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Filed under: Internet, Video, Web

Netflix rolls out updated recommendation system

Netflix Prize
Netflix has been a pioneer in the online retail space by providing automated recommendation services that can help you find items that you might like based on your previous video rentals, ratings, and other data. But for the past few years, Netflix has been trying to make its algorithm at least a little bit better through the Netflix Prize contest, which offers cash in exchange for significant improvements to the company's recommendation engine.

And apparently that bounty has been yielding positive results, because Netflix announced this week that it's changed the recommendation system based on improvements submitted through the Netflix Prize contest.

The new algorithm works better for users that rate movies. The system will now predict how many stars you would give movies that you havent' already watched, and that data will affect the movies that are displayed on different personalized sections of the Netflix web site, including the "Movies You'll Love" section.

[via AppScout]

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Yahoo!

Yahoo! and Reuters team up for crowdsourcing

you witness newsYahoo! and Reuters started accepting photos and videos of news events from users all over the internet to use in related online news articles this week. Both companies plan on taking advantage of the many people worldwide that use mobile devices and digital cameras to take shots of breaking news, aka crowdsourcing. This new program will be called You Witness News, with Reuters planning on distributing selected submissions for print and broadcast. As far as compensation goes for photo and video submissions, the companies are working on some kind of reward. Yahoo! plans to start the You Witness program by offering social rewards. These social rewards will be evident in the online profiles of news submission members who get mentioned in articles. Reuters is, however, planning on compensating submitters when it does distribute the materials to its clients. There is currently no word on how much the compensations will be. If done right, I think Yahoo! and Reuters can really harness the true powers of crowdsourcing. Pay the users a minimum of $20 per submission that actually gets used, and people will be hunting for breaking news. Thus pulling in a lot more traffic for both Yahoo! and Reuters news sites. What do you think? Would you submit breaking news for the opportunity to net some cash, or for a "social reward"?

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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