With much anticipation, Qwiki finally opened it’s doors to the first Alpha testers earlier this month. After quite an extended use I must say, it’s a lot better than I’d first thought it’d be. The hyped up engine that powers Qwiki, essentially the core of the website simply works and there is already an abundance of content at this early stage of it’s development.
Qwiki produces a rich video experience for it’s user summarising information into an easy to digest format on the fly without the need for any human intervention. It currently holds a database of over 3 million articles and is constantly expanding. Search terms that I couldn’t find on the first day of release could be found two or three days later. Using the website is very easy and the content produced is about 90% accurate. There were a few issues with it such as finding the wrong images for actors in films on a few occasions but these should be ironed out if the feedback program gets some attention. Otherwise most the information delivered is in a crisp and very entertaining fashion with the electronic voice sounding unnaturally natural if you will.
Qwiki recently received an additional $1.5m in seed funding hopefully towards expanding it’s servers and increasing capacity so it doesn’t fall down the same route as places like Twitter. As it currently stands, it’s an interesting service but not one that could be considered critical as it stands. I think where the service would succeed is in implementing it ubiquitously into mobile devices and into household electronics. In the future you never know, we might just have our first Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Guidebook in the palm of our hands.
PS: if anyone is looking for an invite into Qwiki, drop a message in the comment section below or get in contact with me for an invite.
