A new search engine, Ortigra, has been launched into beta phase. Ortigra’s main aim is to give parents, educational establishments and employers more control over the results returned by internet searches; a more personalised service when searching the internet and increased privacy for users.
The internet is now seen as an essential part of everyday life with children becoming familiar with computers and how to search the internet at an increasingly early age. This poses many risks, including the accessibility of inappropriate content and websites, a suitable solution to limit this access has yet to be made available; until now.
There is also an increasingly high loss of workforce productivity for employers in the public and private sectors due to employees using the internet for personal rather than work related activity. It has been suggested that over £12 billion is lost in the UK and $800 billion in the US annually through employees spending their work time surfing the internet for personal reasons. Ortigra is designed to help combat this.
Ortigra works by allowing users to select keywords which are then applied to all future searches made on that machine or network. Any searches made that contain that particular keyword are filtered from results Parents can use this to filter out inappropriate content based on personal preference, parenting style or religion. Teachers and employers can filter out social media platforms, career websites and more.
Marcel Gashi, Founder of Ortigra, commented, “Today’s search engines are very effective but I noticed that improvements could be made. Everyone will have seen media coverage on the danger of children and teenagers having access to adult content; current levels of parental control are inadequate. With Ortigra the controls are built into the search engine itself so parents, teachers and employers can control the content returned on a single computer or an entire network. The parameters set can be as detailed as required. We are also working in developing our browser which will allow for filtering not of just keywords but also websites. Which in turn meaning no matter which search engine one uses the filtering protocol will apply; I am very excited about getting the Beta testing underway.”
As if all that that wasn’t enough Marcel has introduced a charitable element. Working with UK charity Save the Children, Marcel wants to help the very demographic that the search engine is there to protect. Every time 100,000 searches are completed through Ortigra the organisation sponsors a child in the third world for up to 5 years. 20.000 children die every day due to poverty and as Ortigra grows its’ user base they aim to make a huge difference to many disadvantaged children’s lives.
Ortigra is expected to be well received by parents, educational establishments; public and private sector organisations worldwide.
