Piffany.com is Search tool with content safe for children
Title
Piffany, A Search Engine For Kids!
Description
Excerpted from the website description:
- A Search Engine For Kids
Why should a 9-year-old get the same search results as a 29-year-old? With traditional search engines, they do. Kids deserve the Internet too Our age-specific, patent-pending search engine, Piffany, remedies this problem, bringing the full potential of the Internet to children. We provide tools and cultivate standards to make the World Wide Web a safe, useful, and fun environment for everyone to learn, work, and play. By delivering superior content, we intend to become the market leader in online search for students, which will in turn enable us to provide profitable opportunities for age-specific, targeted advertisements of enjoyable and useful products for kids and teens.
How it works
Using Piffany is Simple:
1. Starting with the bar set all the way to the left, type in a search token like “science” and press Search.
2. If the search results were too easy, then you can ask for more difficult ones by sliding the ball on top of the bar towards the right. Just place the curser on the little red ball, hold down the left mouse button, and drag the ball. The farther to the right you go, the harder the search results will be.
3. When satisfied with the position of the of the ball, press Search again.
Watch a video demo of Piffany search engine for kids:
What Students Want
A 2004 survey of 160,000 students (38% grades K-6, 62% grades 6-12) dubbed “Speak-Up Day for Students,” and conducted by the Department of Education, Commerce, and NetDay provides direct insight into what students want. What would they like in the future? In their words, Every student would use a small, handheld wireless computer that is voice activated. The computer would offer high-speed access to a kid-friendly Internet, populated with websites that are safe, designed specifically for use by students, with no pop-up ads. Using this device, students would complete most of their in-school work and homework, as well as take online classes both at school and at home. Students would use the small computer to play mathematics-learning games and read interactive e-textbooks. In completing their schoolwork, students would work closely and routinely with an intelligent digital tutor, and tap a knowledge utility to obtain factual answers to questions they pose. In their history studies, students could participate in 3-D virtual reality-based historic reenactments.
Many students described the attributes of a kid-friendly Internet. This includes a safe Internet where there are no "bad" websites, viruses, pop-up ads, spyware, or hackers. A kid-friendly Internet was also described as one that was age-appropriate, including kid-friendly search engines and information on websites presented at a level that students can understand. Some students expressed interest in search engines that produce more fine-tuned responses to inquiries, as well as websites that did not contain factual errors. Sounds like Piffany!
Company History
Piffany emerged as a finalist in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition in May 2006. The $100K Piffany team members, their roles on the team, and their professional affiliations are:
* Dr. David W. Ward, President (CEO during the early stages of the competition), Harvard University * Michael Choi, CEO, Biogen IDEC * Sabine Volkmer, Vice-President, MIT * Eric Melin, CTO, SpiderSplat President * Michael Weiner, CFO, MIT Sloan School * Felicita Holzstein, CMO, MIT Sloan School and McKinsey & Company * Ryan Thom, Language Adviser, MIT * Prof. Ted Selker, Technology Mentor, MIT MediaLab * Eugene Pettinelli, Business Mentor, CambridgeLight Partners
After the competition, Piffany signed Goodwin Procter LLP to incorporate and to secure intellectual property. Piffany incorporated on July 19, 2006, in Delaware with the following founders:
* Dr. David W. Ward * Sabine Volkmer * Michael Weiner * Michael Choi * Ryan Thom
Following incorporation, Piffany embarked on a research and development phase in which they developed a search engine prototype, designed and implemented a kids-friendly Web 2.0 user interface, and secured newly developed intellectual property. In April 2007, Piffany began to lay the foundations for their initial product offerings: a beta version of our search engine for kids, and a beta version for our Internet safety rating service. Their beta search engine for kids (http://kids.piffany.com) was launched July 1, 2007.
Piffany is now in the process of entering the market with a search engine for kids, and will expand into the tween and teen market with a search engine for teens in 2008.
Languages
English
Additional Information
For information about Piffany Inc. visit: Piffanyinc.com
External Links
- Piffany Kids Search
- Piffany Corporate Website
- Piffany Blog
- Piffany Community
- Alexa: Piffany.com
- WHOIS for Piffany.com
