

Qwiki - First impressions? - nirajr

Just got my Qwiki account, and played around with it for 30 mins.<p>First impressions: - Does not create qwikis on the fly. Has a whole load of stuff created with it which it serves to viewers. Thats the logical thing to do of course.<p>- Essentially, just reads out the first 3-4 paragraphs from the wikipedia page. Again logical as there's a very little chance that what you'd want to know about on Qwiki (on instinct) does not have a wikipedia page already. On instinct, all I tried looking for was personalities, companies and algorithms, and I got good quality clean output for all. Its when I wanted to stress test it was when I tried a query like "How to avoid cancer". Of course thats not a Qwiki-like topic.<p>Overall a great product. Makes me think - its very common sense: pick up the wikipedia page, annotate it with images and videos wherever there is a relevant context, store everything in the backend, and serve when requested.<p>I think its going to be huge. What do you think.
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twidlit
Its a nice-to-have and in a very competitive market (information retrieval).
it goes up against the following competitors.

a. reading Wikipedia b. searching on Google c. asking questions on social
networks / forums

Its flashy and attractive but doesn't make the task more efficient and or
grant obvious benefits. Might have a market in Education or Product showcase
vertical but as a web consumer play? not going to be huge IMHO.

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nirajr
Education can be huge. It IS huge.

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twidlit
I agree but they are pitching it to the consumer web not educational
institutions.

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nirajr
We're still some way off from seeing who they are pitching it to. Its more a
question of having your ears to the ground and trying to understand who this
can be sold to. I think that applies for any business. I am sure they'll pitch
it to whoever it makes the most sense to pitch to.

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wturner
As strictly an end user the computer voice annoys the crap out of me and makes
me hate it. The concept is great but due to this one vice, I will never use
it. It seriously makes me feel insane.

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nirajr
Would agree to that, but would still use it.

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kingsidharth
It was nice for a beta launch. But they have long way to go before they can be
of any practical use.

But it's great for kids... or is it? :P

But a really nice start. Interesting things are coming up in Content Industry.
Nice!

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gojomo
I can sight-read Wikipedia faster than the voice can read to me, so that's not
adding anything.

The slideshow often seems like a random mish-mash of related images and
graphs, with animating flourishes that distract rather than adding
information.

I thought clicking them might branch off or accelerate the voice in that
topical direction; instead in most cases it's just a zoomed modal lightbox
that stops the voice and offers other outlinks. Some of the infographics are
wrong where Wikipedia is right; for example its report of the area of the city
of Palo Alto is off by a factor of 100. If the same information were just
inline, I could read/scan them faster. As it is, rewinding is harder than the
same info provided in a scrolling view.

I suppose if Wikipedia has 'too many words', or if you were otherwise of
limited literacy, Qwiki might be valuable. I was underwhelmed, but then again
I prefer the wordiness of the NYTimes or WSJ to cable TV news, most days.

 _Perhaps_ having it be a dashboard for other info sources -- as in the
founder's 'alarm clock'/wake-routine scenario at TCDisrupt -- could provide
some other value... but perhaps not more than other tech that can read a block
of text stitched together from many sources.

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nirajr
I looked at Metallica and Dylan, and looking at the Qwiki was a very enjoyable
experience - way more juicier than reading. It could have gone even further if
it played some tracks in the background :)

