Last Thursday I attended the New Zealand launch of Pingar, www.pingar.com, a search solution I have mentioned before. But this was not really another launch of a software application. It was the public launch of a vision; a vision of collaboration which puts the Bay at the heart of an international development and production.

A vision which includes the University of Waikato, the University of Wales, Priority One, NZTE, AUT, Microsoft and Pingar. The event was attended by the many shareholders and supporters of Pingar and people from the agencies above. For many it was the first time they would see the search solution at work. They also got to meet some of the brains behind it. Some of whom will one day be based here in the Bay. Pingar have developed a great solution for enterprise search, (large corporates and governments) which I have mentioned in a previous post and which is set to change the way we deal with the results of search's we make. Pingar aims "to take the browsing out of browsing" by reducing the time wasted and the poor figure of one in two results failing to find the required information. (Source IDC) It is time for such a solution with the growth of the openGov movement around the world. Pingar is better placed and better able to facilitate public searching of government material than other search providers. With Tauranga City Council busy turning zillions of paper documents into digital ones – they could do with having a conversation with Pingar's

Director, Peter Wren Hilton. So why is this vision a good thing? There is plenty of evidence to support the facts that cities which have research facilities and especially research universities have strong economies. Around 20 per cent of the ideas being generated become commercial activities which generate new business and new income for the region. This tends to grow as more researchers want to join the party and established business' move in to benefit from the opportunities which arise. If you want a prime example of how this works, just look at Stanford University and Silicon Valley. It is a tried and tested approach to economic development. It is hard to mention Stanford without also mentioning Google which started there. People ask if Pingar is aiming to take on Google, Why would it – I reply. The search market and the money it generates is so big now that even a small percentage of that income is in the millions. And there is room for many, even if there is a big gorilla in the room.