works with Google and provides users with the ability to create so-called “search staks” as a way of organising and sharing their searches.

For example, using the new technology a group of friends planning a holiday abroad might create and share a “Holiday 2008” search stak. As each person searches for travel, accommodation and entertainment options, their search selections will be automatically shared with the other group members during future searches as specially highlighted search results. In this way the group members benefit from each others’ searches as they plan for the perfect holiday. Likewise, a group of students collaborating on a project might create a search stak to capture their individual searches and share what they have found with the group, leading to more productive research.

The patent-pending HeyStaks technology, developed by a team of researchers led by Professor Barry Smyth is being commercialised through NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre at UCD.

 "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 who is also the Director of CLARITY.

"We are very excited about the potential of HeyStaks,” says Dr Maurice Coyle, one of the co-founders of HeyStaks and a recent UCD graduate. “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."

"Right now we are moving to an invitation-based beta release of the service. Interested parties will find more information on HeyStaks.com in the coming days and weeks and we are very interested in hearing from people who would like to participate in this beta release," says HeyStaks co-founder Peter Briggs, who has recently completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Barry Smyth.

ENDS

16 July 2008