I have recently been watching the progress of a start up that until today was in private alpha. I began previewing the service last week and was impressed with the presentation. Qwiki has created an automated video presentation in a wiki format that will allow for a growing database and customer improved user experience over time. The product at launch already has an impressive library of content. The presentation is also of decent quality. It reminds me of the sort of interface/ presentation we are seeing from new web and mobile apps like Flipboard for the iPad.
The Crunchbase entry for Qwiki states:
A “Qwiki” is a short, interactive story: a drastically improved information experience provided via interactive video. Unlike traditional rich media content, all Qwikis are created on the fly from web sources (without any human intervention).
Qwiki on Facebook
View Facebook and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.
Here is their mission according to their website:
Qwiki's goal is to forever improve the way people experience information.
Whether you’re planning a vacation on the web, evaluating restaurants on your phone, or helping with homework in front of the family Google TV, Qwiki is working to deliver information in a format that's quintessentially human – via storytelling instead of search.
We are the first to turn information into an experience. We believe that just because data is stored by machines doesn’t mean it should be presented as a machine-readable list. Let's try harder.
Think of asking your favorite teacher about Leonardo Da Vinci, or your most well-traveled friend about Buenos Aires: this is the experience Qwiki will eventually deliver, on demand, wherever you are in the world… on whatever device you’re using.
We've all seen science fiction films (or read novels) where computers are able to collect data on behalf of humans, and present the most important details. This is our goal at Qwiki – to advance information technology to the point it acts human.
Currently, Qwiki's technology has been applied to describe millions of popular topics - but soon we'll do much more. Our team needs your help in reaching our goal: join our alpha now to help test Qwiki and shape the future.
What are your impressions of the presentation? Could you see yourself using this as a research tool?
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