What's More Intelligent Than a Genius? Appsaurus
A new app available in the Apple iTunes App Store promises to help iPhone and iPod Touch users find apps that match their needs and interests. Appsaurus provides more intelligent app recommendations than Apple's recently introduced Genius feature.
Simply surfing the apps is a highly impractical method of finding what you need. With over 120,000 apps and climbing--with some predicting that the Apple App Store could reach 300,000 apps in 2010, users are in desperate need of tools that can help identify apps that fit their needs or that might be of interest to them.
Apple's Genius feature for the App Store recommends apps that you might be interested in, but--despite the name--the algorithm isn't very smart. The Apple Genius feature bases its recommendations purely on past app purchases you have made.
This approach has two critical limitations. First, because there is no way to test or trial apps before you purchase them, many users purchase a wide variety of apps that they subsequently delete or never use. A purchase is a purchase, though, and those apps are reflected in the Genius recommendations. The second issue is that the Genius feature will not help if you are in search of an app for a specific purpose that doesn't fit the mold of your prior app purchases.
Appsaurus tackles those issues by analyzing your needs more intelligently. Rather than only looking at past app purchases, Appsaurus "learns" about your interests and habits. To begin the process, Appsaurus presents you with lists of apps and you tap the ones you like and swipe away the ones you don't like to "train" Appsaurus.
As you continue to train the app, Appsaurus "evolves" until it reaches the "All-Knowing" stage. Even then, though, Appsaurus continues to hone its understanding of what you like based on apps you select or ban.
Appsaurus also does more than just make app recommendations--it is dubbed "a thesaurus for apps", providing a powerful search capability that is missing from the native App Store. You can sift through the vast Apple App Store inventory based on keywords, or app price, or other criteria.
Variety is great, and it's very impressive to have 120,000 apps going on 300,000. I expect that there will be many other app search tools and "thesauruses" following in Appsaurus' footsteps, and that Apple itself will continue to tweak the Genius feature to meet user's needs.
For now, Appsaurus represents a must-have app, though, if you want to have any hope of being able to find the app needle in the App Store haystack.
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