reDesign

December 13, 2011

Scanning bar codes seems to be a popular holiday pastime

Filed under: local search, mobile, mobile search — Rakesh Agrawal @ 9:53 am

IDC’s 2011 shopper survey shows shockingly high usage of smart phone scanning tools to scan bar codes and QR codes.

Nearly 1/3 of those surveyed said they had scanned a bar code. A common use of this technology is to compare prices when at a retailer. That presents a significant threat to brick-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy, who now have to compete more aggressively with online retailers. This could put a lot of pressure on high-margin items like cables, which cost $80 in store when comparable cables online are $4 or less.

Although more than half hadn’t used the scanning feature, I consider these strong numbers for the technology’s adoption.

There was also high overlap among the scanners: 61% of bar code users have also scanned a QR code; 70% of QR code users have also scanned a bar code.

via Jonathan Gaw

IDC shopper survey

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June 24, 2011

Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

Filed under: mobile, mobile search — Rakesh Agrawal @ 5:57 pm
A screenshot of fake Loopt deal for Bi-Rite Creamery

A screenshot of fake Loopt deal for Bi-Rite Creamery


That’s right, the CEO of Loopt will personally clean your house for $5.

But only if 1,000 people sign up.

Only, I haven’t told him about the deal yet. He may not agree, but I’m using his name anyway. Hell, he doesn’t know I’ve put this offer out there.

Sound ridiculous? It is.

But that’s what Loopt is doing to popular San Francisco businesses. This “offer” came to me in a Loopt deal email.

In its bizarre reverse-Groupon model, they are trying to collect demand for businesses.

It would be sketchy but sort of acceptable if this were done behind the scenes. But they’re doing it out in the open using the businesses’ brand names with discounts the businesses didn’t agree to.

I wrote about the Loopt model the other day. One of the many challenges with Loopt’s u-Deals is that people would want discounts at popular places. Every time I’ve been to Bi-Rite Creamery, there’s been a long line out the door. They don’t need to discount like this.

Loopt is using the Bi-Rite name to build its mailing list. They are collecting people’s credit card numbers in conjunction with this purported deal. That is bordering on fraud. I would also consider it trademark infringement.

This has a lot of negative effects on unsuspecting businesses:

  • Having to deal with consumers who view it as a real offer. I called Bi-Rite and they said “We have nothing to do with that.” While the fine print implies that it’s not a real deal, to the casual reader it’s very confusing. Bi-Rite reported having turned away other consumers who referenced the deal.
  • Bi-Rite is a premium brand. Being associated with daily deals can dilute that.
  • Long term SEO impact. If “deals” like this manage to rank in search results, it further affects the brand and their ability to charge full price.

This is so wrong on so many levels. As readers of this blog know, I think Groupon does a lot of things that are bad for businesses. But they do get the business’s consent beforehand. The Groupon merchant agreement specifically includes a license of the business’s brand. (Section 1.6)

Update: Loopt has since removed this “offer.”

See also:

June 4, 2009

Announcing reDesign mobile

Filed under: lbs, mobile, mobile search, wireless — Rakesh Agrawal @ 5:31 pm

I’ve been working in wireless application design for more than 10 years and it’s really exciting to see wireless data take off. Mobile applications and widespread connectivity are bringing oceans of information to our fingertips. In the last year I’ve been more informed, eaten better, taken public transit more and been more adventurous than ever before. I’ve also been less bored and less lost.

The explosion in the availability of data and the creation of data is going to be transformative, perhaps more than the wired Internet. Realtime information from our friends, neighbors and sensors will allow us to be more efficient and avoid a lot of everyday annoyances.

There are challenges:

  • Network quality — Wireless networks in the U.S. aren’t nearly as fast or reliable as networks in the rest of the developed world. I’ve got a love/hate relationship with my iPhone. I love it works and hate it when I can’t use it because of network issues.
  • Filtering and alerting — With all of the content that is being created through mobile devices (tweets, photos, videos, etc.) sorting through it all to find what’s important is becoming a big problem and the tools that we have today are crude at best.
  • Platform overload — There are too many mobile platforms today. Developers have to choose among iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian. And that’s just the smartphones. It’s just not cost effective to develop for everything.

My new blog, at redesignmobile.com, will look at interesting (good and bad) applications of mobile technology and the good and bad of mobile user interfaces. If you have an application you’d like me to take a look at, please drop me a line.

This blog will continue to be an eclectic mix of pieces on social networking, search and media. I will also crosspost mobile-related posts for the near future.

January 8, 2009

Tellme about Ford

Filed under: cars, launchpad, microsoft, mobile, mobile search — Rakesh Agrawal @ 1:37 am

Yesterday marked my one year anniversary at Tellme. I spent the day where I started a year earlier: at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Coincidentally, Ford officially announced its next generation of SYNC, which incorporates Tellme services. It’s the project I’ve been working on. The first version of SYNC, which allows users to control their cell phones and MP3 players, has been tremendously successful for Ford. Cars equipped with SYNC have been selling nearly twice as fast as those without. The new  features let motorists search for businesses, get turn-by-turn directions, check traffic and get other information using just their voice. The Ford press release goes into depth on the features.

Microsoft’s Robbie Bach, president of the entertainment and devices division, referenced the service as part of Steve Ballmer’s opening keynote.

Robbie Bach introduces enhancements to Ford SYNC (photo from Engadget)

Robbie Bach introduces enhancements to Ford SYNC (photo from Engadget)

January 6, 2009

Tech lessons from a trip to Borders

Filed under: customer service, iphone, mobile, mobile search, search — Rakesh Agrawal @ 10:42 pm

On my way home from work today I decided to stop by Borders to pick up a guidebook for my birthday trip to Mexico City.

Step 1: Figure out if the Borders near my house is open. I called 1-800-555-TELL using my car’s Bluetooth to get the phone number. Tellme connected me to my neighborhood Borders. “Thank you for calling Borders… for our store hours and locations press 1.” FAIL. With more people relying on cell phones and increasing legislation requiring hands-free systems while driving, Touch Tone-only systems need to go away. After 2 1/2 minutes and three full loops of the menu I was finally connected to the store.

SnapTell screenshotStep 2: Arrive at the store and look for a guidebook. No one was behind the information desk. Two computer terminals allowed me to search for a book. The search results include books that are only available online, aren’t yet published and a few that are “likely available in store” in a seemingly random order. FAIL. Gee, wouldn’t you want to sort the books that I can walk out with first? Otherwise, why am I here? The screen says my book is in section “B020,” with no indication of where that it is.

Step 3: I notice on my way out of the store a book in the bargain bin on Sonoma wineries. I figure this is the perfect opportunity to try out SnapTell, an iPhone comparison shopping application. Take a picture of a book, CD or DVD and SnapTell shows you how much that item sells for online. (It’s like Shazam for shopping.)

My first picture wasn’t good enough; I got an error message. Second time was a charm, despite taking a picture of a book that was too wide to fit in the frame. I could scroll through a list of prices from online merchants.

While I was impressed with the image recognition, the data quality needs work. The results included older editions of the book; the 1 cent price shown on the summary screen was for an older edition. Even when the current edition was shown pricing didn’t correlate to the merchant. Clicking on the $1.99 link pictured shown showed a price at the merchant of $6.99.

Data errors like this aren’t unusal in large databases, but I suspect will improve over time.

SnapTell is an interesting tool for research. And with access to location information, they could build a nice database of what people are searching for and from where.

That’s assuming that stores like Borders improve service to the point that I’ve got other reasons to come in than “I can’t wait for shipping.”

Disclosure: I work for Tellme, a company that makes speech recognition systems for many large companies. I have a bias against poorly implemented telephone systems.

July 14, 2008

Unlocking the creativity of the masses

Filed under: apple, apple tv, facebook, flickr, geotagging, gps, iphone, ipod, lbs, local search, mobile, mobile search, photography, social networking, twitter, where, wireless, wireless data, yelp — Rakesh Agrawal @ 9:26 pm

With the launch of the iPhone last year (and the millions of dollars in ad spend around it), Apple did more for wireless data adoption than wireless carriers had in the last 10 years. With Thursday’s launch of the App Store, they’re doing it again by unlocking the creativity of the masses.

Wireless carriers had long held on to core cellphone features with an iron grip. Want access to the camera, GPS, microphone or address book? Good luck. It usually involved spending a year or more negotiating with a carrier and then writing and (rewriting) your app to work on dozens of phone models. And when you were all done, you brought it to a market with little distribution support at a price few people would pay.

In the last couple of days, I’ve downloaded more apps than I had in my entire history of cell phone usage (dating back to 1996). There’s one big reason: once developers had access to features like GPS and the camera, they created compelling applications.

The most compelling apps have come from independent developers or startups. Some have used public APIs for other products; although there isn’t an official flickr app, there are several apps that interact with flickr. AOL is the lone exception among large companies, with apps for AIM and AOL Radio.

Here are some of the apps that caught my eye. With the exception of iMilk, all are free. That’s another refreshing change: Apple is making it easy for application developers who want to distribute free applications. Even paid apps can be relatively cheap, with a one time price of $3-$10 being common. (Versus the previous $3-$5 per month.)

All is not perfect in app land, of course. Much like when Facebook launched their app platform, some developers are having a hard time keeping up with the demand. I’ve also had my phone reboot at least half a dozen times when using various apps.

The functionality in some of these apps is limited compared with their other incarnations. For example, in Jott, you can’t send Jotts to others. As these apps are revved, they’ll become even more compelling.

Jott

Jott allows you to record a voice “note to self”. The note is then transcribed and put in your Jott account, which is available by phone or Web. It isn’t as robust as Jott’s

Where

A mobile social network that lets you plot friends on a map, look for restaurant reviews, find and reserve Zipcars and even look at a map of the night sky where you are with the constellations plotted. (Video of the app.)

There are a number of players looking to create mobile social networks. Whrrl, Loopt and Limbo offer somewhat similar apps. Where offers a range of features beyond social, while Limbo is the most social.

(Disclosure: I did some consulting for Where last year.)

Facebook

Facebook took an early lead with the iPhone 1.0 by having one of the best iPhone optimized sites. The lead developer released a toolkit that was used by other developers. The application version adds the ability to upload photos and IM, but lacks some of the features found in the browser version.

AirMe

Upload pictures to flickr (or an AirMe account). The pictures are automatically geotagged with your location. AirMe also tags you pictures with the current weather conditions.

NearMe

See pictures from Panoramio of places around where you are.

Twittelator

See and update Twitter. Post pictures and location updates. Twitterific has less functionality and also has ads.

Urbanspoon

Kind of like a Magic 8 ball to decide where to eat. Uses GPS to find where you are. Shake your iPhone and it will select a place for you.

iMilk  ($2.99)

“Drink” virtual milk. Uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to empty the glass. If you prefer, you can pour it into a glass before drinking.

Remote

Control your Apple TV or iTunes. Play songs, see album art and search your iTunes library. Works over Wifi, so you don’t have to be in line of sight. Much better than the flimsy remote that ships with Apple TV.

Pandora

The world’s greatest music discovery service now streams to iPhone. The app is beautifully simple. Add in an aux in jack or FM transmitter for your car and say goodbye to the $14 a month you’re paying to XM or Sirius.

Yelp

Why settle for the hand-picked (usually glowing) reviews displayed in the restaurant window? Pull out your iPhone and check Yelp. My favorite feature is a filter that limits the search to restaurants that are open now. Very helpful for those midnight cravings.

April 15, 2008

Occasional reader – Pennies, GPS, bribing Congress, Nats opener

Filed under: consumer electronics, elections, fun, gps, local search, mobile, mobile search, random, reader, weekly reader — Rakesh Agrawal @ 11:00 pm

Some interesting stories from the last couple of weeks:

February 1, 2008

Microsoft yodels for Yahoo!

Filed under: aol, google, iphone, microsoft, mobile, mobile search, social networking, wireless, wireless data, yahoo — Rakesh Agrawal @ 5:12 pm

Microsoft and Yahoo logosThe announced Microsoft bid for Yahoo! means a lot of different things for lots of people. An emboldened competitor for Google. A stronger ad network for advertisers. Heightened acquisition hopes for AOL. Better benefits for Yahoo! employees. (Microsoft has the best benefits I’ve seen in the industry.)

But what does it mean for every day consumers? The biggest impact is likely to be in the mobile space. Microsoft’s ownership of the Windows Mobile OS and Yahoo’s large audience and mobile applications could revolutionize the industry.

As revolutionary as the iPhone is, it’s not a true network device. Apple did a terrific job integrating four devices – phone, Internet tablet, media player and camera – into one.

Even as our lives get more and more digitally connected, the cell phone remains a remote island of information. Someone needs to build a device that integrates the Internet seamlessly.

Some of the things I’d like to see:

  • A network address book. You no longer have to use the 10-key keypad or a sync cable to keep your address book up-to-date. In fact, you don’t have to update it all – as your contacts move, those changes are automatically reflected. The address book would incorporate network presence so that you don’t call people when they’re in the middle of something.
  • A network calendar.
  • Integrated photo applications. I’ve been looking for a way to view pictures from my friends on flickr through my mobile phone or iPod Touch. The best efforts have been clunky. When I take pictures, they’re seamlessly integrated with my flickr account, without the hacks that are currently required. (Sprint has done a nice implementation of this kind of integration with Picture Mail, but their Web application is awful and little used.) The pictures could also be used for picture Caller ID.
  • Richer data push to the phone. It amazes me that we’re still stuck sending 160 character text messages to each other. A network-integrated phone would allow for a better experience. Want to invite someone to dinner? Send them a message which appears complete with photo, address, review and link to driving directions.
  • Web access to text messages and integration with IM. When you’re at your desk, text messages come in on your IM client. Leave and they get routed to your cell phone. All of your texts are available in your mail app. The carriers are an obstacle to making this happen (text messaging is highly lucrative), but a combined Microsoft-Yahoo might be able to pull it off.
  • Network control of your phone. Phone stolen? No problem, send a bullet to erase all of the data. Forgot where you left your phone? See a map of where it is.
  • Local search integration. Found a business that you like? Add it your network address book for quick and easy access. Click to rate right from your cell phone.
  • Location-aware presence. The option to publish location to other networks, including IM networks. More on that later.

Some variations of a few of these features, like the network address book and calendar, exist in enterprise-focused devices. Yahoo! Go is an excellent consumer application that includes features such as a flickr viewer, but without integration into the OS isn’t as great as it should be.

Microsoft’s ownership of the phone OS, deep integration of Yahoo! Go and their combined consumer audiences could be combined to create a phone that out Apples Apple.

See also:

ObDisclaimer: These are my personal views and do not reflect the views of my employer.

December 11, 2007

Searching for a search engine that understands deep dish pizza

Filed under: local search, mobile, mobile search, search, wireless — Rakesh Agrawal @ 8:23 pm

Update: If you’re looking for deep dish pizza near O’Hare, see my step-by-step guide to Gino’s East on Higgins.

Having gone to school in Chicago, I love deep dish pizza. Unfortunately, there’s no Carmen’s or Giordano’s in the D.C. area. The last time I had good Chicago-style pizza was when my friend Jason flew in a few Giordano’s pies for his Super Bowl party. (The Colts were are also represented with tenderloins.)

Jason with Giordano’s pizza

I was connecting through O’Hare today and wanted to get some deep dish at the airport. I asked Google for “deep dish pizza at o’hare”. No luck.

This is a really difficult query for search engines. It seems simple, but it has a lot of components that make it tricky. But it’s exactly the kind of query that search engines should be able to handle.

Breaking apart the components of the query, we have:

“deep dish pizza” is a distinct concept. It’s different from “New York pizza,” “Sicilian pizza,” and “Indiana pizza”. (I don’t know what that is, but my friend Wanita swears there’s such a thing.) I could restrict my query using quotation marks around the phrase “deep dish pizza” but I shouldn’t have to do that. On the other hand, “deep dish pizza” is close enough to “Chicago-style pizza” that those results should be included.

The second part of my query was “at”. Search engines typically treat words like “at” “and” “near” and “or” either as filler and ignore them, or they use them as Boolean operators. There’s a big difference between the query “deep dish pizza at o’hare” and “deep dish pizza near o’hare”. With 90 minutes between flights, “near” doesn’t work.

“O’Hare” is also tricky. It’s a known place with a physical address. But Google and other search engines know it as ORD or 10000 Bessie Coleman Dr, Chicago, IL 60666. Compare the results for “deep dish pizza o’hare” with those for “deep dish pizza ORD“. Frequent travelers might shortcut to ORD, but again, that’s not a burden users should have to bear.

The answer, in theory, lies in natural language search. I’ve written before about how search engines force people to think like computers. Natural language search tries to teach computers to think like people. The most talked about company in the space is Powerset. I saw a controlled demonstration of their technology in August, but the promised fall public beta has yet to materialize.

Keyword-based search engines fake some of this by using tricks like stemming, synonyms and anchor text. With the uptake of sites like Yahoo! Answers and the sheer volume of information on the Web, there’s a decent chance that someone has phrased the question the same way. In the search results page for my original query, one of the results was a Frommer’s Q&A.

In addition to the structural challenges of queries like this, there’s also the challenge of how data is gathered. Data providers do a terrible job of gathering information about a place that’s really a collection of places — such as malls and airports. In some cases, information is simply not collected. In others, the information that is collected isn’t sufficiently descriptive. The physical addresses of these businesses aren’t meaningful to users. “Terminal 1, Gate C3″ makes sense; 10000 Bessie Coleman Dr, Chicago, IL 60666 does not.

OK, how many geeks are pulling out their laptops and doing searches like this you ask? Not a lot. And in search from the Web, it’s relatively easy to re-do the query and keep tweaking it until you get an answer.

Getting better answers faster becomes increasingly important as search moves to mobile devices and with voice-based search from the likes of Tellme and Google’s GOOG-411. In those environments, the penalty for failure is much higher. Users can’t easily tweak queries. They can’t browse endless Web sites to try to get the answer. They need the algorithms to do the work for them.

I was finally able to find out about pizza options at O’Hare by going to the O’Hare Web site and looking at a PDF map of Terminal 1. There isn’t a deep dish pizza place in Terminal 1, though there are Pizzeria Unos in other terminals.

The pyschic search engine would know that Pizzeria Uno is not an answer that works for me.

More on: local search, search, wireless

September 18, 2007

Sprint launches GPS-enabled voice search

Filed under: gps, local search, mobile search, wireless, wireless data — Rakesh Agrawal @ 3:16 pm

Sprint has released an enhanced version of its search that allows users to tap into their phone’s location when doing searches. The search feature is powered by Microsoft’s Live Search.

The first time user experience isn’t exactly intuitive. When doing a search off Sprint’s portal, one of the layers that comes back is “Local” clicking again to “Go Local” then asks whether you want to enter a location or “Find Me.” Selecting “Find Me” renders a release authorizing Sprint to give your location to Microsoft. The results that come back after all this (my query term was “Target”) still show ringtones and screen savers above the local results.

Search results aren’t sorted in any discernible order. Usually in local search, results are sorted by distance from the starting point or alphabetically. These are neither.

The authorization to use “Find Me” can be stored for a session, day, 30 days or unlimited, making return visits easier.

A link labeled “Get Precise GPS Location” offers users of select phones the option to download a Java applet. Instead of typing out what you’re looking for, you can speak the name of the business or the category.

Although category names (restaurants, bars, Mexican restaurants, movie theaters) worked fine, business names did not. Of the dozen or so names I tried, only “Cheesecake Factory,” “Target” and “Dominos” returned the results I was expecting. These terms are so common that many data providers treat them as categories.

It seems that the browser-based search uses triangulation from the towers to calculate location, whereas the application uses GPS from your handset.

Despite its flaws, it’s still a significant move. This is the first time I know of that a U.S. carrier has offered location-enabled search for free.

Update: The Java application also can tap into the phone’s address book. If you find a business and want to share it, just pick a name from the phone’s address book and send.

More on: GPS, wireless data

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