Congrats to Samidh, whose company Pluribo launched their first product a couple days ago! In a nutshell, it’s a Firefox plug-in that takes Amazon product opinions (just for electronics at the moment) and summarizes them into one sentence via an automated algorithm. To see it in action, take a look at this screencast, with narration by Samidh.
I’ve tried it out, and it’s very cool. Actually, now that Pluribo is released, maybe the team can turn Pluribo on itself and summarize what people are saying about it!
Bookroll

- I Am A Strange Loop
- Douglas Hofstadter

- 3 wds: Deep, insightful, correct
- Why We Lost The ERA
- Palle Yourgrau

- 3 wds: Thorough, researched, slow
Tweets
I just sent @komenforthecure an opprobrious email and donated $50 to Planned Parenthood http://t.co/b9IJQoCY
5 days ago

Thanks for the post. Turning Pluribo to work on its own comments would be so ridiculously “meta” that we might just do it.
Reminds me slightly of a shirt I saw in Cambridge (MA) this weekend. It had the following text, listed as a dictionary entry:
recursion (re-ker-shun): (n) See recursion.
Only in Cambridge!
That is SO COOL. Kudos to your friend. What a terrific application!