About Me 0086: People Making Money Online

When we think of scientists, we often picture distinguished researchers in white coats, methodically conducting experiments in labs that run like well-oiled machines.

Unfortunately things are usually less glamorous. Science labs have a lot going on, and while they’re generally very focused on making sure safety protocols are followed and contamination is minimized, there are some things that are a little less organized. Like ordering supplies — oftentimes reagents are either ordered in excess (resulting in waste) or forgotten about until they’re needed (resulting in delays).

Quartzy, a startup that’s part of the most recent Y Combinator batch, is setting out to fix that problem. The company launched around 18 months ago and has 4,500 scientists worldwide using the service — and there are plenty more who could use help keeping their supplies in check, many of whom are spending thousands of dollars on supplies every year.

At first glance, the service seems a bit like a science social network. You sign in and create a profile, then link up with your coworkers and other colleagues. But founder Adam Regelmann explains that the site isn’t really about connecting with your colleagues in a social sense — rather, it’s about keeping track of which supplies your lab has in stock, and what needs to be ordered . He adds that it’s a problem he’s faced himself as a MD and PhD from Columbia, which is when he had the idea for the company.

Anyone in your lab can log in to see the current inventory status, which helps make sure that they don’t place order requests for things that they don’t need. The site also lists expiration dates, which is important for reagents that only last for a relatively brief amount of time (like some enzymes).

Inputting the inventory information into the system is something each lab will need to do themselves — there’s currently no direct integration with vendors, so your inventory won’t automatically be updated each time you order more supplies. Regelmann says this is partially because the industry is very fragmented, so labs are oftentimes ordering their supplies from many different vendors (some of which use arcane technology) which makes integrations difficult. Update: Regelmann adds that while the service doesn’t tie in directly with these vendors, Quartzy does allow labs to upload their existing inventory Excel spreadsheets to quickly get their labs up and running on the service. And Quartzy also includes online versions of each supplier catalog, so you can quickly add supplies to your database by keying in vendor names and catalog numbers — the system will automatically populate the rest of the information.

Quartzy does more than keep track of your lab supplies. It’s also building out a review database for supplies commonly used in laboratories (you can rate how effective a given enzyme was, for example). At this point the database is fairly small, with around 1,000 reviews, but it’s an idea that has potential.

Also very cool: Quartzy has a feature that’s the scientist equivalent of asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar. It’s quite common in scientific communities for researchers to ask friends and colleagues in other, nearby laboratories for a certain reagent that they only need a small amount of (Regelmann says he’d get five or so such requests per week during his research days).

Quartzy helps with this by letting users run a proximity-based query that lets them see if anyone in their city happens to have what they need. And it’s smart about doing this — any results you see will be anonymized. You can send a message to the anonymous researcher and ask if they can spare a dash of whatever you need (they’ll be able to see who you are), and if they’re interested they’ll respond.

So how does Quartzy make money? So far Regelmann says that the company is focused entirely on growth. Down the line it will let science supply vendors purchase advertising on the site, giving a very targeted channel directed toward a group of people who are typically hard to reach (he explains that many vendors often have time informing scientists about new products). And scientists will get exposed to new products they might not have otherwise known about, so it stands to be a win-win situation.

Quartzy’s team currently includes three programmers in addition to founders Regelmann and Jayant Kulkarni.

The idea behind tapping into collective intelligence is simple: There’s bits of useful information distributed among the members of diverse crowds, so aggregating their judgments should yield a better answer — better even than experts’ — to a particular question.

But ARA is looking to do something just a little different from other crowdsourcing efforts. While many similar tools assign equal weight to participants’ inputs, ACES will be looking for the most accurate predictors over time and weighting their judgments more heavily than other users.

Tools that tap into the smarts of the crowd have shown promise on a host of challenges over the years. Researchers have used Twitter buzz about upcoming movies to make pretty accurate predictions about box office sales on opening weekends. Tools like Ushaidi, nonprofit software that lets users map incidents, resources or people in the midst of crises, has helped rescuers find and save victims of disasters like Haiti’s earthquake.

ACES is a crowdsourcing tool somewhat similar to an online poll. People who sign up for the website will be asked whether an event in the fields of politics, economics, science, society or security will take place and what probability they assign to it. Their answers are then aggregated to see if the group produces an accurate prediction. It’s not a prediction market like the famous InTrade, which lets users bet on just about anything you can think of. No money changes hands on ACES — only opinions.

For ACES to be successful, it needs to attract a diverse pool of users and keep them engaged. But the online world is home to a lot of crowdsourcing tools and prediction markets, posing stiff competition for the marginal predictor’s attention. In addition to sites like InTrade, there’s a slew of other options available. The University of Iowa’s Iowa Electronic Market has been around since 1988 letting users bet on presidential elections or Federal Reserve Policy. Cinephiles use the Hollywood Stock Exchange website to bet on opening weekend box office hauls and other movie-related events.

Warnaar says he’s hoping some of ACES’s features designed to research analytical skills for the intelligence community will also prove interesting to the average user. “We’re thinking that people will be interested in competing with others and maybe learning how to become better forecasters.”

To accomplish that, ARA is working on a tool intended to help forecasters better calibrate their estimates of a prediction’s probability. For example, let’s say ACES finds out that when you say there’s a 60 percent chance an event will happen, it turns out that over time your “60 percent” guesses actually end up having a probability of closer to 40 percent. The site will then clue you in to your serial over or under-confidence, giving you feedback on your forecasting ability and allowing you to adjust accordingly.

Other features planned for the site would allow a social dimension to the prediction process. There’s some evidence that indicates information sharing among participants may undermine the accuracy of the crowd, turning a wise crowd into a dull mob. Warnaar says the jury is still out on the effect of social influence. “It’s not clear, for example, whether or not collaboration between participants helps or hurts.” Either way, he plans to find out, as ACES will experiment with features that lets users work together on prediction challenges.

Just like with math problems, ACE wants you to show your work after making a prediction. ARA has yet to determine how exactly participants can elaborate and collaborate on predictions. But some approaches could involve having users write about their rank their reasons behind it and let others vote on them.

“We think there’s a way of doing it this way that would basically give us the arguments for [a particular event] and split the problem apart in such a way that people start thinking about this problem a little deeper than they otherwise would,” says Warnaar.

Turning to the crowd has proven pretty popular with security types. In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm, recently began work on a prediction market aimed at forecasting computer security events. Darpa, the nerd cousin of Iarpa over at the Defense Department, tucked away some cash in its budget last year to farm intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data out to the crowd in search of better analysis. The Navy has even turned to crowdsourcing via online multiplayer games in order to hunt for better ideas against piracy.

So how would ACES be applied in the intelligence community? ARA’s press literature mentions National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) as an area of potential application. NIEs represent the top-level assessment of America’s various spook agencies and senior-most analysts on a particular topic. Right now, ACES is still in the research phase and any firm ideas on how or would just be speculative, but it’s not hard to imagine potential uses. A validated ACES tool that polls intelligence analysts could complement an NIE, letting intelligence consumers gain a more complete picture of the intelligence community’s views on an issue.

But that’s only possible if ACES turns out to be accurate, something that’s yet to be proven. It’ll be a long while before answers are forthcoming — the project won’t be completed for another four years.

Photo: Focus Features

See Also:

Challenge! Darpa Crowdsources New Military Vehicles

Jihad Forums Crowdsource Fantasy Assassination List

Military May Crowdsource Haiti Relief

NATO’s Newest Bombing Tool: Twitter

Paging Chris Anderson: Darpa Wants DIY Drones

Physicist: I Can Predict Insurgent Attacks, Thanks to The ‘Red …

About Me 0086

Monday, August 1, 2011

People Making Money Online

More bad poll <b>news</b> for Obama as debt deal brings smiles to Capitol <b>...</b>

Obama, Boehner Announce Agreement to Raise Debt Ceiling, Avoid <b>...</b>

<b>News</b> Corp. Names Andrea Zappia CEO of Sky Italia - The Hollywood <b>...</b>

No comments:

Post a Comment