Open Data Startup Factual Gets Funding
Factual, a startup that provides online tools so that users can share and manipulate databases, has raised about $1 million from a long list of big name investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt and About.com founder Scott Kurnit. The company launched its platform in public beta last October. Founder Gil Ebaz started Applied Semantics, which was sold to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) (and formed the basis for AdSense). More in this blog post.
dont think that having a U.I. that is essentially a spread sheet can work very well.
There is a reason why most of the world does not use spread sheets and why when asked to most would rather eat glass. Spread sheets usually mean entering data into boring grids and then have to add a formula to organize them…One When developing or using an app I like to ask mysled; could a 10 year old or a 65 year old use the UI with out any technical FAQ.
I think that linked data is one of the futures of the internet. I think to have this type of data creation and annotation picked up by a large amount of users the application will need to be both fun and easily usable.
For me one of the things to understand when
developing apps for linked data is to not discount the knowledge that a user brings to the table.
Making some safe assumptions about what a a user is looking for based on the knowledge that they more than likely have some access to some to media can help narrow the results sets almost to the point of being ridiculously accurate.
In my view it is also important to give the user the option to find other linked information if and only if they want to go beyond the basic fact.
Below are examples of a basic search for Geroge Bush using Factoetum and the other using Factual
http://www.factoetum.com/search/George_Bush
http://www.factual.com/search?q=George+Bush
I think it is also important to know that linked data is also about data that the user wants to share about themselves. There needs to be a level of personalization
http://www.factoetum.com/factoetum/Bruce_Wayne+Favorite_Tech_Newsfeeds.rss