Bangladeshi whizkid on the block

First-ever Bangladeshi meta-search engine SearchW3.net, created by a 13-year-old kid, has been launched to help Internet users find local contents and applications easily on the Web.

Shehzad Noor Taus, a student of class seven at Seabreeze International School, created and programmed the meta-search engine.

"The top websites visited by our country's Internet users include Google, Facebook and Yahoo! I wanted to change this trend and have a website of our very own at the top," the young talent told journalists at the launching ceremony of the meta-search engine at Dhaka Reporters' Unity conference room yesterday.

He hoped the new search engine would inspire local Internet users to use more web applications developed by Bangladeshi programmers.

"The meta-search engine has the capability of filtering and organising results in a manner that no other search engine is capable of. It's very fast. Many Internet users have said it's even faster than popular search engines like Google," Shehzad claimed.

A meta-search engine is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source.

The search engine was entirely written in PHP scripting language with 250 lines of codes.

"There is also a file-sharing site with the search engine offering unlimited storage capacity with the ability to send links to multiple email addresses," said Shehzad.

"He used to play computer games. Later he got into computer programming being inspired by several teachers at his school," said Shehzad's mother and popular actress Mita Noor.

"We are really proud of him for putting Bangladesh on the global map of technology," she added.

Shehzad's father Shahanur Rahman Mozumder and younger brother Sadman Noor Tahmud were also present.