

Show HN: Osmoar: A Bayesian Suggestion Engine - zacstewart
http://osmoar.com/
A friend and I are launching an alpha first thing in 2011. We're trying to gain some momentum and whatnot, so we're opening early registration as of tonight.<p>We're planning to develop a Bayesian network to derive suggestions. If you're interested in seeing our progress, check it out.<p>Edit: Any and all suggestions, criticism, advice, etc is highly appreciated!
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chewxy
why three personal items?

Also, more info would be nice.

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ams6110
My assumption is that they will suggest to you other possessions that you
might want to buy, based on the three favorites you provide.

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zacstewart
Good assumption, but we're doing more with it than that. There's also an
"activities as recipes of items" aspect we're working on.

We don't want to just push more crap from amazon on users. We want to help
users become aware of activities they could be doing with the things they own
as well.

"789 users that own a MacBook and a DSL camera are doing photography. Maybe
you'd like to try it"

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benmccann
Try using a camera for photography?! I might need a better example to see the
value proposition :o)

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zacstewart
Haha. Sorry. Pretty much all your activities can be broken down into a recipe
of the things you do them with, the place you do them, and a description of
what it is you do.

It will help you find something to do with your possessions in the place you
live. E.g., if you have a bike, it might suggest you right critical mass on
the last Friday of the month. If you have a dog attend the people with dogs
party at your local park this weekend. I can't really come up with a great
example myself, but once it's in action, I can see some pretty interesting
"recipes" of place, items, people and activities arising.

Value insofar as monetization, is obviously affiliate income from retailers.
We're planning to establish an API for any retailer that wants to sign up to
add their link to an item's page, which is also helpful to users so they can
sort by price and compare retailers.

