In the software engineering literature people like to make analogies between programming and other disciplines, typically civil engineering (e.g. programming is like building bridges). But these analogies don’t fit very well. Programming seems to be ill-suited to the extensive modelling that can be done in, civil engineering, nor does it have the same high cost of change (you can’t move a bridge easily). Here’s an analogy that seems to fit: film making. And I’m not just saying that so I can grow a goatee and hang out with the cool kids (you reading, Geoff?  )

Just like Citeseer and Google Scholar, but better! Rexa is at core a search engine for the computer science literature, but with additional functionality beyond what the others offer. The key improvement is that Rexa knows about more types of data than just papers — it can also track people, for instance. It also has w00ty Web 2.0 tagging, and a dodgy .info domain. If they only had rounded corners and a day-glo colour scheme they’d be a dead cert for an acquisition.