Apple Siri paves way for $100 million IPO

“Siri is the most advertised feature of the new iPhone 4S from Apple,” Nigam Arora reports for Forbes. “Siri is a voice controlled virtual personal assistant that relies on artificial intelligence, and Apple has done an excellent job at integrating Siri with other apps on the phone.”

“In my article ‘Siri Is Apple’s Post-Jobs Ticket To $1,000,’ I gave the following example to illustrate the capabilities of Siri: When I asked Siri to find the best Indian restaurant nearby it came up with the right answer. It did not answer with the nearest restaurant, but found the highest rated restaurant nearby,” Arora reports. Siri received the answer to my query from a restaurant data base generated by a company called Yelp.”

Arora reports, “Yelp offers reviews of local businesses. Yelp claims to have built up a data base of 22 million reviews. It is estimated that 61 million unique visitors per month visit Yelp. Yelp is now capitalizing on the publicity generated by Siri. Yelp has just filed for an IPO for up to $100 million.”

Read more in the full article here.

22 Comments

    1. CB is stuck in Batman mode. Did you not realize the same batman voice he did in Terminator? Just watch it again and pay attention to his voice. Now close your yes and see if you can’t see Batman.

        1. I’ve seen Yelp bury well deserved negative reviews, for whatever reason. Manipulation from inside or outside the company seems inevitable.

          Similar scenarios:
          – The attempts to have accurate gas price comparison apps.
          – Corrupted pages on Wikipedia.org. Look up ‘Building 7’ at Wikipedia and roll your eyes. 🙄

          Because these databases are ‘open’, they’re open to berzerkers and negative anarchists (aka ‘irresponsibles’ as I call them).

        2. Yelp is not an open database, it is curated. Yelp offers a “service” to businesses that for a cash fee they will delete or burry bad reviews. This is not about the odd troll, or even gangs of them.

        3. If it is known that Yelp buries bad reviews for a fee, why does the public support them? Are people so accustomed to corruption in the business world that it doesn’t even register on their radar anymore? Or are people simply not paying attention? Either way, it’s a sad commentary on American society when openly dishonest companies flourish. I’m not saying that Yelp is crooked, but it has been alleged.

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