Apple’s App Store recently hit the 10,000 application mark, and while the store does a pretty good job at turning up impressive new applications through its Top App lists and on banners that scatter the store, most users are only exposed to a tiny fraction of the applications that are available. Now Y Combinator startup AdPinion has leveraged the technology behind its advertising voting engine to create a recommendation service for iPhone apps called Appalanche, hoping to surface the gems that are most appealing to users and might otherwise go unnoticed. To use the web app, visit this site from your browser.
The interface is sleek and intuitive, and looks great on the iPhone’s screen (the web app is also compatible with standard PC web browsers). The site presents users with six applications at a time, asking them to drag them into either a green “Like” section or a red “Don’t Like” area”. After making a few choices, users can hit “More recommendations” to see six new applications. Users can associate their recommendations to an Email address, so they can build up a larger (and hopefully more accurate) database over time.
While the site looks very nice, it still has some shortcomings. Unless you have a comprehensive knowledge of the applications on the App Store, most of the applications displayed by Appalanche will be totally unfamiliar, which makes it hard to categorize them under ‘like’ or ‘dislike’. The icons and names for each app aren’t particularly informative, and while you can see a brief description of each app by clicking on it once, the process is tedious, especially on the iPhone’s small screen. And because it’s so tough to figure out which applications you’re actually going to be interested in, the engine isn’t as helpful as it could be. That said, I’d love to see a recommendation engine and AdPinion certainly has the technology to do it – they just need a better interface.
Appalanche. Great name, for what it’s worth.
Why do a review if you can’t download the app and try out right now? What a waste of time. Spent time searching both their website and iTunes because I thought it was a good idea & wanted to try it out. Zip. Zero. Nadda.
Fail.
Put up the app, make it available then do the review.
Simple.
It’s a web app. Click the link above. It’s not on the App store.
when you’ve settled down, read the post.
Though, for iPhone users, Appalanche takes advantage of a little-known feature in firmware 2.1 and 2.2: “Site-Specific Browsers”.
Go to appalanche.com on your iPhone, and you can hit the “+” button in Safari (then “Add to Homescreen”) to get an Appalanche app, complete with icon and no Safari interface cruft.
This is Slick, it’s been difficult going through all the apps on app store trying to find something i might like! much needed tool!
Agree with the author. This isn’t particularly helpful unless one is familiar with the apps they’re “rating.”
Hallo all,
Thanks for the nice words – in response to Jason’s complaint above that “most of the applications displayed by Appalanche will be totally unfamiliar, which makes it hard to categorize them”, we’ll be adding a search feature (as soon as we take a nap) that will let you find the apps you already know about, as well as an experimental homescreen icon recognition feature we’ll preview soon.
Best
Luke
Appalanche/Adpinion
Congratulations to Appalanche for getting mentioned on TechCrunch! This looks pretty cool.
Now, for my shameless plug…
AppBeacon lets you do something very similar. You can “Sink” an app, bookmark it, mark an app as owned, or sink an entire category of apps to start from scratch.
We’re still working on features and ironing out bugs.
Like Luke said above, we’ll get everything worked out after some much needed naps.
Justin Noel
AppBeacon
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> Users can associate their recommendations to an Email address, so they can build up a larger (and hopefully more accurate) database over time.
I don’t understand this sentence.
Could you explain?
What do they have with each other, a mail address and recommendations?
I dont get it either @_@
Hi Yuko and Zafarali,
The idea is that you can save your vote history to our server, associated with an email address, so that if you clear your browser cookie or change computers, you don’t have to start over from scratch with Appalanche. That’s all!
And by the way, we set up a Get Satisfaction page here if you need any other help!
http://getsatis...nion_appalanche
Best
Luke
And I would want to go through 10,000 Apps Six at a time for what reason?
I LOVE LUKE!!!!!
It’s silly to fake an iPhone display and therefore limit the amount of apps you can look at.
Someone made the point above on going through 10000 apps, six at a time is tedious. I agree. Why can’t I look at 60 at once using my full display?
I would say it was for the purpose of not crowding your iPhone display with a list of things you wouldnt want to waste time scrolling through.
The site is designed for use on your device so you dont have to run from desktop to phone to do your app selection.