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A Greek search engine will make an impression at the interactive world famous festival SXSW (South by South West) in Austin, Texas, at which Twitter and Foursquare were first presented.

The social search engine Terranova, which connects users with people, places, events and activities, will be presented at the same festival between 7 March and 11 March.

According to the statement, former CEO of Apple - John Sculley will be the master of ceremonies at this year's festival and Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks will also take part as one of the speakers via a conference call.

As noted, this year's Interactive Festival, which started in 1994 as a musical event, has been the most important event in the world for a decade – it presents future technologies and the world meets the most ambitious talents and most advanced ideas and products in the field of high technologies there.

Twitter also started from this festival in 2007, as well as Foursquare in 2009 and many other companies presented at the festival, such as Siri, which were later bought by industry giants such as Google and Apple.

This year, the innovative idea of Greek computer scientist George Stoikos to create Terranova, a search engine that connects people, places, events and activities, impressed the organizers and jury of SXSW and was selected among 500 other innovative ideas and products to be represented as a finalist in the category of Social Technologies. The other five categories are related to enterprise and big data, entertainment and content, health, innovative world and wearable technologies.

It is also emphasized that Terranova is a smart personal assistant for iOS (Apple iPhone and iPad) and Android and soon for the Internet, which has the ambition to become a "one-stop-shop" for each activity. Its next versions already foresee a new generation of products - wearable computing – such as Google Goggles and smart watch Samsung Galaxy.

For example, you can type in the search engine Terranova what you want to do, "find me live music activities", "find VIP clubs", "find me a personal trainer", "find me a taxi" - and the application will connect you with people, places and activities according to your search.

The horizontal platform Terranova allows users to get in touch with each other. It is also noted that since smartphones and tablets have already replaced computers and laptops, especially as a means of communication, Terranova will be the next leap in terms of mobile phones technology which offers smart social services such as Apple's Siri and Google Now. The difference is that, while Siri and Google Now connect users with information on the Internet, Terranova connects users to each other based on their activities and in a more personal manner.

The application is now experimentally launched in Greece on App Store (Terranova!) of Apple and Google Play (AppTerranova) and the web page of the company offers instructions for use www.appterranova.com

Regarding its creator, George Stoikos, he is also founder and CEO of Terranova and has more than 20 years’ experience in the development of information systems. He has created complex applications in the sphere of industry, media, advertising, oil production, cars, etc.

Before starting Terranova in October 2012, he was Technology Director for 8 years at a company based in Chicago, where he created media software. Thanks to this software, the company has developed an interactive television network with over 46 million viewers, merged with two other companies and entered the New York Stock Exchange NASDAQ. It also has many patents in the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Australia, Mexico, Israel, etc.

Stoikos was born in Thessaloniki in 1970. He studied physics at the University of Aristotle, and graduated with a Master’s degree in Informatics from the University of Imperial College in London. He started his career at SAP, participating in IT projects for multinational companies such as Colgate-Palmolive and Beiersdorf (Nivea), and continued as a special consultant for StatOil, General Motors and Deutsche Bank.

Today, he lives in the USA, constantly travelling between New York and San Francisco, and wants to turn Terranova into the most famous Greek "success story" in the high-tech sector.