Trexy.com remembers the search trails of previous searches, helping you to get back to that page you know were relevant, but cannot seem to find again.

Dr. Vannevar Bush was one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s main advisers within the area of science and technology policy, laying the foundation for the American post World War II policy in that area. He was also a great scientist.

In one paper called As We May Think he presented the idea of creating a collective memory by recording people’s trails through information. Hence you would not only file the final results of a search, but the search process itself.

In this paper Bush pointed out that the human mind does not work like a filing cabinet, where information is found by tracing it down from subclass to subclass:

It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. (…)

Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. (…)

The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

Bush called the machine the Memex:

When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. (…) Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space.

London based Trexy.com is trying to build the Memex machine, using searches done in search engines like Google, MSN and Ask.com for the search trails. Trexy.com remembers the search terms and the web pages visited on over 3000 engines. Trexy also enables users to follow the anonymous search trails of other searchers.

By making use of your own previous searches and the search trails of others you will — hopefully - be spared long and time consuming searches in the future.

Trexy’s CEO and Inventor, Nigel Hamilton says:

“Every day we all make personal discoveries and traverse trails from what we’re looking for, to what we find - but sometimes we forget. What did I search on again? What was I looking for? How did I find that?

“We’re all in an endless loop of searching, finding, sometimes forgetting and the procedure repeats. Wouldn’t it be good if you could harness all this effort? Wouldn’t it be good if you could remember your personal search trails and also follow the search trails of others?”.

Search trails can be created at Trexy.com or by downloading a free toolbar called the Trexy TrailBar. Trexy is free to use.