It is a "social" people search engine that is the pioneering idea of Greek computer scientist George Stoikos
At the world-famous interactive festival SXSW (South by South West) in Austin, Texas, where Twitter and Foursquare were first presented, the Greek-inspired "social" search engine Terranova will be presented between March 7 and 11, 2014, as the application that connects the user with people, places, events and activities is called.
According to a related announcement, the master of ceremonies for this year's Festival will be former Apple CEO John Sculley, while among the speakers will be, via video conference, Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks website.
As noted, this annual Interactive Festival, which began in 1994 as an exclusively musical event, has become the world's leading event for a decade, where today meets tomorrow's technology and where the world gets to know the most ambitious talents and the most creative, innovative ideas and products in the field of high technology.
The Austin Festival launched Twitter in 2007 and Foursquare in 2009, while several other companies that have been presented at the festival, such as Siri, which is present in every iPhone, were acquired in a very short time by giants in the field, such as Google and Apple.
This year, Greek computer scientist George Stoikos’ groundbreaking idea to create Terranova, a search engine that connects people, places, events and activities, impressed SXSW organizers and judges and was selected among more than 500 other innovative ideas and products to be presented as a finalist in the festival’s “social” technologies category. The other 5 categories concern enterprise and big data technologies, entertainment and content, health, innovative world and wearable technologies.
Terranova, as it is underlined, is an intelligent personal assistant for iOS devices (Apple iPhone and iPad) and Android and soon for the web, which aspires to become a "one-stop-shop" for every activity. Already, its next versions are targeting the new generation of wearable technology products (wearable computing), such as Google Glass and Samsung Galaxy smartwatch.
Examples include: tell or write to Terranova what you want to do - for example, "find me activities with live music", "locate VIP clubs", "buy basketball tickets", "find me a taxi", "find me a personal trainer" - and the application will put you in touch with people, places and activities around you, relevant to your search.
It is also noted that Terranova's horizontal platform enables users of the application to come into contact with each other for various activities, in the fields of social networking, entertainment and fun, sports, health and beauty, catering, commerce, travel and transportation, etc.
Finally, it is emphasized that, as smartphones and tablets have already replaced computers and laptops as the primary device for computing, but mainly for the user's communication needs (based on Gartner research), Terranova is the next leap in mobile technologies that offer intelligent social services, such as Apple's Siri and Google Now. The difference is that while the latter two connect users to information found on the Internet, Terranova connects users with each other based on the activities of each individual, at the level of location and in a more personal, more integrated and more meaningful way.
The application, it is noted, is already available as a pilot in Greece on Apple's App Store (Terranova!) and on Google Play (AppTerranova) and instructions for its use are available on the company's website www.appterranova.com
As for its creator, George Stoikos, he is the founder and CEO of Terranova and has over 20 years of experience in developing large-scale information systems and has implemented complex applications for a range of industries in Europe and America, in media and advertising, in the oil industry, in the automotive industry and in utility companies.
Before starting Terranova in October 2012, he spent eight years as CTO of a Chicago-based company, where he developed and designed software for the media industry. Thanks to this innovative software, the company developed an interactive television network with over 46 million viewers (according to Nielsen), merged with two other companies and eventually went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NASDAQ). As CTO, he developed multiple patents, which he has registered in the US, China, Japan, Russia, Australia, Mexico and Israel, while he has filed several others and is already under examination in the above countries and in the EU.
G. Stoikos was born in Thessaloniki in 1970, studied physics at the Aristotle University and continued his postgraduate studies in computer science at Imperial College London. He began his career at SAP, taking part in large IT projects for multinational companies, such as Colgate-Palmolive and Beiersdorf (Nivea), and continued as a special consultant for StatOil, General Motors and Deutsche Bank.
Today he lives in the USA, between New York and San Francisco, and aspires to make Terranova, as he stated, the leading, world-renowned Greek "success story" in the field of high technology.
Source: protothema.gr
