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Posts Tagged ‘Aggregates’

PowerReviews Lands $6 Million To Power Customer Reviews For Retailers

PowerReviews, a company that provides customer review technology for retailers and e-commerce sites, has raised $6.1 million in funding led by current investors Menlo Ventures and Tenaya Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to over $30 million.

The additional funding will be used fuel customer acquisition and for new product development. The company’s original products let retailers include Amazon-like product review features into their websites, for free. Last year, PowerReviews launched two more social technologies for retailers to integrate: BrandConnect and Social Megaphone. BrandConnect tracks what consumers are saying about a company and/or brand on the social web and Social Megaphone allows customers to post their reviews to Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Last fall the company also brought on a new CEO, Pehr Luedtke.

PowerReviews, which launched in 2007, also powers a consumer-facing site, Buzzillions.com, that aggregates reviews from its partners retailers. The site includes over ten million product reviews. Customers include Staples, Drugstore.com, Walgreens, Diapers.com, Callaway and Jockey.

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Rumor: Geekbench hints at a Core i7 MacBook Pro

Filed under: Hardware, Rumors, Macbook Pro

A quick couple of tips from readers Ken and Jack, and this thread over at the MacRumors forums, point us towards an interesting results page at the Geekbench site (Google cached version, in case they get hammered), which aggregates benchmark results from thousands of users all over the globe. This particular page reports the performance of a previously unreleased MacBook Pro model (MacBookPro6,1) which claims an Intel Core i7 M 620 processor running the show.

Real? Maybe, although at this point it’s a bit suspicious that it’s not running a dev build of 10.6.3 instead of an internal build of 10.6.2 as reported on the page; also, Geekbench results are frequently spoofed by hackintoshes (unless Apple built an AMD-based MacBook Pro and simply neglected to tell us about it). Fast? Heck yes; the benchmark score of 5260 handily blows by the speed of currently shipping machines.

The eventual appearance of the 6,1 version of the MBP has been a bit of a foregone conclusion since October of last year, when developer builds of OS X 10.6.2 were found to include support files specific to those model IDs. A laptop refresh in Q1 would be a very nice thing, but in this case I wouldn’t get the checkbook sharpened quite yet.

Thanks to Ken and Jack for sending this one in.

TUAWRumor: Geekbench hints at a Core i7 MacBook Pro originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ComScore Ups the Ante in Mobile Analytics

ComScore, a leading Web statistics provider, has joined with Flurry Analytics to provide a more complete picture on the who, what, when, where and how of our use of mobile media. Founded just over a year ago, Flurry has grown immensely and this move will only serve to boost its popularity.

Flurry announced the partnership on the heels of its merger with Pinch Media last month. The service boasts a nearly ubiquitous presence in the mobile market and will add a host of real-time data to comScore’s reports.

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Flurry collects mobile application data from approximately two out of every three iPhone and Android devices. Each month, the company aggregates application usage data from over 1 billion end-user sessions across more than 50 million unique handsets from more than 200 countries. Over 10,000 developers have chosen to integrate Flurry Analytics within their applications.

That’s 9,700 developers more than the company started with just a year ago.

Using Flurry’s data, comScore will add “real-time consumption data, including frequency of use, length of use, user geographic location, new vs. repeat usage and Wi-Fi vs. carrier network usage” to its mobile application data.

In a market that’s only going to see growth, some are already predicting Flurry’s acquisition by a big-time player in the near future. Analytics remains hot, as evidenced further by this morning’s news of a $27.5 million investment in comScore-competitor Quantcast by Cisco and Polaris Ventures.

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Exclusive: Ex-MySpace Execs Launch Gravity Into Private Beta

Back in March 2009 a trio of MySpace execs -COO Amit Kapur, SVP Steve Pearman and SVP Jim Benedetto – left to begin working on a new startup.

In May we learned that the company, then called Blue Rover Labs, had raised $10 million in funding. We also heard well a few details about what the startup might be about: <em “The company is supposedly targeting the message board/Internet forum space with technology that aggregates content and serves advertising against it. Real time search (bingo! fundable!) may be part of the business plan as well.”

Today the company, now called Gravity, is launching into private beta. At a high level Gravity is an evolution on forums (vBulletin, phpDB, etc.) and groups (Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, etc.) services, which haven’t evolved much over the last decade.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Gravity is available both as a website service at Gravity.com as well as distributed via widgets and an API. They are also offering compelling analytics services for any service that hosts conversations (think broadly – Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Wave, etc.). That service, called Insights, is arguably a startup in itself.

And, finally, Gravity has created a new way of thinking about and exploiting conversational data. They call the way they track and predict the relationships between people and things the Interest Graph (a play on Social Graph, a popular way of describing online relationships between people).

I go into more detail on the products below. And here’s a video I took of the team in their Santa Monica offices yesterday:

Gravity: The Service

Gravity allows people to create conversations around topics. The service will be available on the Gravity website as well as via widgets and an API (we’re talking to them about adding a Gravity conversation to each record on CrunchBase, for example).

Gravity won’t be a mystery to anyone familiar with groups or forums. But their goal is to bring some more recent thinking on data architecture and user interface to the table. The team also makes it clear that they think of their domain as much wider than now-ancient forum software. A lot of what they’re talking about is comparable to features added to Twitter, FriendFeed and Google Wave. The goal is to help users discover topics that they’ll be interested in quickly, and then foster productive conversation.

Some of the features are simple and effective – like giving badges for participation. And others are just proven engagement tacticts, like adding a “like” link by comments to show support for what’s being said. This is nothing new to users of sites like Facebook and Twitter, but it’s compelling stuff when you look at aging forum services.

If anything, Gravity is a nice balance of fun, fluffy stuff and seriously thought through features. Here’s an internal Gravity chart, for example, showing how Gravity compares to Google Wave and Twitter. This isn’t to show one is better than the others. It’s a way of quickly visualizing exactly what Gravity is and isn’t:

Insights Analytics

Think Google Analytics but for converstationally-focused services. In addition to tracking visitors, pageviews, signups, etc., Insights shows you how many threads and posts are being created over time. It also shows which threads are the most active, most viewed, etc. It works on Gravity’s service as well as other third party forum software and services. In fact, Gravity has been testing Insights with a bunch of third party forum sites for some time now.

They’ll provide the service to third parties for free. They’re goal is to get access to the data to better build and understand the Interest Graph (more on that below).

Here are some screenshots of Insights. The first one, which shows a stream of pictures being added to a forum as well as a live stream thread, is actually a pretty compelling user-facing product, too.

The Interest Graph

This isn’t a product or feature, it’s the religion of the Gravity service. The company isn’t giving a lot of detail on the software behind the Interest Graph, but they are willing to take time to describe the philisophy. The idea is that knowing which people are connected to which people is great for social networks, and Facebook and others have done a good job at that.

Gravity is building an Interest Graph, which shows the relationships between people and topics that they are passionate about. Person A may love baseball and the NYTimes. Person B may love action movies and squirrels. Given enough data the service can start to predict exactly what you’re interested in over time.

And they’re going to great lengths to gather that data. It isn’t simply based on what topics you start and add to. Gravity is also analyzing the language you use to gather further information about your interests.

And they’re thinking about the decay rate of interests, too. You may be very interested in cars right now, but next month after you buy the new Honda you may not have the same level of interest. They’re able to see how engaged you are on certain topics, and how that maps statistically to what others are doing. That helps them build out a very interesting profile of who you are, and who you may be in the future.

Not only can they use that data to push you to new content you may be interested in, it gives them an amazing dataset to advertise against. And that’s the real value of Gravity. The more time I spent with the team the more clear it was that the conversation engine that people will use is merely the very tip of what this company is doing. There’s an ambitious project below the water line that has to do with gathering, analyzing and leveraging data to give people exactly what they want, when they wants it. Even, eventually, advertising. Fascinating stuff.

Trying Out Gravity

You can sign up for the Gravity private beta on their home page. Make sure to properly fill out the form, they want to first add people who they think will really like using the service. And if you add TechCrunch in the appropriate field it will get you in quicker. Look for first invites to go out in a couple of weeks.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Google Releases API for Cool Visualization of Data Mashups from Many Sources

A recently released Google Labs product called Fusion Tables allowed users to grab data from spreadsheets, text documents, PDFs and other sources and create compelling, comprehensive visualizations from a merged data set.

Google has just announced it’s releasing an API for Fusion Tables. The API integrates with Google Maps, App Engine, Base Data and Visualizations APIs, as well, to allow for motion charts, timelines, graphs and maps with all the data available and running on Google’s infrastructure. The API allows users to upload data from any source, from text files to full databases, and see their data merged and compared in cool visualizations. Surprisingly, that’s not even the best part.

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Perhaps best of all, for active, dynamic datasets, Fusion Tables is programmatically updated and accessed, so new information is accessible without requiring an admin login to the Fusion Tables site. As data is added or altered, the most up-to-date version will be available as long as the dataset is synced to Fusion Tables.

The Fusion Tables API also allows for queries and downloads. It’s built on a subset of SQL. By referencing data values in SQL-like query expressions, developers can find data and download it for use by their app. The application can then do any kind of processing on the data, like computing aggregates or feeding into a visualization gadget.

Visualizations of data can be embedded in blogs and other sites all around the web, and attribution remains constant for all the data that is uploaded to Fusion Tables.

Another cool aspect of Fusion Tables is its real-time collaboration features. As with Google Docs, collaborators can be invited via email. Multiple people can view and comment on the data, and these discussions show users’ commments and any changes to the datasets over time.

For an overview of how Fusion Tables works, check out this demo video that explains how data can be mashed up and graphed:

We also found this cool video from Google engineer Alon Halevy and Pacific Institution president Peter Gleick on the principles of interpreting and using data to solve water problems:

Developers can get more information at the API developer’s guide page.

We think data itself is exciting and has the potential to tell many previously unheard stories. We wonder what kinds of apps will be developed using Fusion Tables, and we also wonder where the datasets will come from.

What kind of data would you like to see explored and visualized in apps from Fusion Tables developers? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Boxee goes beta

Filed under: Multimedia, Music

After what has seemingly been a never-ending “alpha” period for the famous XBMC fork, Boxee, tonight the Boxee crew have finally (as expected) unveiled the first beta release of Boxee.

For starters, they have totally revamped the user interface especially surrounding the home screen. Up top are the usual suspects movies, TV shows, music, etc. On the far left is the news feed which aggregates content recommendations from friends on Boxee, Facebook and of course Twitter. Proudly, in the middle, is the “featured” section which contains recommendations from Boxee staff and associated partners (read: this is where money is made). And on the right is a list of items in your queue, but more on that in a moment.

Read on for the TUAW overview of the Boxee pre-release beta.

Continue reading Boxee goes beta

TUAWBoxee goes beta originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tibco: A Twitter Like Service That’s About Subjects More Than People

Tibco is coming out with a Twitter like service that has an emphasis on subject matters more than following people.

In Tibco’s view, the enterprise is not about the people anymore but the subject and contextual information that relates to a person’s job. The value is in decoupling the subject matter from the person so the right information can be found quickly and easily.

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The service is called tibbr, which Tibco describes as a workplace communications tool. Tibco has a corporate focus on real-time technologies. In June, the company announced Tibco Silver, a cloud-based platform for developing applications in the enterprise. tibbr is built on the Silver platform.

tibbr is a real-time technology that is definitely different than a service like Salesforce Chatter, which aggregates commentary on different matters to give context and knowledge about a particular topic.

Instead, tibbr will offer a service that is more about finding information about the most granular of topics.

We find this approach a bit cold, perhaps even taking a bit of the soul out of what real-time social technologies have historically provided. But this may be precisely the point. Corporations may be places filled with people but it is the work and the efficiency that drive performance. Companies are flooded with information, most of it junk. The demand is not for more talk but for ways to be notified of information when it becomes available.

We are reminded of Attensa, which provides a service that finds connections and aggregates data on different topics. Individuals are notified when a reference to the data is discovered.

tibbr is agnostic about the actual user. The subject may represent an individual, an application or a business process. This seems like search or discovery in many regards, driven by a subscription mechanism like a feed.

The focus on subject matter in tibbr makes conversation almost secondary by eliminating what it calls “static and unwanted information clutter.” The intention is to eliminate duplicate information and “reply all,” email strings.

tibbr is definitely an intriguing service that represents how real-time technologies are taking different forms in the settings of the enterprise.

tibbr will be available in the first quarter of 2010.

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Star That Tweet! Favit Launches in iTunes App Store

There’s a new iPhone application from Favstar.fm which launched late last night in the iTunes App Store. Like the Favstar website, the new Favit app (iTunes link) aggregates the “best” Twitter posts based on the number of stars they receive from other Twitter users. However, while starred tweets should in theory point to interesting and useful content that people want to save for later viewing, the Favstar service tends to favor humorous tweets instead. The new iPhone app does the same, which makes it the perfect addition to your collection of time-wasting apps for curing boredom.

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Nearly all iPhone users have at least one if not more applications whose sole purpose is to help kill time. Whether you’re sitting in a waiting room or standing in a long line, these apps are lifesavers for those of us who are so digitally connected that a few minutes of boredom feels like a death sentence. For many people, these apps include casual games. But outside of that genre, there are plenty of other apps for quick-fire entertainment meant to be consumed in small doses. For example, FML (iTunes link) is a personal favorite. This app lets you read through people’s posts of their unfortunate, embarrassing, and downright hilarious personal stories. Trivia-based Cool Facts (iTunes link) is another. (And yes, both were discovered thanks to a high-school aged family member. Don’t judge!) The new Favit application fits right into this category of casual, entertainment apps.

Using Favit

With a very simple interface, Favit displays one Twitter post at a time on the screen. After reading the tweet, you can flip to see the next one using a finger swipe. If you see a tweet you want to star yourself, just tap the giant star button beneath the tweet.

You can also swipe down on the tweet for more interactions. Doing so reveals the author and then lets you re-tweet their post or email it to someone. In addition, clicking on the “+” (plus) sign lets you add the author to a special Favstar.fm list which is synchronized with your saved lists on Twitter. This allows you to build your own personalized list of favorite twitterers, accessible from Twitter.com or any other Twitter client supporting lists.

What’s Missing

Although the iTunes app description notes that Favit has a celeb and tech filter built in, we couldn’t find these settings in the application itself. However, you can follow these pre-filtered lists via the Favstar website’s Leaderboard section. We hope this feature is coming to the application in an update because it would be great to be able to switch from the funny and entertaining tweets over to the tweets from tech and social media set and then over to celebs, depending on whatever interests you at the time.

Another missing feature from the application is one of our favorite features from the Favstar website – the ability to see who has been favoriting your tweets. The Favit app could offer a quick and easy way to track those people and then add them to a list or follow them, but sadly it does not. Still, that’s hardly a deal-breaker since Favstar offers RSS feeds for this purpose via their website. Besides, it’s clear the app is meant to be more of a fun toy for casual users rather than a handy utility meant for data-obsessed folks like us.

If you want to check out the new Favit application (iTunes link), you’ll have to fork out a little cash. Favit, unlike similar time-wasters including the above-mentioned FML and Cool Facts, doesn’t come in free and pro versions. Instead, it’s one price only: $2.99. That may seem like a lot for an app just meant to amuse you, but the next time you’re terribly bored, you’ll be glad you downloaded it.

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