The contest has been ongoing for almost 3 years. The objective was to improve Netflick’s current movie recommendation system, called Cinematch, by at least 10%. BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos team did so, and the 7 team members were awarded the $1,000,000 Netflix Prize today.
So, how did BPC do it? We’re not sure, but here’s their explanation, and also here … their approach seems to involve improvements to Collaborative Filtering via Neighborhood Models and Latent Factor Models.
Anyway, their maps look interesting – they have zoomable interactive affinity maps for music, movies, books and TV shows. The map for movies, for example, shows that if you liked the original Terminator, you’re also likely to want to rent The Fly, whereas fans of Terminator 2 would go for Lord of the Rings instead.
Recommender systems are software applications that aim to support users in their decision-making while interacting with large information spaces. They recommend items of interest to users based on preferences they have expressed, either explicitly or implicitly. The ever-expanding volume and increasing complexity of information on the Web has therefore made such systems essential tools for users in a variety of information seeking or e-commerce activities. Recommender systems help overcome the information overload problem by exposing users to the most interesting items, and by offering novelty, surprise, and relevance. Recommender technology is hence the central piece of the information seeking puzzle. Major e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Yahoo are using recommendation technology in ubiquitous ways. Many new comers are on their way and entrepreneurs are competing in order to find the right approach to use this technology effectively.
Plus it’s a great way to keep customers and build business and ward off competition as per the following interview with Netflix exec Reed Hastings:
One Il-Gu Cha of Royal College of Art designed this rolling radio with a dead simple interface. The R-1 Radio as it’s called, won a silver medal at the IDEA ‘09 awards.
Here’s the first official shot of the 9700 (codenamed Onyx), T-Mobile’s first 3G BlackBerry.
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the successor of the well known BlackBerry Bold.
For starters, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 rocks the same optical track pad seen on the BlackBerry Curve 8520. That means slipping from menu to menu is easier than ever but apparently RIM’s preloading it with the Amazon MP3 store, so that’s slightly interesting. T-Mobile says 9700 will support UMA Wi-Fi calling, visual voicemail, and corporate email. They also confirmed that it will have TeleNav GPS Navigator and Amazon MP3 store pre-installed. From what we can tell, it’s due in early November, but pricing is still unclear – we hope that RIM and T-Mobile have saved the best surprise for last.
Microsoft launched the new Zune HD media player today. There are 2 models at 16GB and 32GB respectively.
The 32GB model holds 8000 songs or 10 hours of HD video; it also receives digital radio . Specs are at this link.
Some competition for the $10 more expensive iPod touch. No apps, no external speaker, but it does have that very nice OLED display, and it’s small & light.
AOTS rates the Zune HD at 4/5 in the following video…they say that the web browser needs a bit of work, and that MSFT might consider changing the brand name…
And not to be out-done, PC Mag also reviews the Zune HD by comparing it to the iPod touch in the following video. The iPod touch narrowly beats out the Zune HD, by five stars to four-and-a-half.
Newteevee apparently duct-taped an older model Flip SD video camera to a new iPod 5G and took about 3 minutes of side-by-side video both indoors and outdoors. Seems like the Flip greatly outperformed the iPod in both audio and video categories as per the Ntv video below…
Other unflattering remarks include “the nano’s video was darker and bluer than the Flip’s”, “looked drab”, and ” the nano failed to pick up detail “, as per a review by Infoworld.
And P.Kafka over at AllthingsD largely agrees, suggesting that video produced by the nano 5G is even worse than that out of the already not-so-hot iPhone 3GS, but then adds the kafkaesque comment: ”the nano is good enough“. He goes on to say that multi-purpose converged devices will generally win out over higher-quality dedicated ones…’the triumph of mediocrity’, as he puts it. One supposes that the only way forward for the Flip, and like devices, is to pile on the features such as telephony, radios and music players, but to keep the ratio of cost to selling price as low as possible.
Yesterday Motorola announced its first Android-powered phone, the CLIQ. CLIQ has the many of the usual smartphone features, including a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 3.1 inch 320×480 187 PPI capacitive touch-screen display, 5 megapixel camera with video recording and playback, A-GPS and 3G capability. Cliq runs on Android 1.5 (Cupcake), a well-regarded verion of Android. Specs are here.
The Cliq’s main claim to fame however is Motoblur, which the company says integrates and syncs various social feeds including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, e-mail and Photobucket and Picasa into one customizable home screen. Motorola describes the Cliq as “the First Phone with Social Skills”, thanks to this silo-breaking feature. On an iPhone, for example, one would be required to access each of those apps individually.
Here is Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha introducing the Cliq at a recent conference…
Also at the Apple ‘Special Event’ held on 9/9/09, a new third generation iPod touch was shown. There’s not much to report, aside from an increase in max capacity to 64 GB, plus a faster processor. (For a view of the new iPod touch, just take a look at your current iPod touch). The entry level 8GB model drops in price by 13% to $199. 64GB for $399.
Some have wondered about the continuing lack of a camera on the iPod touch. Apple CEO Steve Jobs addressed that question in an interview with the New York Times, wherein he suggests that the touch is a ”great game machine” and that the addition of a camera would have caused Apple to miss its $199 price point. Lurking in the white spaces of that interview are likely to be fears by Apple about consumer spending during the continuing recession, as well as some concerns over competition from the spiffy Tegra-powered, OLED-screened, Hi-Def, web-browsing, also-camera-less, $10-cheaper (for the 32GB model) Zune HD from Microsoft due in the fall. Or perhaps it’s just a matter of poor quality cameras causing the launch to be delayed, as reported by others.
Duracell has released a new line of rechargeable pocket chargers, which can refill any USB compatible device. This little gadget is a life-saver! It’s so small and compact; you can carry it everywhere in your pocket. It can recharge your iPhone, your digital camera, e-reader and pretty much everything with a USB connection.
Duracell’s Instant charger is so simple, it has only one button to turn it on/off and one little light indicates it’s charging or finished charging. It is not as powerful as its older brother Powerhouse Charger, but it recharges your iPhone about halfway (180 minutes of 3G talk). However the Powerhouse Charger has enough power to charge an iPhone 1.2 times. It’s a pretty good idea to have an Instant Charger and keep it in your bag for emergencies. Although it is cheap, it comes with a 3 year warranty. If you interested I’ve prepared a little chart for you.
RUN TIMES*
iPod
35 Hours
Cell Phone
(Talk Time)
295 Minutes
(Standby Time)
350 Hours
Smart Phone
(Talk Time)
250 Minutes
(Standby Time)
230 Hours
Handheld Game
8 Hours
PDA
4 Hours
*Run time may vary depending upon the specific device and the mode of operation.
