Desperately Seeking Paglo

May 30, 2008

Posted by: Glyn Moody

What's a Paglo?

Francisco Paglo was a virtually unknown Italian explorer who first set sail as a lookout on Cadamosto's expedition to the Gambia River in 1455. Upon completion of a distance learning course in creative writing, he published a stirring account of the exploration from his viewpoint in the crow's nest, which was widely published throughout Europe. It ultimately caught the eye of Prince Henry the Navigator who was a Portuguese royal prince, soldier, and patron of explorers. Prince Henry summoned Paglo, and thanks to his generous funding, sent him on an expedition around Africa's Cape of Good Hope in 1460 to trade for spices in India. A storm pushed him off his target, and he finally dropped anchor in what is now known as New Zealand.

He never did set foot in India, but in New Zealand he remains a hero for bringing the country its first sheep, and his birthday (April 1) is celebrated every year with giant mutton pies. A growing movement has petitioned the government to officially establish the day as a national holiday — Dandy Mutton Day, in reverent appreciation for Paglo. On the eve of March 31 each year, children leave tiny bales of hay in their family rooms, hoping for the safe return of his ghost to their home and a flock of sheep for their family. Those who have been good the preceding year and have prepared fresh bales receive a bowl of lamb stew and freshly-knit wool socks and sweaters from their parents. But poor behavior and unkempt bales is frowned upon as a sign of disrespect, and these unfortunate kids receive a clump of manure.

And if you believe that, you'll believe anything. More plausibly Paglo is:

"Google for IT." Paglo is the world's first search engine for IT. Now businesses can discover all their IT information and get instant answers to their computer, network, and security questions.

It does this as follows:

we allow you to collect all of the information about your computers, networks, and users with the Paglo Crawler. The captured data is then securely sent to the Paglo Search Index and is ultimately presented through your Paglo Web Account. This is important because we are not limited to one type of information, say logs or documents. We also are unique with patent-pending technology that presents query results as both simple text and rich quantitative data.

Most interestingly:

We believe strongly in what we call the "open enterprise." It's a transparent way of doing business and a key component of it is that technology and expertise of significant value is provided at no cost and can be extended by the community that uses it. We also recognize that the Paglo Crawler runs on a business computer or server at the customer premises. Users like to understand what they are running, so by making the source code available they can understand exactly what the software does when it runs at their business. Finally, there are thousands of different networks and devices out there that businesses would like to discover and index. By making the Crawler open, anyone can easily write a plug-in to gather additional info. That info is then uploaded into the Paglo Search Index for searching and reporting.

I first wrote about Paglo last year; it's now in open beta, so you can give it a whirl if you like – and find what a Paglo *really* is.

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