In an article titled “Clearing Away the Clutter From Tech Shopping,” the New York Times recommends the use of UW CSE startup Decide.com:
“A couple of years ago, some exceedingly bright minds from the worlds of computer science and business created Farecast, a site that takes reams of data about airline ticket pricing and analyzes it to let consumers know if the fares for trips they want to take at a given moment are going to go up or down soon. The price-prediction engine was later bought by Microsoft and incorporated into that company’s Bing Travel site.
“The founders of Farecast then turned their attention to consumer technology. This was much more challenging because new products are being replaced by even newer products at an alarming rate. Decide.com is the result.
“On the Decide site, you can search for tech products and find out whether one is about to be supplanted by a newer, better model, as well as whether the price is likely to rise or fall. Decide uses all kinds of algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence to comb not only pricing data, but also articles and blog posts to predict a product’s price and life span.
“Armed with that data, you can either move ahead and buy with confidence, or lie low for a little while and feel extra knowledgeable.”
Read the New York Times article here. Try Decide.com here. Learn about the UW CSE research of Oren Etzioni, Decide.com co-founder, here.