Summize Blog

2007's Worst

Over the past few weeks we've examined the books, gadgets, movies and music with the most positive sentiments and opinions in 2007, but what about the opposite - the things with the most wretched sentiments for the year.

I dug into our data and was surprised to find that there are far fewer negative opinions. In November 2007 Bazaarvoice and the Keller Fay Group released findings from a survey showing that 87% of reviews are positive in tone. This certainly seems similar to the sentiments we've been gathering.

With that in mind here are the items with the greatest number of "wretched" and "bad" sentiments during 2007.

1. Epic Movie
    
2. Eragon
    
3. Halloween
    
4. Ghost Rider
    
5. You've Been Warned by James Patterson
   
6. Babel
    
7. The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers by Lilian Jackson Braun
    
8. Sunshine
    
9. Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device
    
10. The Wicker Man
     
11. SanDisk Sansa M240 1 GB MP3 Player
     

2007's Best: Music

Finishing up our survey of the best of 2007, here are the best CDs and albums of 2007 -- the ones with the most "great" and "swell" sentiments, opinions and reviews. Two 'American Idol' contestants made the list, but no 'Idol' winners made it.

1. Daughtry from Daughtry
   
2. Snakes & Arrows from Rush
   
3. Love from The Beatles
   
4. Minutes to Midnight from Linkin Park
   
5. Awake from Josh Groban
   
6. Continuum from John Mayer
   
7. Year Zero from Nine Inch Nails
   
8. Back To Black from Amy Winehouse
   
9. Not Too Late from Norah Jones
   
10. Corinne Bailey Rae from Corinne Bailey Rae
    
11. Katharine McPhee from Katharine McPhee
    

See also: 2007's Best: Gadgets and Goods; 2007's Best: Movies and DVDs and 2007's Best: Books

2007's Best: Gadgets and Goods

Continuing our survey of the best of 2007, here are the gadgets and goods of 2007 -- the ones with the most "great" and "swell" sentiments, opinions and reviews. This list turned out to be a bit of a surprise - for example the Apple iPhone didn't make the list, and a Zune ranked higher than the lone Apple product on the list.

1. Garmin nüvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
   
2. Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset with Multipoint Technology
   
3. Omron HJ-112 Digital Premium Pedometer
   
4. Logitech Harmony 880 Advanced Universal Remote Control
   
5. Nintendo DS Lite
   
6. Zune 30 GB Digital Media Player
   
7. KitchenAid Artisan Series Tilt-Head 5-Quart Stand Mixer
   
8. Nintendo Wii
   
9. Eureka Boss Smart-Vac Upright Vacuum
   
10. PlayStation 3
    
11. Apple 1 GB iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation)
    

Next week we'll dive into music...

See also: 2007's Best: Movies and DVDs and 2007's Best: Books

2007's Best: Movies and DVDs

Continuing our survey of the best of 2007, here are the best movies and DVDs of 2007 -- the ones with the most "great" and "swell" sentiments, opinions and reviews. You may disagree with some of the items on the list, I know I certainly didn't appreciate #1 as much as some of my friends. And two of the items on the list are actually from the small screen, but they easily beat out other big screen titles.

1. 
   300

 

2. 
   Transformers

 

3. 
   Spider-Man 3

 

4. 
   Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

 

5. 
   An Inconvenient Truth

 

6. 
   Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

 

7. 
   Casino Royale

 

8. 
   Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno)

 

9. 
   Planet Earth

 

10. 
    Firefly

 

11. 
    Live Free or Die Hard

Stay tuned for gadgets and goods tomorrow.

See also:  2007's Best: Books

2007's Best: Books

It is that time of year again -- time to take stock of 2007 and prepare for 2008. Meandering across the web we've found many lists touting the "best of 2007," but what better way to determine what really was the best than to look at the sentiments, opinions and reviews we've gathered. So here are the best books of 2007 -- the ones with the most "great" and "swell" sentiments, opinions and reviews.

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
   
2. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
   
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
   
4. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
   
5. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
   
6. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
   
7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
   
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
   
9. You: on a Diet by Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz
   
10. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
    
11. God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
    

Stay tuned for DVDs and movies tomorrow.

Computing Compute Resources for a Startup

Startups today need far less capital for compute resources then they did just a decade ago. This has been driven by the improvements in CPU processing speeds, people designing systems that run on cheap commodity servers and an overall trend of getting more computer for less.  For Summize, I couldn't imagine building the technology and processing the data we have today with less than a few million dollars in hardware a decade ago. Now $25k gets you a lot of computing power.  Even with the cheaper cost of hardware these resources come with additional costs that can be real issues for a startup.  For example, you still must buy and setup servers, find rack space, deal with backups, DNS servers and many other tasks before those servers are usable. There is also the additional time and knowledge to perform the maintenance that keeps them running.  In this post I examine some of the costs for figuring out when to build vs rent these resources.  Others can benefit from this as it is not a problem specific to Summize but to compute intensive startups.

New Summize.com

We launched a new and improved beta version of Summize.com this week. Starting with the homepage you'll immediately notice a bold new look:

Then as you scroll down the page, notice there is a new section highlighting trending artists, actors and authors. We determine these trends by constantly scouring and analyzing blogs and websites for recent mentions. As products and people are mentioned they are added to our trends list. You can also find a link to the full trends list at the top of every page, just to the right of the Summize logo.

If you click on one of the trending topics you'll find a new type of page that showcases the many things we've gathered about the topic or person. For example take a look at the Sarah McLachlan page.  Starting at the top you'll find the most reviewed, most liked and most buzzed products featuring Sarah.

Afterglow is her most reviewed work, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy is her most liked album and her holiday album, Wintersong, is the most buzzed or discussed. Moving down the page we've pulled together a collection of recently reviewed and discussed products, from Surfacing to Mirrorball:

Further down the page we've pulled in recent mentions, videos, mp3s, websites and related products.

On the upper right side of the page you'll find the overall opinion for all Sarah McLachlan products:
 
Followed by bloggers who've recently mentioned her, then related topics, for example fellow Canadian musician Loreena McKennitt.

All the sections of this new page work together to create a comprehensive discovery experience. We hope you find the new page useful. If you have any suggestions please let us know.

OpenSearch

Have you ever wondered if there was an easier way to find content on your favorite websites? If your favorite websites support OpenSearch, then you may be in luck. OpenSearch is a set of technologies that allow you to search websites directly from browser with a simple click. In this post I am going to review how opensearch works, how to add it to your browser and the progress this technology has had in terms of adoption.

Comparing with Summize

I've been doing lots of online window shopping this week, trying to find the best gifts for my friends and family. And I've found a favorite new Summize feature that lets you compare reviews and opinions on just about anything.  All you have to do is enter the letters "vs" for versus between the topics you want to compare. For example my cell phone contract is up in a few days and I've been looking at new phones. My sister-in-law raves about her new Blackberry, but I'm partial to Palm so I searched for "treo vs blackberry."
Looking at that comparison I may give the Blackberry another look.

I'm also trying to figure out what to get my nieces and nephews. For the girls I looked at "high school musical vs hannah montana." With 79% great reviews it looks like something related to Hannah Montana might be a good choice. And comparisons aren't limited to just two topics, you can compare as many topics as you like. For example I compared "dora the explorer vs elmo vs bob the builder" for my younger nieces and nephews.

For fun I started comparing musicians and celebrities. There has been so much buzz about Amy Winehouse this year. I compared her to fellow 2007 MTV Video Music Award nominees: "amy winehouse vs lily allen vs carrie underwood vs gym class heroes." Amy had the highest percentage of great reviews at 77%, but apparently that wasn't enough since Gym Class Heroes won the 2007 VMA for Best New Artist. And while Britney Spears might be losing the custody battle with K-Fed, she easily wins the review battle on Summize: "britney spears vs kevin federline."
70% wretched reviews for Mr. Federline must sting a bit.

The comparison possibilities are endless...If you find any interesting ones let me know.