recommendation posts

Netflix Prize Contest ends after nearly three years

by Jay Hathaway Jul 26th 2009

The Netflix Prize Contest, a million-dollar challenge to improve the accuracy of the Netflix recommendation algorithm by 10%, has finally ended after close to three years. One team, BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, claimed victory by showing a result of better than 10%, which kicked off a 30-day period where other teams would have a chance to top the leading score and win the million. That period has now ended, with another team, The Ensemble, apparently beating BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos by a fraction of a percentage point.

According to the leaderboard, the Ensemble submitted its potential winning entry just 20 minutes after BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos made its final test. The score is 10.10% for Ensemble and 10.09% for BKPC, but the results are now going to judges for testing and verification before the prize is awarded. As a condition of the contest, the teams agree to reveal their algorithms and make them available for Netflix to use in improving its recommendation system.

Tags: contest, netflix, prize, recommendation

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Search, web 2.0

Need interesting bookmark suggestions? Try inSuggest!

by Jay Hathaway Jun 10th 2008

inSuggest for bookmarks is the latest way to get more out of your del.icio.us account. For those not familiar, del.icio.us (now owned by Yahoo!) is a thoroughly handy little site that lets you quickly save, tag and share bookmarks. It's a great service, but it would be an even bigger deal if there were a way to find other bookmarks you might want to see based on the ones you're feeding in. That's what InSuggest is trying to do.

Social networking pundits are making a big deal out of inSuggest for a good reason. If it turns out to be the next big thing, it could be a good way for interesting sites to get residual traffic and well-deserved attention from related sites that are already popular on del.icio.us. But for the average user, it's just another useful way to discover cool new sites, and it's easy as putting in your del.icio.us username. If you're looking for something more specific, you can even filter by tag. Happy bookmarking!

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: bookmarks, de.icio.us, Delicious, inSuggest, recommendation, social software, SocialSoftware, yahoo

Filed under: Audio, Podcasting, Podcasts

Escape Pod - Download Pod

by Michael Schleifstein May 8th 2008

Last time we told you about a science podcast that was all about getting to the truth, now let's look at a podcast that covers the other side of science. Escape Pod is a weekly short story podcast hosted by Stephen Eley released every Thursday. The three-year-old podcast will stretch your mind with all types of sci-fi including space, time, technology, hard science, and even weird psychological science fiction. Each episode features some of the best science fiction from the present and the past with some stories from the great digests being read as well as this years Hugo nominees.

All stories come with an introduction that helps guide the listener into the work and gives fair warning to parents about the content of the work. Each episode even carries a rating similar to movies (G to R) to help determine whether you want your kids to listen. This week's PG episode features a 2008 Hugo nominee that was published in Asimov's Science Fiction short story magazine last year. The story took our minds on an Outer Limits type journey that included a main character living out the end of his life and discovering someone who may have been the reincarnation of someone very close to him.

Escape Pod is part of a network of short story podcasts including the horror podcast, Pseudopod, and the fantasy podcast, PodCastle.

Download Pod is an occasional series about our favorite podcasts. If you have suggestions for podcasts you think we should check out, let us know in the comments or via our tips page.

Tags: download pod, DownloadPod, escape pod, EscapePod, hugo, podcast, recommendation, science, science fiction, science-fiction, ScienceFiction, short story, ShortStory, story

Filed under: Audio, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Open Source

Pandora's Jar: Save MP3s from Pandora automatically

by Jordan Running Dec 5th 2006

Over at the Hak.5 forums you can download an app cheekily named Pandora's Jar, which adds a bunch of functionality to music-recommendation service Pandora. Most notably, Pandora's Jar will automatically download the tracks you hear on Pandora, carefully naming and tagging them first. It also features Last.fm integration, automatically adding tracks to your account as well as fetching album art, artist bios, and so on for display. Getting it set up isn't as streamlined as it could be, so you may want to check out the "noob's guide" before downloading. If you're in a hackish mood, you'll be happy to learn that Pandora's Jar is open source and built in Java, so presumably it will run on most platforms. I have no idea how well this app sits with Pandora's terms of service (my guess is poorly), so use at your own risk.

[Via Lifehacker]

Tags: download, mp3, music, pandora, pandora's jar, Pandora'sJar, recommendation

Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, Social Software

InsiderPages: Search and review local businesses

by Chris Gilmer Sep 11th 2006

It's always difficult to find truly great local businesses. For a lot of businesses, recommendations and word of mouth is how they generate the most business. That's where InsiderPages comes into play. On InsiderPages.com people can share reviews of local businesses in their area like Auto Repairs, Plumbers, and Realtors, so they can find services they can trust, and truly be happy at the results. The site is very simple to use, and there are currently over 500,000 customer reviews from across the US. Check it out when you need your next service.

[Via web2list]

Tags: business, insiderpages, local search, local service, LocalSearch, LocalService, recommendation, yellow pages, YellowPages

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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