More offerings from Trudon

The main purpose of this portal is to be a single point of reference, a ‘one-stop shop' for users to conduct federated searches which will bring back results from multiple information sources. For example, a user could search for “Peter” and the portal would bring back results from the Yellow Pages (commercial), White Pages (residential), Wikipedia, Blogs, Citysearch, etc. This is a very powerful way to find what you're looking for really quickly across multiple platforms. The idea behind this portal is that in this fast-paced, technology driven world, people don't have the time to spend hours searching for information. They want to find what they are looking for quickly and easily.


The look-and-feel of this portal is very simple and clinical, very similar to what one may find on powerful search engines such as Google or Bing. The user's attention is drawn to the centre of the page where he will find a search bar placed optimally in the middle of the page. A user would type in their search text in the search bar and then click on the find button in order to process their search request. Above the search bar is an icon bar which contains various different icons. The icon bar defaults to ‘All' where the icon is the world. This type of search allows searches across multiple platforms. However, if a user wants to search on only a single platform, then he can click on the icon he wants, for example clicking on the yellow speech bubble will search only the blogs. There are also Wiki searches, Bizz searches, People searches and City searches.

The portal is highly customisable as well, which allows the user to personalise it according to his own tastes. For example, there are seven dynamic, visually appealing skins that users can utilise to change the appearance of the background. There are also many ‘widgets' which the user can choose to show or hide. A favourite is the Dilbert cartoon strip widget, which features the popular cartoon characters' latest adventures as an engineer exploring the corporate world. Users can also add a clock widget, a calculator widget, a calendar widget, an editor's pick widget and widgets for Weather, a dictionary, notepad, unit converter, Citysearch blog, Scholar blog, People search and Bizz search.

Skins that allow personalisation on the Trudon portal

At the top of the portal's main page there are links to Trudon's other fantastic sites such as the Yellow Pages site (www.yellowpages.co.za) which attracts more than half a million users a month. There are also links to City Search, Maps, Phone Book, Wiki Search and Scholar Search. The bottom of the page has the usual company footer and branding with a disclaimer and a link to the corporate website based at www.trudonhome.co.za.

The Dilbert widget

The Trudon company website

Overall, Trudon has presented a very simple and easy to use search portal which is intuitive and fresh. This is sure to cut down the amount of time people spend searching for information while making it simpler and faster for them to find precisely what they're looking for.