Imagine being able to get Web-wide ratings on restaurants, hotels, cars, electronics, movies or even politicians from your iPhone. Cal Poly alumni and brothers Steve Harmon and Tony Harmon created a 99-cent iPhone app that assembles information from blogs, news sites, social media and other Web pages and scores from one to five stars.
The app came out two weeks ago and Apple has already featured it as “New and Noteworthy.” It gives a Web-wide opinion so someone will know whether to buy a service or product, Steve Harmon said.
“Taleee gives you the power to know the opinion of anything; the Web’s opinion is in your hand,” he said.
Taleee, which means “applause” in Hindi, allows users to get Web-wide ratings on restaurants, hotels, cars, electronics, movies — even politicians — from an iPhone.
“Google indexes websites, we index ratings,” Chief Technical Officer Tony Harmon said. “Taleee syndicates ratings to over a thousands different Web sites.”
There are two ways to get opinions from the application: Users can search the object by entering information manually, or use the barcode scanner to get online opinions on something such as a CD or digital camera.
After receiving the online ratings, Taleee gives the user the option to share the results on Facebook or Twitter. The app also allows for someone to read posted ratings on the product.
“It’s our goal to have everyone benefit from this application,” Tony Harmon said. “Anything that has enough shared opinions will have a rating.”
Taleee gathers its Web-wide information by using innovative Web Sensus technology that the creator call a “Taleee bot.” The bot “crawls” across websites and views online information and data sources. Taleee then uses an algorithm to determine the overall Web-Wide rating for products.
In the case of blogs, the application will look for descriptive words like “love, amazing, fantastic” and then compare the words to the overall word count of the article.
“Taleee is a directory or collection of information — almost like the Yellow Pages,” Steve Harmon said.
Taleee plans on making the application available for the Motorola Android and SMS or text messaging, Steve Harmon said. When using SMS, a person can text Taleee the object’s information and Taleee will reply with the Web-wide rating.
“We want the application to be available to everyone,” Steve Harmon said. “The user would be anyone who wants to buy something or go someplace.”
Taleee is also working with investors from companies like eBay and Thomson Reuters to create funding to expand its mobile services.
“There are 17 million business in the U.S. and 300 million consumers that can benefit from having the Web-wide ratings and opinions on demand,” Steve Harmon said. “Next time you want to buy something, just Taleee it.”
Tony Harmon attended Cal Poly for one year. Steve Harmon got his journalism bachelor’s degree at Cal Poly, then worked for a company that did media research and business consulting around when the Internet sparked in 1994, Steve said.
Ten free downloads of the Taleee app is available to readers who e-mail Steve and Tony at invite@taleee.com.