search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
system for the
Gopher protocol
The Gopher protocol () is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to ...
, released in November 1992 by Steven Foster and Fred Barrie at the
University of Nevada, Reno
The University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada, the University of Nevada, or UNR) is a public land-grant research university in Reno, Nevada. It is the state's flagship public university and primary land grant institution. It was founded on October 12 ...
.
During its existence, Veronica was a constantly updated database of the names of almost every menu item on thousands of Gopher servers. The Veronica database could be searched from most major Gopher menus. Although the original Veronica database is no longer accessible, various local Veronica installations and at least one complete rewrite ("Veronica-2") still exist.
Naming
The search engine was named after the character
Veronica Lodge
Veronica Cecilia Lodge is one of the main characters in the Archie Comics franchise, and is the keyboardist and one of the three vocalists of rock band The Archies.
She is from New York but currently resides in the town of Riverdale, with her ...
backronym
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
for Veronica is "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives". Cory Doctorow at about 12:37 Cory states in his podcast what Veronica stands for.
See also
*
Archie
Archie is a masculine given name, a diminutive of Archibald. It may refer to:
People Given name or nickname
*Archie Alexander (1888–1958), African-American mathematician, engineer and governor of the US Virgin Islands
* Archie Blake (mathemati ...
– a search engine for finding FTP files.
* Jughead – an alternative
search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
system for the
Gopher protocol
The Gopher protocol () is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to ...
.
* WAIS – another client-server text searching system of the same era.