Gotcha!
Month: April 2013
Most Reviewed Amazon Book?
I was wondering which was the most reviewed book on Amazon and came across this list on the site (been a while since its been updated though). It seems that the first Harry Potter book is most probably the most reviewed product with over 7000 reviews of which nearly 6000 are 5 stars. Interestingly, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had more reviews at the time the list was last updated (in 2008).
Wonder whether there are any other books\products with a higher number of reviews…
Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Book 1.
Are we there yet?
Elad Blog: Who Cares If It’s Been Tried Before?
There is a difference between knowing the path and walking it:
Every large market, and every good idea, will have half a dozen others who are digging around the edges of it. Many of these companies will be doing something similar to your own idea, or will provide a service that at a high level sounds similar. In some cases these companies will win if they have a superior product or an unfair advantage in distribution think Microsoft bundling browsers with their OS. In a lot of other cases, the market is still wide open even if at a high level it seems crowded or busy.
World’s largest game of Pong
Before the Logo Flipped
Was watching “What women want” on TV and noticed Mel Gibson working on a PowerBook that had the logo upside down. The movie is from 2000, and we’ve come a long way in terms of product placements, and so has Apple. Flipping the company logo (a Steve Jobs decision that was similarly flipped) on the laptop lid was probably one of the most useful product placement decisions ever made, and its not that old an idea either. The PowerBook seems to have starred in quite a few movies, as recent as the middle of last decade.
Algorithm to write stories, read by Essay Grading Software?
First came the software to write stories based on data collected:
Once Narrative Science had mastered the art of telling sports and finance stories, the company realized that it could produce much more than journalism. Indeed, anyone who needed to translate and explain large sets of data could benefit from its services. Requests poured in from people who were buried in spreadsheets and charts. It turned out that those people would pay to convert all that confusing information into a couple of readable paragraphs that hit the key points.
Then came the essay grading software:
The EdX assessment tool requires human teachers, or graders, to first grade 100 essays or essay questions. The system then uses a variety of machine-learning techniques to train itself to be able to grade any number of essays or answers automatically and almost instantaneously.
The software will assign a grade depending on the scoring system created by the teacher, whether it is a letter grade or numerical rank. It will also provide general feedback, like telling a student whether an answer was on topic or not.
Just a prelude to the battle to figure out the loopholes in both with each trying to game the other?
Tablet as a Studio Light
Very interesting bunch of ideas – from using the tablet as a backlight for silhouettes, to pattern lights
Steve Jobs on New Product Development
New Product Development explained simply:
…there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do.
via Quote: You know, one of the things that really hurt… by Travis Jeffery of 37signals.
