Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Sunday, June 28, 2009

web potato - the new couch potato

Nerds Beat Netflix's Recommendation System, Qualify for $1 Million Prize [Contests]

In a very shrewd move, Netflix created a contest more than 3 years ago to award $1 million to anybody that could create an algorithm more than 10% more accurate than theirs. Now, a team has finally done it.

The two front-running teams, distressingly named Team Pragmatic Theory and Team Bellkor in Chaos, joined forces and have submitted an algorithm that is 10.05% more accurate than Netflix's. Now, the other contestants (it's a field of thousands) have 30 days to beat that score, and if nobody can (and no rules have been broken), Netflix will award the superteam a cool million.

This is a smart move for Netflix—improving their algorithm by that much would have been incredibly expensive anyway, and Netflix has said that the $1 million prize is actually a great bargain. Plus, it'll net them tons of press. Like the press I'm giving them, right now. Maybe in return, you guys can stop recommending 28 Days Later because I liked The Royal Tenenbaums. [Wired]

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Study Suggests Eyeballs Like Bing, but Google's Familiar [Search Engines]

A usability research firm, the Catalyst Group, performed one of those amazingly geeky (and neat) eyeball tracking studies on 12 people conducting searches. The results, combined with a survey, suggest that while Bing won out in layout, design, and filtering, and drew more eyes to the top, i.e. sponsored, results, Google familiarity and relevance kept it a favorite of three-fourths of users. [via TechCrunch]

Palm Pre's Mojo SDK Leaked: Bring on the Apps [Palm]

Palm's Mojo devkit has leaked to the web ahead of schedule—they had announced it would arrive in late summer, and instead developers are treated to the SDK right now.

Mojo is of the utmost importance to Palm: Without a huge and vibrant developer scene churning out tons of apps, the Pre might not excel as a platform enough to challenge the iPhone. The SDK that leaked is a beta, and some are warning potential developers to treat this version as a guide rather than a final release. Now the fun really begins—it's time to see what the Pre (and Pre community) can do. [PreInsiders, Thanks Pat!]

TouchFLO 3D 2.5 Tricks Us Into Getting Excited About Windows Mobile, Again [Skinning]

We've got some screenshots of the new version of HTC's TouchFLO 3D, which should be debuting on the Firestone. HTC's gone ever deeper into WinMo's UI, including every settings screen. Basically, you'll hardly know which OS you're using.

TouchFLO 3D 2.5 also allows for more customization than before, including three user-defined buttons on the home screen. Hopefully we'll be seeing it in action sometime in August. Check out the video below to see it in motion, though be warned: Them fellas aren't speaking English. [PocketNow