Krillionology: where local and commerce connect

News update - The Find selects Krillion

It's been a busy week for the Krillion team. Today, we announced our partnership with The Find. This is a significant step for Krillion and has been a great opportunity for us to work together with a major shopping portal/search engine to provide our local product search and inventory information for web shoppers—no matter where they are on the web.

Here’s how it works: TheFind will now use Krillion's data feed to supplement the information it provides shoppers on local products and where to buy them. This means that TheFind users will now be able to get real-time inventory information for certain categories of merchandise they are researching for purchase.

Krillion aims to forge relationships with search engines, shopping portals, YP operators, publishers and manufacturers, and to thus act as a supplier of essential data that connects ready-to-buy shoppers with local retailers. Look for more announcements shortly.

Krillion poised for stellar 2008

A lot has been going on since we last posted to the blog. If you've not visited Krillion.com lately, you should take a fresh look. With the recent addition of deeper product information, user reviews and real-time (in-store) availability checking, the experience is better than ever (PR). There are exciting new partnerships and a host of new product categories on the launchpad as we ramp up for what promises to be an eventful 2008. More soon.

Re: the uncanny valley of UI design

Bill Higgins has an interesting thought piece entitled "The uncanny valley of User Interface Design"
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First, thank you Bill for finally explaining why I walked out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988... it ultimately lead to a rather painful breakup ;-). It also got me thinking philosophically, which is a rarity these days.

I find it interesting that as a designer who appreciates novel and innovative approaches, it’s apparently ineluctable human nature to grow comfortable with the familiar. Perhaps as we age the disappointments of technology for its own sake accumulate and we begin to grow intolerant of what seems to be a declining signal-to-noise ratio in the deluge of experiences out there.

The first time I saw the Flash mastery of Joshua Davis I was truly inspired, and yet, when given the choice, I routinely choose the HTML site variant over Flash. As many comments have pointed out, the innovation question is an obvious one with no easy answer.

It seems to me that finding a balance between experimentation and codified communication is at the core of what it means to be a designer. What’s appropriate? In the right environment the 90s-typographic excess of designers like David Carson felt edgy and fresh. Used indiscriminately, on detail-heavy annual reports, it was a disaster.

We need to push the envelope, but ultimately keep in mind the envelope has to be read by someone or it never gets delivered. If you have the resources, hire a user researcher, he/she will keep your design honest.

What's the word

Every organization has its own vocabulary.

Arriving in the bay area at the height of the Bubble I can vividly remember my first impressions. I left the frozen tundra north of the 49th to join high flying Ariba whose parking lot resembled a new car dealership, complete with cell phone-wielding sales guys. Not a week went by when someone didn't drive in with something shiny & new or better yet had it delivered. Favorite test fright... a colleague's new Viper.

Truthfully the materialism didn't bother me, I'd brought my own pick and shovel to this latest gold rush. What really puzzled me was the language everyone used. Product managers spoke about leveraging assets and wanted to benchmark everything. And then came prepone (ref). I'd never come across the word and thought it sounded silly, but more importantly it was used in the fictional context of advancing the release date of software (and that certainly never happened at Ariba). Hearing it, a dev manager sardonically asked if by releasing on schedule we'd be poning the release.

Krillion too has developed its own language liberally sprinkled with search/ad-related acronyms (SEO, SEM, CPM, RPM, PPC) and a few real gems we all enjoy.

By definition, our favorite word, canonical (ref), is in a class by itself ;-) There are canonical URLs (oops URIs), product-identifiers and even a T-shirt. We delight in finding new ways to work this into the conversation, and non-developers get approving looks if we manage to use it correctly from Van and Roger.

Then there is trifurcate (ref). I offered this up one day tongue-in-cheek discussing a UI problem that had, surprise... three solutions. It doesn't lend itself to easy usage and in that sense it's rather canonical.

Paul gave us accretion (ref) in response to Van annexing some of the common space between them with his technical library which had been gathering dust in his basement and now is gathering dust on our bookshelves. As our QA lead, Paul is the team's conscience and he specializes in accreting bugs in Jira.

It will take time for new words to gain the support necessary to rise to the pantheon of usage occupied by the big three, but we have candidates. Joel casually offered vicissitudes (ref) during our last all-hands and judging by the impression it made on the assembly it might rate a T-shirt of its own one day. That is if the venal (ref) fortunes of its rivals don't win out, quietly rendering it moot (which might qualify as mute).

Anyway, if you come across this post and have some good examples of words that define your company let us know. We know this linguistic experience is not canonical.

606Tech has the Krillion 411

606Tech just published a detailed (and complimentary) piece on Krillion today. Writer Kristen Nicole puts the whole story together recounting the common user issues with current search technology. Have a read of her post "Krillion; the next big thing in local search"

Her personal frustration with the wasted hours spent searching in vain for a place to buy that new "insert product here" is palpable. When you are looking for a refrigerator is it really unreasonable NOT to find results for satellite dishes?

Unless you're using Krillion you might just have to buy a satellite dish.

Krillion Launches February 5th

It might seem a little tardy to blog about your launch 30 days later, but we'd like to think we're demonstrating just how reluctant we are to puff ourselves up when there's work to be done ;-)

On February 5th Krillion reached an important milestone that Churchill would have called ..."the end of the beginning" After a year of hard work the team proudly launched Krillion.com. It still bears a "beta" stamp in recognition of the ambitious feature set we're going to build and the challenges ahead, but it stands firmly on it's two feet for the first time.

Our founders Joel and Roger set out to build an answer to a very simple question. "Where can I find this product near me?" It's a question that millions of consumers researching purchases on the internet ask every day, and as Joel delights in demonstrating, no one else answers very well.

We encourage you try it for yourself, and then pay us a visit. If you're in the market for a major appliance (our first category) and want to purchase it locally (as 99% of major appliance consumers do) then check out the site and let us know what you think. You may even come across one of the 275-million local pages we provide through your favorite search engine. Relevance, is a beautiful thing after all.

With the humility that comes from that mile-long feature list we want to build, we are happy to acknowledge the great press we've received since launch from Search Engine Watch, VentureBeat, Search Engine Land and StartupSquad.

Joel and the sales team have their hands full with advertising and syndication meetings, while Roger has us heads down on the next development phase. Exciting times. Don't forget to zip in to Krillion before you zip out to buy that new fridge.

Krillion's IKEA segment posted to You Tube

Furnishing Krillion's Local Search Headquarters

You Tube Video Link

IKEA TV visits Krillion

Host Lisa Quinn (author of $500 Room Makeovers) and the crew from CBS-5 stopped by the Krillion office last week to film a segment of the Evening Magazine's IKEA $500 Challenge. Tentatively set to air at 7:20 pm on Thursday, November 30th, the episode looks at how Krillion designed a fun, work space with IKEA furniture. Joel and I were a little disappointed that we didn't have hair and makeup, but we managed. The shoot was quick, and we got right back to work.

Bonnie Scotland in Pictures

It's been 33 years since this wee lad last visited Scotland. I was born and lived in Edinburgh until I was eight when the family packed up the kilts and emigrated to Canada. Blessed with some terrific  weather the September trip was emotional, inspiring, wonderous. In fifteen days I shot over 2000 images with the 5D... waterfalls, hills, lochs, harbours, cemeteries. This image gallery is a sampling.

User Research: 84% is the magic number

Sixty-nine responses and counting. Krillion's first user research project is an online survey that looks at how and where people make major appliance purchases. If you're interested you can take the survey yourself. The biggest surprise so far is just how strong the attachment to shopping in stores remains. The internet factors heavily in buying research patterns but 84% of our respondents made their purchase in an actual store, exactly the same percentage who wanted the opportunity to "touch the actual product". And 84% shop within 15 miles of their home; now that's local.