Mid-2004 -- a couple of guys are out getting muddy on their bikes. Strangely, they found themselves both commenting on the same thing; that so many web sites and on-line services provide very inhuman ways for people to search for the things they want.

One pointed out that Yahoo! Dating was the only major dating website that allowed people to find "matches" -- prioritising people on their distance apart, how many mutual leisure activities they shared, and other preferences.

The other pointed out that house-buying, looking for a second hand car, and even finding a camping site have the same problems.

In both cases either a very detailed, laborious "advanced search" returned no results, or a broader search returned hundreds of possibilities, and in an arbitrary order, such as age, or distance.

They decided to do some investigation, and discovered why - that standard databases don't allow a search to be for a "best match".

Luckily for the rest of the on-line world, both these muddy cyclists were technology entrepreneurs. And for people like these, there is only ever one answer... if the solution doesn't exist, then it will have to be invented.

And so it was, and that was the first days of a new database engine, called Whirlwind Index^tm.

In the three years since, the Whirlwind Match^tm has poured thousands of hours of work and plenty of brain power into planning, designing and coding one of the most advanced fuzzy matching systems in the world -- built from the ground up to deliver fast, human results.

Whirlwind Match Limited
87 Lovell Road
Cambridge, CB4 2QW
UK