創業偶像

????Clever Sense公司憑借“數字好朋友”應用程序獲獎

????如果你幸運的話，你可能會有一位食客朋友，他知道城里所有熱門的餐廳。更貼心的是，他還知道你對貝類過敏，喜歡南方菜。如果你沒這么幸運的話，不要緊，你可以下載一款名叫Alfred的應用。它能了解用戶的口味和偏好，向您推薦吃美食的去處。

????這款應用是一家名叫Clever Sense的公司研發的。頭一次聽到Alfred這個名字的時候，你可以會覺得它和其他推薦類應用沒什么區別。但是這項技術的特別之處在于，它的推薦結果完全基于你的口味，（而且只需要不到一秒鐘的時間）。它的潛力可不只限于告訴你下頓飯吃什么。正是由于Clever Sense的這項技術擁有廣闊的前景，因而在本次峰會的“創業偶像”競賽環節上，它獲得了風投公司的最高票數。

????Clever Sense的共同創始人巴巴克?帕勒萬和尼瑪?阿斯加爾貝基是在2008年認識的，當時他們二人都在斯坦福大學學習數據挖掘和人工智能。經過兩年的研發，他們在2010年創立了Clever Sense，并且聘請了諾伯托?吉馬拉伊什作為產品主管。

????Alfred與亞馬遜（Amazon）或網飛（Netflix）一樣，也可以告訴你，你的同好都喜歡什么。而且就像其它移動應用一樣，Alfred可以確定用戶的地理位置，并能讓用戶根據價格和菜系對餐廳進行篩選。不過它的過人之處在于，它的搜索引擎可以不斷地在網絡上收集、組織和更新餐廳的信息，而且它的人機對話方式跟人與人之間的對話幾乎沒什么差別。然后系統會生成一份圖表，將具有相同屬性的餐廳匯總在一起。28歲的帕勒萬解釋道：“我們的系統甚至能理解‘Badass’這句臟話什么時候能用在正面的語境中?！庇脩籼峁┑姆答佋蕉啵珹lfred就會變得越智能，它會識別出用戶的偏好模式，然后將用戶的偏好與它的興趣圖譜進行比對，最后給出建議。

????Alfred登錄蘋果（Apple）的應用商店短短兩周就已經擠進了iPhone最受歡迎的生活類應用的前20名。Alfred是Clever Sense的第一款產品，或許在未來的某一天，它的技術可以用來幫用戶尋找最喜歡的電視節目，或是最喜歡的旅游勝地。如果你沒有一個對各種美食餐廳都門兒清的朋友，那么Alfred也是一個不錯的替代品。不過到目前為止，Clever Sense還沒能把它打造成一個非常健談的機器人。所以最好還是多交些人類的朋友吧。

????——杰西卡?沙姆波拉

Startup idol

????Contest winner clever sense scores with a digital "BFF"

????If you're lucky, you have a friend who knows all the hot restaurants in town -- and also knows you're allergic to shellfish and like Southern food. If you're not that lucky, there's Alfred, an app that learns tastes and preferences and recommends venues for dining out.

????At first pass, Alfred, from a startup called Clever Sense, may sound like a raft of other recommendation apps out there, but the technology that powers it delivers results specifically for you (in less than a second), and has the potential to help you discover much more than your next meal. Indeed, Clever Sense's vast prospects helped it earn the most votes in Brainstorm Tech's Startup Idol competition for companies raising money.

????Clever Sense co-founders Babak Pahlavan and Nima Asgharbeygi met in 2008 when both were studying data mining and artificial intelligence at Stanford. After two years of research and development, they set to work building Clever Sense in 2010, and hired Norberto Guimaraes as head of product along the way.

????Like Amazon or Netflix, Alfred can show you like-minded customers' preferences. And as with other mobile apps, it can figure out where you are and allows you to filter by price or cuisine. But the real secret sauce is an engine that constantly crawls the web gathering, organizing, and updating information on places in the way that human beings actually talk about them. The system then creates a graph that connects those places based on similar attributes. "Our system understands that the word 'badass' is actually being used in a positive context," Pahlavan, 28, explains. The more feedback you provide, the smarter Alfred gets, recognizing patterns in your preferences and then matching them to its interest graph to come up with suggestions.

????After a couple of weeks in Apple's app store, Alfred has ranked among the iPhone's top 20 free lifestyle apps. And it is just Clever Sense's first product; the technology could someday help you discover TV shows or vacation destinations. But while Alfred is a good substitute for a friend who knows all the hot spots, Clever Sense hasn't figured out a way to make it a good conversationalist. Until then, you'd best keep cultivating human friends.

????--Jessica Shambora