Power of Intelligent (or rather self-adaptive) Suggestions..

Intelligent suggestions are no new to us. Amazon.com has been providing "Recommendations" for a long time now.. but it is now that suddenly so many applications of these intelligent suggestions are springing up all over the web..

Social computing is big today. Its all about mapping the social life of a human being to web based applications. One of the key characteristics of our social life is our compliance to suggestions/recommendations from our peers. If we want to know which car to buy and which dealer to go to..we generally ask our friends, colleagues, family and their recommendations make a hell lot of difference.. Mapping this to the web requires sophisticated context-sensitive suggestion engines, a research area that has drawn immence attention over the years, but has delivered little good.

Still, today we see a lot of websites attempting to make intelligent suggestions.. Most of these websites take advantage of patterns found by mining data that users provide.. For example, some websites (shitt, i dont remember the name..) provide suggestions for "Tags" when you are tagging some article/blog or something.. These suggestions are not from some intelligent system which has "read" the blog and has idetified the context, but they come from how other readers have tagged the blog. These systems generally give most commonly used tags for that blog as suggested tags.. at the same time it takes your tags as input and does further processing.. so these systems are not really intelligent but they are self-adaptive.. anyways, they do a pretty decent job..!!

One area which in human social life propagates through suggestions is art or creative property like music, books, movies, paintings etc.. How we discover music..?? Generally some friend recommends it..!! Same is with books..isnt it..?? So, has this area got some attention on the web..using these self-adaptive suggestion engines..?? Well, yess...

Check out Gnod. Click on music/movies/books whatever you are interested in.. It will ask you to provide some of your favourites..and then it provides you with something else which you most probably would like.. big deal, u might think.. now the freaky thing.. go to the homepage and click on one of the links on the right.. lets say, Led Zeppelin.. it will show you a map of floating suggestions with Led Zeppelin at center.. obviously the bands with music genre similar to Zeppelin's music, which a Zeppelin fan is more likely to like, floating near center.. Click on any of the bands..and boom, you have a new music map.. Its so very intriguing.. I simply loved it..!!!

Another one which does a good job at suggesting music is Pandora. You type in a band name and it will populate a playlist for you with songs which are generally liked by people who like the band you entered.. I have had an amazing experience with this tool too.. It could identify my music choice almost spot-on.. Awesome stuff..!!!

Imagine a tool like Pandora integrated with iTunes or upcoming Zune-Urge music store.. Thats like a killer app..!! I would expect Zune to do something like this more than iTunes, as Zune is selling itself on the idea of music as a social experience.. It already is wi-fi enabled so that you can transfer song you like to your friends device and make him listen to it.. Later after a week, that songs DRM will not allow your friend to listen to the song, and will ask him to buy it from Zune-Urge.. Awesome idea in itself.. Imagine extending it with an app like this..

What can be the other applications of such a intelligent suggestion engine..?? Basically any online store which sells whatever can use something like this.. but further think about discussion boards where you post your doubts about lets say .Net something, or "How to click photos in Polar regions?".. Imagine such an engine actually suggesting you the people you would want to ask this question to.. It will ensure a lot more speedy and more reliable reply.. I am thinking..where else can it be used..??

Any ideas...??? :)

Touchscreen ordering: The future of restaurants..??

What if a restaurant can do away with service staff and menu cards..?? I am talking about a physical establishment and not an online one.. Well, it translates to a great deal of savings..and obviously, a lot more profit..



Thats whats happening at Bytes, a newly opened cafe in UK town of Canterbury. Its difficult to imagine, but apparently, Bytes is the first restaurant in the world to deploy "Touchscreen Ordering" to replace service staff comepltely.. (I dont believe this, but still it is probably the first restaurant to deploy this successfully) and its definitely giving some food for thought to other restaurant owners..

Each table at Bytes is equipped with a 15-inch touchscreen, from which patrons can place their orders.Aside from helping Bytes save money on wait staff and menu printing, the touchscreens allow the restaurant to build a database of customer preferences, and to change items and prices on the fly. The touchscreens also double as game consoles, keeping the kids occupied. Nice use of an existing technology, I must say..



A detailed report can be found at SelfServiceWorld

Light Bulb..!!

Light Bulb for me signifies ideas, innovation and creativity. Thats exactly what this blog is about.

Today the world around us is changing.. and this change is happening at a much faster rate than ever before.. Software, electronics, media..even age old automotive and mechanical industries are suddenly bustling with innovative ideas.. Innovation has become the new buzzword in the boardrooms..

Somehow, over the last few days, this frenzy has gotten to me..!!! My brain is stormed with new ideas for products, services, business models, advertising and what not.. I am gonna use this blog as a platform to document my ideas and brain storm with all similar, creative individuals all over the world to refine them.. I sincerely request you all to comment, critique, contribute ideas.. Lets make this blog a repository of ideas for tomorrow..

Lets put our thinking caps on and start visualizing what tomorrow can look like....