Retrevo blogs

Deal or No Deal

Andrew — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:50:11 -0700

Deal or No Deal?

Navigon 2100 3.5" Portable GPS Navigator

Here’s the deal; The Navigon 2100 has been around for about a year. It's a decent GPS that you can buy now for less than $100

The Good News: It has a 3.5 inch display, features Text to Speech turn-by-turn navigation, and shows cool 3D images of the road.

The Bad News: It only gets an average of 3.5 on Amazon user reviews and you have to pay extra for traffic data.

The Verdict: Pretty Good Deal. If you're working with a limited budget this GPS offers a good GPS for a very reasonable price.


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OLED All the Way!

Vipin — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:26:49 -0700

OLED (Organic LED) first caught my attention at CES in 2007. See my post from that CES here. Subsequent to much fanfare with a 27" prototype OLED TV in 2007 and then at CES in 2008, Sony finally shipped a 11" (3 mm thin and 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio) OLED flat panel TV earlier this year. Retailing at $2,400 and up, I won't quite call it a bargain. As you can see Retrevo's scientific assessment concurs with me on this one here for sony XEL-1.

So what's the point? Well, what Sony did was a good prototype demonstration. I can't imagine using a 11" flat panel TV much in my day to day life so this product is still confined to early adopters and geeks until the technology matures for larger display sizes. But here was an anouncement that caught my attention. Kodak announced a 7.6" OLED Digital Photo Frame a couple of days ago. Yes, at expected retail price of $999, it is no joke but if I had to own something OLED, with 2GB of built in memory, wifi and 180 degree viewing angle, this one passes the muster. Keep looking out for this baby on Retrevo, it should be shipping soon.

There is a Bright Light Afterall!

Vipin — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:18:01 -0700

Who can complain about the mood of consumers nowadays. The tech bust of 2000 feels ordinary compared to the financial mess we have got ourselves into. Tech seems like a safe haven this time around with corporations carrying strong balance sheets. Yes, financial sector has a reason to be concerned about (thank goodness, retirement accounts, insurance policies and now the money market accounts are not that vulnerable). And now it is official; retail sector has a reason to be worried about. TNS report just came out forecasting just 1.5% growth in retail sales this holiday season - the lowest since 1991 when retail sales grew just 1.2% in the holiday 4th quarter.

But wait! The same report also says that consumer electronics holiday sales will grow at 4% with online channel expected to grow at a healthy 9% this holiday quarter. Woohoooo! I love my gadgets and the forecast shows that technology has become an integral part of our lives. Not a luxury but a necessity. So where are we going to spend money? Among other things, we expect HDTVs to continue the upward momentum. Other home entertainment categories should show a strong growth as prices of Blu-ray, HD-capable audio/video receivers etc come down to a point where the masses can afford them. And yes, slowing econoly and (still) high travel costs will make us glued to our computers and HDTVs more than ever.

One thing is for sure though. We will research more and we will look for good values more. Well, this is what Retrevo aims to continue to offer to consumers. Retrevo's product advisor is the only tool out there that helps everyday shoppers find good values in every consumer electronics category that you might care about this holiday season. For example, check out Retrevo's HDTV product advisor that tells you that you can have a 50" 720p Plasma HDTV for less than a thousand bucks. This TV is not only a good value but is also rated highly by both experts and consumers. Now that's a real deal.

So whether you trust our lawmakers and regulators in helping you get through the financial mess or not, you can trust Retrevo to help you get through the holiday season with some cheer while saving you money at the same time. Now that's a bright light in an otherwise gloomy outlook!

Deal or No Deal

Andrew — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:39:36 -0700

Deal or No Deal

Sony BDP-S300 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player

Here’s the deal; A Sony Blu-ray player available on amazon.com for $229 with free shipping (while supplies last). It displays 1080p Blu-ray content and is a nice looking unit.

The Good News: It’s a Sony! It outputs 24p video (“True Cinema”) and offers some neat integration features with BRAVIA TVs.

The Bad News: It will not support latest Profile 2.0 (not even 1.1). Also, users complain of long load times, frequent firmware updates, and failure to play some DVDs.

The Verdict: No Deal. You’re better off waiting for the next crop of Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players that should start selling at reasonable price points this holiday season. The PS3 is still the best deal for a Blu-ray player.

Deal or No Deal

Andrew — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:37:19 -0700

Deal or No Deal?

Westinghouse TX-42F430S 42″ 1080p LCD HDTV with 4 HDMI ports for $849.99

How does a 42 inch, 1080p, LCD TV for under $900 with free shipping sound? The Westinghouse TX-42F430S is on sale at BestBuy.com for $849.99 with free shipping. With the exception of a few users who had problems with this TV, it gets favorable reviews for image quality.

The good news: It includes 4 HDMI ports so you can hook up everything including your PlayStation 3.

The bad news: The HDMI standard is one level behind the current 1.3 standard which leaves out Deep Color compatibility.

Verdict: It's a deal, but you may want to buy the extended warranty

Women think Retrevo is Fun. How Cool is that!

Robb — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:07:01 -0700

DivineCaroline, the popular blog for women and flagship site of Real Girls Media Network, has just nominated Retrevo for a “Love this Site” award. Now what makes this so cool is who nominated Retrevo and what category they placed us into- FUN!

Now this category may be a surprise to some but for us it’s a great appreciation of the DivineCaroline Editors and Community for their ability to “get it” and recognize that shopping is fun and Retrevo is a fun place to shop. You see, we work very hard to provide a simple and fun experience between you and your products. We want you to have a fun time, whether you’re just (as my teenage daughter’s say) “hanging at the mall and checking out stuff” (I guess they mean window shopping :-), learning more about products you want to buy and finding the best stores, or looking for help from the community or the page in the manual that describes how to use the backlight feature. Retrevo is your place for electronics.

We wanted to provide an experience women would enjoy, that they would find using Retrevo.com very fun and engaging. Unlike other sites that think the way to reach women is to just color their site in pink, Retrevo actually builds the experience into our products. We want USING Retrevo.com to be simple and fun, not just looking at it (we’ll I guess only if you like pink ☺). So to have the DivineCaroline community vote to nominate Retrevo for their “Love this Site” award for most fun site is very rewarding in itself.

This is just the nomination part; we’re on the short list if you will. To win we need votes. If you think Retrevo is a fun experience (and make sure to check out our Product Advisor) then we’d appreciate your vote. Just click the button below and vote for Retrevo!

We couldn’t do it without you!

-Robb

Verticalization is Inevitable!

Vipin — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:00:45 -0700

I recently talked about verticalization at an event. What verticalization means, why it happens, where it succeeds, where it fails and what's it's intersection with search. Here is a synopsis of the talk. And I will focus on verticalization (of needs), not segmentation (of users) even though there is some cross-over there.

Verticalization

If we look around us, we see examples of verticalization everywhere. From the cars we drive to sneakers we buy to television channels we watch. We used to drive a model T 100 years ago. Now we drive a sedan for general purpose use. We drive an SUV or a mini-van to carry our family around. And we drive a truck if we have to carry household goods around. We have moved away from watching only CBS, ABC and NBC to watching from hundreds of channels available with specific focus on science, news, history, travel, food and such. We can find analogies all around us if we pay attention...

So what makes this verticalization possible? Most paradigm shifts, most basic innovations center around building a single product, and a simple product that the mass market can adopt. And I use products to also represent pure web centric innovations. Yes, we go through the adoption curve where early adopters pick up our product first. We then go through the learning and fine tuning so the product is ready for early majority, ultimately finding its way to late majority and such. But in this process, we are trying to build a single product that serves the mass market needs. Now 3 things happen in the marketplace:

As customers go through the learning curve and become comfortable with the product, they become more sophisticated and more demanding (they expect more from the product),
A market develops for the product (from users perspective, from usage perspective and from revenue perspective) and
Suppliers become more sophisticated and armed with the knowledge about customer usage and a developed market, they are in a position to introduce more vertical, more specialized products that are economically viable because the market is big enough.

So the 3 ingredients for verticalization are: user sophistication, a developed market and supplier sophistication.

The Search Economy

Now lets take a look at web search. It has come a long way in last 14 years. WebCrawler and Lycos were one of the first full text crawlers and they were used by only a few people. Today, more than 125M Americans use search engines. Search touches every facet of our life whether it is commerce, entertainment or education. We have all become very comfortable using search engines. And we have come to expect more from them, we have become more demanding. We use search engines and we get frustrated because we don't get what we need. This shows user sophistication. Take a look at the market opportunity: search generates more than 10 billion in revenue every year and is expanding 20%+ year over year. Now you can call it a developing market or a developed market depending on your perspective. I call it a developed market with a fantastic opportunity to grow further. Then you look at the supplier sophistication. We have developed a good understanding of consumers’ online behavior and their needs on one hand and a monetization model that is very lucrative for vertical applications on the other hand. Even more lucrative than a horizontal search. So we have a perfect blend of user sophistication or demand, a developed market and supplier sophistication that is screaming for verticalization. This in turn creates tremendous business opportunity.

So how do you go about verticalizing web search. Well, you look at a segment of consumer need that has deep pain or deep emotion associated with it, that has enough usage to make verticalization interesting and has a good economic model behind it. And you can identify these opportunities across commerce, entertainment and education. Then you build a product that offers tremendous value to consumers, a value that’s compelling enough for consumers to break away from their comfort zone and try your product.

When we started Retrevo, we wanted to make buying and using technology (products) simple and fun for everyday consumers. And we wanted to break two barriers that prevented a horizontal search engine from delivering such an experience. We knew that breaking these two barriers would unleash such a tremendous value to consumers that they will want to use an alternative. First - understanding the syntax and semantics of unstructured data that would allow us to summarize and simplify this information. We knew that this simplification was needed to make buying and using technology (products) simple and fun for everyday consumers. Second - breaking away from the current UI paradigm that offered a flat list of raw search results. We knew that in order to remove the complexity associated with technology buying and using, information had to be presented in a way that allowed consumers to search, discover, personalize and consume products and associated information, visually and naturally. And this recipe has worked well for us at Retrevo.

Verticalization is a fact of life. It has happened before in many industries and it will happen in the web economy. You need to pay attention to basic triggers, identify a need that requires a specialized product and go after it. May the force be with you!

Is This the Start of a New Trend?

Vipin — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:58:07 -0700

Yesterday we announced a partnership with PC World, a subsidiary of IDG, world's leading multi-billion dollar technology media company. With more than 8M unique visitors a month to its online property alone, PC World has been known for its test center, high quality expert reviews and news coverage of tech products (computing and electronics) since its inception in 1982. The partnership with Retrevo involves PC World linking to expert reviews of tech products written by its competitors along with user reviews and support information all aggregated and contextualized by Retrevo.

So what's the big deal? News media and jouralists' blogs link and syndicate already. Yes, but no one has done it in tech publishing. Can you imagine Car and Driver puting a review of the 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera from Road and Track right next to its own First Drive review? Nuts? Exactly. PC World is breaking new grounds in providing access to competitor information right from its own web site, in areas that have been (and still are) bread and butter of the company. No one (and I dare say no one) has done it in tech publishing so far. When we first brought this idea with PC World, no one jumped from their chairs (in excitement or denial). Scalability and coverage was an issue that the executive team at PC World had been grappling with already. Then in one of the meetings, Stephan Scherzer (the executive in-charge of PC World online) articulated their thinking that stuck with me "we want no dead ends for our audience". A simple but profound statement. There was this realization at the senior level at an established brand that no single publisher could create all the knowledge to keep up with the pace of innovation in computing and electronics world. That from an audience perspective, getting access to competing as well as complementary information was only a mouse click away. Would they attempt to keep the audience inside their walled garden limiting the flow of information or would they rather guide the audience to the right answer even if it took them to a competitor's site? There was this realization that opening up the access will only build a deeper affinity with their already loyal audience, now and in the future. PC World was telling its audience "whatever you need, we will help you get there". That there will be no dead ends!

At Retrevo, we live and breathe by the "open information" philosophy. Web is meant to provide us access to the information, the knowledge, the products and the services when we need them so we can live a better life (and be more productive). Days of walled garden approach are numbered. We have seen this in commerce, just look at what amazon and buy.com have done (providing pricing from competing sellers). We are seeing this in social media with open social and facebook platform. And we have all seen this in news media already. Media brands who recognize and embrace it will be the winners as we traverse the 21st century. We at Retrevo take pride in being the most comprehensive resource to get information about tech products. We want to be the catalyst that makes this "openness" real in tech media so everyday consumers can make confident buying decisions and enjoy their ownership experience with computing and electronics products.

Tiecon Update!

Vipin — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:36:18 -0700

I attended Tiecon last Fri and Sat. Despite the economic uncertainty, the place was buzzing with entrepreneurs, bankers/investors, executives from hi-tech and non hi-tech companies and people with aspirations to do something different, something meaningful with their life and their careers. Keynotes from Chris Anderson, Peter Thiel, Naresh Goel were engaging. But what I found most inspiring was the keynote (more in Q&A format) from Elon Musk. It was my first time see Elon talk about his story, his motivation and all the success. Story of a person who thought about 3 problem areas while growing up, Internet, space and energy. A person who after two successes in the software business, Zip2 and Paypal decided to pursue what was still lingering in the back of his mind: space and energy.

Many of us have heard about Tesla Motors, where Elon is an early investor and chairman. Yes, Detroit and Toyota have been talking about clean cars, electric cars, hybrid cars and everything in between. What is remarkable about Tesla is the "clean" and "efficiency". Imagine a pure electric car that plugs into a regular AC outlet and costs $5 to drive 220 miles. A car in which batteries are non-toxic and completely recyclable. This kind of innovation doesn't take billions from companies with deep pockets, it takes an entrepreneur passionate about the problem and belief that there is a solution out there. Yes, the initial price is high $100K for roadster shipping in 2009 and $59K for a sedan shipping in 2010 but this is not a big problem. Volume will drive the scale and economy. Just look at how much Prius costed when it first came to market...

Then take SpaceX, a company that develops space launch vehicles that Elon founded after Paypal. Elon wanted to build a rocket that was low cost (think reusable stages) and highly reliable. Can you imagine NASA giving exclusive launch rights to one company for all its low-Earth-orbit space programs between 2010 and 2015. NASA couldn't build such a low-cost and reliable launch vehicle with billions of dollars and decades of work, SpaceX did it in 5 years.

Elon talked about his beliefs. His belief is that in next 30 years, (i) majority of energy will be produced from solar power and (ii) majority of vehicles will be electric. Just imagine the implications of combining these two. Effects on our society will be dramatic. We created three monsters: global warming and energy crisis over time and food crisis with our naiveness. I am sure all of us are looking forward to a world where these three are issues of the past.

Yes, we live in an enterprising world. We are all passionate about our companies, our ideas, our startups and successes. It was humbling to hear Elon. Here is someone with modest upbringing but big dreams, at 36 years of age has accomplished and desires to accomplish things that can change the face of our society. Amen!

April First Report From CTIA - No Fooling

Andrew — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:10:04 -0700

It was opening day at CTIA today and no one was fooling around. I have to say this show is a lot easier to deal with than CES; much more manageable and less crowded. You could actually get a chance to check out the products at the booths and lunch in the press room didn't vanish at 11:45.

Speaking of the press room I ran into a Becky Waring, an old colleague who has a degree from MIT and has been writing a lot recently for PC World. She just finished a roundup of new wireless routers due to be published soon. One thing she told me that I wasn't aware of is how WiFi networks can interfere with each other. It's common these days to see a dozen or more networks right in the vicinity of your home or apartment. According to Becky, you're connectivity may degrade due to other networks using the same spectrum.

From the large number of implementations on many phones it seems like Windows Mobile is gaining momentum. Today they announced a new version of Windows Mobile (6.1). It's is a fairly minor upgrade that includes things like one-step Bluetooth setup and a bigger clock font to allow display of seconds. Apparently user research revealed people are using their cell phones to time soft boiled eggs (no fooling). Microsoft also announced a new version of Mobile Explorer that trumps the iPhone with support for Flash along with support for their new Silverlight platform.

There were cool new cell phones everywhere you looked. LG had a nice looking phone in a watch (900 Euros) . Their new Viewty phone has a 5 MP camera, 120 fps video recording, and image stabilization.

Motorola showed their phones which frankly left me somewhat underwhelmed. The Moto Q 9 is Moto's smart phone hope, the MotoRokr is a hip camera/music phone with a cool scroll wheel, and the Razr2 is still thin, glitzy, and cool.

Samsung's booth had an impressive, mind boggling number of cell phones. They have cell phones in every size, shape, and color. They showed their new Soul phone with the novel OLED contextual navigation display and the Alias which twists around like a Rubik's Cube and turns into a qwerty based terminal phone or a flip phone. I have to say it's small and clever. Samsung's Juke phone was also pretty cool. It looks more like an MP3 player but looks, feels, and supposedly sounds pretty good.

The Navteq booth had lots of interesting geo applications. I especially liked a 3D realtime map that shows you moving through an aerial map as you drive along. The company is 3D Vu.