We're so excited to launch the official 2009 Wize Choice Awards and 2009 UnWize Choice Awards. We have analyzed thousands of products and reviews and determined what people have said are the best products and why they thought so. Please take a look at the 2009 Wize Choice Awards releases to date:
Best Products for Sports LoversWe plan to keep releasing more Wize Choice Awards and UnWize Choice Awards until the end of the year, so stay tuned! You can find the updates on Wize, here on our blog, our Facebook Fan Page or on Twitter.
Today we are proud to announce the re-launch of Wize.com with an updated design and many new features! Our team has been hard at work building the Wize Product Recommendation Engine, which provides personalized product recommendations based on the voice of the Web. We're now analyzing over 26,000,000 recommendations from 1,000's of sources over 450 product categories (and growing daily!). We're also honored to announce that Jeffrey Glueck (current CEO of Skyfire and ex-CMO of Travelocity) has joined our Board of Directors. To top it off, we've also moved our office HQ to Burlingame, CA!
A few highlights of our re-launch include:
We're so excited to share this new site exprience with the world. We are also going to continue to improve the site and add new features that are important to our users. Go ahead and drop us a note and let us know what you think of the new Wize! You can leave a comment here on our blog, follow us on Twitter, connect with us on our Facebook Fan Page or just send us an email!
We are also proud to announce the launch of an innovative new awards program called the Wize Choice Awards. For our first release, we've analyzed millions of reviews to come up with the 2009 Wize Choice Awards - Best Products for Sports Lovers. These are the best products currently for Sports fans hoping to take full advantage of this upcoming season! Stay tuned for future Wize Choice Awards.
For full details of our Wize.com Re-Launch and the 2009 Wize Choice Awards - Sports, please visit our Press Page.
We're honored to have been announced as a winner of 2009 AlwaysOn Global 250! Our CEO, Tom Patterson will be speaking at the main event on Wednesday July 29, 2009, so please be sure to reach out to us if you will be there. Here's a link to the event itself: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/32096
There continues to be more and more evidence to suggest a need for change in how people find things online. According to this article at Australian IT, Bill Tancer (GM of Global Research at Hitwise) suggests that people are becoming frustrated with the search results provided by the major search engines and are looking for more specificity in their results.
This shift in the search industry was even more evident and a hot topic this past week at AltSearchEngines Day II, which was held in San Francisco, CA. We had the opportunity to listen to presentations and hear panel discussions from many of the thought leaders and CEOs of startups dedicated to improving search. It's clear to us all that there is SO much to improve upon and that users will continue to see and demand improvements in how they find stuff online.
There's no denying that Google is the leader in US Searches, but the evidence continues to show that people are expecting more and more and that's where alternative search engines and innovative niche services are going to shine.
In our research and user testing at Wize, we've learned how people shop for products offline and it's only natural that they would want to shop the same way online! When was the last time anyone went to the store and asked for a Oster blender with work top, 2 speed, 40 oz blender with pulse features?! People usually will ask for something more specific to their needs, such as the best blender for smoothies and this where the long tail shines...
Please visit Vator.tv to read about Wize, deep web and the discovery landscape.
Looking forward to your feedback / thoughts. Email us @ wize.com!
What do you think of the new iPod Shuffle? I'm a fan of "The Apple Experience" and just like all of their previous releases, this one is full of all the great PR, display ads, commercials, etc., but this release also has some interesting aspects to it.
First of all the size of the iPod has shrunk even more than the previous ones and is smaller than the size of an average house key! The access controls are now located on the right ear bud headphone cord, which is probably going to be the reason for contention. Let me explain. For now at least, you have to use Apple's own headphones in order to control this device. Oh, but did you just shell out $300 for Beats by Dre? Well as Engadget has pointed out, you'd need to get another $20-$30 adapter to make that work!
I've already spoken to a few people and over and over I keep hearing:
The one cool feature that has promise is the new VoiceOver feature they've introduced. It's easy to read online reviews about it and to read Apple's own description of the technology, but this to me is just one of those things where you have to try it out yourself. The best way to test this feature and figure out if it's as good as it seems is to get out on a treadmill and determine for yourself whether it's really going to keep the Shuffle as one of the best MP3 players for working out.
Just came across this great article over at Direct Mag, which talks about a HitWise survey that found longer searches to be growing rapidly, while shorter 1-3 word searches actually declining. This is really interesting and also quite exciting. We've always been about creating a more personal experience with our users and really allowing them to find the exact products to match their needs.
For example, a friend of mine that has been much more health conscious lately, recently found some juicers for fruits and vegetables through a longer search on Google. There are lots of innovative businesses that are helping to revolutionize the space and this of deep interest to us here at Wize.
Let us know some of the more interesting long searches you have done recently and whether the results were satisfactory -- we'll collect the comments / emails and re-publish them later on.