So here comes another news from Apple. In their usual style, Apple announced a complete upgrade of ipod line of products.  read more »

Yesterday, we started the beta of our product on http://www.retrevo.com. After much debate, we decided to keep it by invitation-only for now. We will be looking for a good time and venue to launch the company, and then start an open beta. Not a shock to anyone engaged with a startup, lot of hard work and sweat went into taking the product from a concept stage to beta. Team worked relentlessly to make the product category complete (from types of products supported and content coverage perspective) and fix all those nasty bugs. Team is excited and is not read  read more »

Many of us have still not gotten used to the changed daylight saving time (three weeks earlier in March and one week later in Nov). And those of us who are at least aware have often rationalized the inconvenience by savings in energy cost (myself included). Yes, we will get used to starting work at odd hours and working at odd hours in the evening. But will we really save energy? There was an article in the journal today that covered this topic at length. According to Megan Barnett, the spokeswoman of US Energy Department "The jury is still out on the potential national energy savings". Well, that kills my excitement about the change in daylight saving implemented earlier this year.  read more »

We finally let the cat out of the bag today. 9 AM at Demo in San Diego. A perfect setting at Sheraton Marina, near the sea, with lot of exciting new companies launching interesting products. Retrevo team, Manish, Charles and Matthew pulled the launch together in the last minute. At 9:06 AM, Retrevo.com went live. Here is the launch video at Demo. The team is very excited and energized (though a little exhausted too). We got some quick coverage at N  read more »

A few weeks ago I was on a panel at Investor Business Forum when one of the venture investors attending the session asked "why is it that we see more entrepreneurs and even companies we fund founded by immigrant entrepreneurs"? I answered the question and it is not hard to understand why it is so. From 1513, when the Spanish explorer Ponce De Leon discovered Florida to French and German emigration in mid 19th century to emigration of Russians in late 19th century, Italians in early 20th century and Asians in mid 20th century, America has been the land of opportunity that has attracted talent, labor and intellectual capital from all over the world. And I would argue this has been the major driver behind the growth that has made America the super-power it is today.  read more »

I have been asked this question many times in the last few days. Is Retrevo a product review site? The answer goes a lot deeper than the question. When we started Retrevo last year, we did it because we were frustrated with the complexity of the hi-tech products we bought and used every day. We always were in need of the right answers but there were none (well there were but were extremely hard to get to). In spite of every one of us spending thousands of dollars every year on new products, there was no one to help us *after* we bought a product. And pre-purchase help was incomplete at best. S  read more »

A little before mid-night on Nov 18, Retrevo launched its next big innovation. This innovation dramatically simplifies gadget (electronics) shopping for masses. You see, consumer electronics category is inundated with constant technological innovation, price changes and obsolescence. It is daunting to take the shopping journey even for the tech-savvy consumers. You don't know where to start and when you do manage to start the journey and zoom into a set of products that meet your brand and feature preference, you are never sure which product delivers a good bang for the buck.  read more »

Response to our Search Widget has been phenomenal. Thanks to everyone who is giving it a try. We are still in the first inning, there are lot of improvements needed and yes, this can evolve into something bigger. But this is a start! I particularly liked this post from Nitin Karandikar outlining pluses and minuses of our Search Widget. One question that has come up repeatedly is mone  read more »

What's the big deal about closing another round of funding? So many companies have received funding over the last two years so that's not a reflection of the viability or success of a venture. In fact, Erick Schonfeld over at Techcrunch just posted a nice article on venture funding of new-age (web 2.0, web 3.0 whatever you want to call them) consumer internet companies. Wow, so many companies  read more »

Michael Calore of Wired wrote an article Retrevo: a Google for Gadgets on his blog. It was a balanced article focusing purely on product research. I have covered the topic of product research vs. lifecycle information needs on this blog in the past. Some of Michael's readers asked when we would develop a search plugin for th  read more »