Researchers from CLARITY win UCD Sussed! Competition
Dr Maurice Coyle and Dr Peter Briggs, CLARITY researchers based in UCD, have won the UCD SUSSED!-UCD’s €10K Entrepreneurship Competition, with HeyStaks (www.heystaks.com), the social web search company. HeyStaks makes it easier for internet users to organise and share their internet search experiences without having to leave their favourite search engines.
Most users when searching on the internet are looking for information that another user, with similar interests, has found previously. However to date there has been no easy way for individuals to collaborate on shared internet searches. HeyStaks’ online tools will now enable internet users to organise and share the pages they find while searching the internet, without having to leave Google or their favourite search engines.HeyStaks allows internet users to create a ‘folder’ called a ‘search stak’ for any search interest, which they can share directly with other users or which can be made public so that anyone can subscribe to it. As stak members search, they contribute pages and associated query terms to the stak's data store. When another stak member searches for a similar query in the future, the pages that are most relevant to their query, as decided by the collective actions of the stak community, can be promoted and recommended within Google's standard result list.
The objective of the SUSSED! Competition, organised by NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre, was to transform business ideas emerging from students and early-stage researchers at UCD into business plans and commercial enterprises. Maurice and Peter were presented with a cheque for €5000, and will receive 6-months free incubation space in NovaUCD and will obtain professional support in further developing their new venture. HeyStaks will also go forward to represent UCD in the Europe-Wide UNICA Entrepreneurship Competition for Students and Young Researchers which takes place later this year.
Pictured above are (l-r) Eamonn Fallon, founder, Daft.ie a competition judge, with Dr Peter Briggs and Dr Maurice Coyle co-founders of HeyStaks, with Dr Pat Frain, Director, NovaUCD.
For more information and further coverage click the following links:
http://www.businessworld.ie/bworld/livenews.htm?a=2435645
http://siliconrepublic.com/news/article/13252/randd/heystaks-has-got-it-sussed/
http://www.electricnews.net/article/10125260.rss
http://cwebnews.com/technology/software-news/heystaks_wins_sussed_ucd_s.txt
http://www.ucd.ie/nova/news/currentnews/novanewstitle,35866,en.html