Jay Nickson develops new search software (UND Newsletter December 31, 2013)
James “Jay” Nickson, a programmer for Academic Support Services at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, has developed new search software that will make searching websites faster, easier and more accurate.
Nickson’s program is of the type called “semantic URL handling”, according to Michael Sadler, legal and marketing assistant in the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development’s IP Commercialization and Economic Development unit. Sadler is helping Nickson with the patent, trademarking and commercialization processes.
For the non-expert: a URL, or uniform resource locator, is, very simply, a web address. A semantic URL is a URL with added words that are easy to read and understand.
“For one thing, it’ll enable a lot better navigation, that is, it’ll make websites a lot easier to search,” said Nickson, who is fluent in several computer languages.
Nickson’s approach teaches a new way of navigating websites without the traditional use of a keyboard or mouse.
Nickson points out that search software on most sites returns a lot of pages that you are not looking for, wasting your time.
His software is a lot more accurate, allowing pinpoint information retrieval. It gets more of what you’re looking for from a website instead of searches that produce a lot of extraneous information.
Here is a link to a video about the Nickson’s invention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S590taVYdUA&feature=youtube
Nickson’s semantic URL handling software is being reviewed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.