The PowerResearcher story

Computer Consulting Services Corporation (www.ccsc.com), an INC500 company that found its feet in March of 1982, based on demand from its clients like Accenture, Bellsouth, Cartoon Network Computer Sciences, EDS, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Northup Grumman, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Sun Micro Systems, who demanded the best of the best, scouted the far corners of the globe, tracking down, interviewing recruiting, building an army of leading edge, top of their game, IT technicians. In this team, standing shoulder to shoulder, were hundreds of IT specialists from 28 nations, like scientists from South Africa, aerospace experts from the UK, banking gurus from Australia and New Zealand, satellite communication scientists from Canada and nuclear physicists from Russia and Peru. Together they were an arsenal of expertise that raised the bar on the IT standards. And for many years they reigned top of their industry.

Since CCSC has been a resource driven model, a company of permanent long-term employees, not contractors, these exceptional people sometimes found themselves between projects “on the bench/beach”. In order to retool them in this fast growing market and to keep them fresh and up to speed in their skills, they were challenged to continually design and create software products using the latest technology, which they did with vigor. The software applications churned out included Rubi™ – a Object Oriented Rapid Application Development Tool that was leapfrogged by Java; MaestroPro™, an intellectual capacity expander and memory teaching tool; ResearchRepublic.com, a teacher’s database of workproduct and Unite-IT.com, a community building portal, and as the dot com phenomena peaked, a “shopping cart” for the Internet that enabled you to collect and process all kinds of research data and media in one single application, called Scoutaboutä.

Graduation

The early 2001 saw the Scoutabout™ concept put to the test and focus groups, comprising of lawyers, teachers, students and businessmen all set to work to stress test the new “kid on the block”. All came back with a similar war cry. “This will be the one!” Once Scoutabout™ had survived the firing squad, it graduated and acquired a new, more accurate, more appropriate name – PowerResearcher™.

Many a sharp mind and many a creative talent brainstormed enhancements and upgrades to this promising new plagiarism prevention, research and writing tool. “Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan”. Judging from the number of claimed fathers, PowerResearcher™ was no orphan.

PowerResearcher in 5 minutes

Fueled by pride in their sophisticated creation, many a team member preferred to talk about PowerResearcher’s complexity and a user’s need for training. “A product that can be learnt in 5 minutes can’t be very impressive” they wailed, but through endless toil and tireless effort the “Keep it Simple Stupid” (KISS) contingent prevailed, so today, you can learn and be proficient in PowerResearcherä in 5 minutes or less. Just download PowerResearcherä or start your browser for the ASP version, get to our website, do the 5-minute Quick and Easy Tutorial and you are ready to go.

“In 5 minutes or less?” the ever-changing team of bright sparks queried, saw the challenge, picked up their tools and retreated to their cubicles. These amazing creators of, and contributors to, PowerResearcher™ were now faced with the most interesting of challenges. Brainstorm sessions drew their brilliant and diverse minds to exhaustion. And so it was with knocking out, cutting back, streamlining and simplifying, they shouldered the task with one mission in mind.

If you already knew MS Word, Explorer, Internet Explorer and File Manager, you already knew 70% of it, as our software mirrors those functionalities. But since the Internet is a moving target with increasing complexity, our passionate team of teachers, developers, programmers and analysts, are constantly at work improving the interface, features and functionality. We do not subscribe to the “make them wait” for a major release and then bombard you with a host of radical changes but rather, when this dedicated team complete a feature, they excitedly release it to the users immediately with hardly noticeable, automatic updates whenever you sign on. These baby steps throughout the year gives our users one or two new improved features to learn at a time.

Plagiarism – “protect and serve” versus “detect and prosecute”

The year 2002 saw Internet “copy and paste” plagiarism burst onto the education scene. The market did not know the problem breeding. The “detect and prosecute” detection services, with their sirens blazing cropped up, profiting in perilous times and thriving on the newly emerging fear of educators, students and parents.

But you can say we were still dealing with an immature market with our “protect and serve” proactive plagiarism prevention features and the ability to capture website online for later offline use, recording cited information from the Web. PowerResearcher™ quietly and proactively prevented inadvertent plagiarism, guiding and hand-holding the student or writer in academic integrity and made it easier for them to do the right thing. No fanfare or time-consuming disciplinary hearings or uncomfortable or embarrassing parent/teacher chit-chats. Just gently prompting and guiding the writer in proper citations and references, as we believed and continue to believe that students and writers inherently all want to do the right thing.

We are now seeing software companies slipstreaming in our tail as we blaze through the education environment, but with little success. PowerResearcher has remained the leader in Internet research and plagiarism prevention software. The only software of its kind announced “Editor’s Choice” by the New Zealand Ministry of Education on its Software for Learning website.

Some of the more significant members of the team: Christo van der Merwe, Matthew Hobbs, Carlos Bassi, Nelson Ferrari, Doug Beasley, Jim Compton, Jeff Reynolds, Dmitry Shugaev, Ishmael Mirable, Tracy Hansen, Gerhard Venter, James Gathwaite, Alvaro Garriga and in fond memories of Oscar Orihuela, our most dedicated and tireless workhorse nuclear physicist, who sadly lost his battle with cancer last year.

To be continued…………

Atlanta Offices
4555 Mansell Road
Suite 300
Alpharetta, GA
30022
Tel: 770 521-4370
sales@powerresearcher.com

New Zealand
sales@powerresearcher.com

United Kingom
UK-sales@powerresearcher.com

Phillippine office
PHILI-sales@powerresearcher.com