At this point in time I am just going to assume there has been a search engine created to assist knowledge-seekers of all kinds. If you like to watch things, go to Netflix. If you want to expand your iTunes library, give Pandora or Spotify a shot. But what about those who are more focused on attending the right school and finding the perfect tutor than on trying to decide which movie will best help them to get over their Post-Potter Depression?

Hold on to your protractors, young prodigies, this one is for you.

Noodle Education was created with the education seekers in mind. Whether he or she is searching for a school to pursue an MBA, the perfect study abroad program, or just some affordable test prep, Noodle provides “personalized recommendations [that] let you skip the stress and go right to the opportunities that fit your needs.”

While I think this engine is going to become more and more useful as it transitions out of beta, I can’t help but think this is a more advanced version of the site I used to search for colleges when I  was in high school. Then again, seeing that search page just now, I can tell you that CollegeBoard has improved the functionality of the engine since I last used it.

But that’s what is supposed to happen, isn’t it? Development? Improvement?

Think of something that you have recently searched for, whether it be cars or comic books- did you use a specialized recommendation engine? Or did Google suffice? Keeping in tune with the orchestra of Double-O Engines- if you had to create an engine specifically geared to recommend answers to your search, what would you name it?

Some comments on TC:

They worked hard on this report, but I don’t give it a passing grade. This is simply wrong ( General Partner at The Founders Club)

Were they smoking pot? – preferred to stay anonymous.

Austin should definitely be higher. We have UT powering Austin’s ecosystem and its simply amazing how big of a scene there is here. SXSW alone should tell you that.

Warsaw 24 vs Berlin 17 – does not seem right.. Pawel Chudzinski (Point Nine Capital)

Strange — is the Toronto startup scene really bigger in so many measures than that of LA? Maybe I don’t get the measurement methodology..

It’s ridiculous, and intuitively wrong, to rank Moscow above Boston, the home of MIT, CIC, MassChallenge, Techstars, Atlas Venture, Bessemer, Highland, … . It simply proves that their algorithms and methodology have serious flaws and/or the datasets weren’t representative.

Interesting to see how it evolves. Hope they can solve the issues since the idea itself sounds interesting.

This is Start-up Genome’s ‘ridiculously’ new ranking for the world’s top 25 startup ecosystems, ordered by their average throughput (whatever that is):

1. Silicon Valley (San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Jose, Oakland)
2. New York City (NYC, Brooklyn)
3. London
4. Toronto
5. Tel Aviv
6. Los Angeles
7. Singapore
8. Sao Paulo
9. Bangalore
10. Moscow
11. Paris
12. Santiago
13. Seattle
14. Madrid
15. Chicago
16. Vancouver
17. Berlin
18. Boston
19. Austin
20. Mumbai
21. Sydney
22. Melbourne
23. Warsaw
24. Washington D.C.
25. Montreal

TechCrunch announced the 10 companies selected to participate in the Healthbox Startup Accelerator Program in Chicago.  Iconic Data, one of the eight eHub Nspire Program participants, is one of these 10 companies. Following is an excerpt from the article.

TechCrunch

Healthbox: Chicago’s New Health-Focused Startup Accelerator Debuts Its Inaugural Batch by Rip Empson

Healthbox is set to launch its three-month accelerator program on January 9, 2012 and will be seeding the 10 companies it has chosen from over 200 applications with $50,000 equity investments (for a 7 percent stake). The 10 teams will share space and collaborate at the accelerator’s headquarters in Chicago, where they will be given access to an expert network of entrepreneurs, investors, and experts, a collaborative workspace, as well as forums led by these experts and investors, geared towards educating startups on partnerships, product development, and so on.

Iconic Data (Georgia) delivers a cloud-based patient list manager solution that provides physicians access to near-real-time snapshots of clinical care episodes across disparate, non-integrated facilities, resulting in increased charge capture and reduced inefficiencies.

To see the full list of participants and read the article in full: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/20/healthbox-chicagos-new-health-focused-startup-accelerator-debuts-its-inaugural-batch/

Congratulations to David LaBorde and the Iconic Data Team.

It has just been officially announced on TechCrunch that streaming service Vudu has tapped the Filter to provide personalized recommendations to its users.

Vudu – which was acquired by Walmart in March 2010 – offers the world’s largest selection of High Definition movies which can be rented or purchased for viewing on set-top-boxes and PS3s the same day as they are released on DVD or Blu-ray. It now joins the Filter’s growing list of high-calibre clients such as Warner Bros., NBC, Nokia and Dailymotion.

This latest deal means that The Filter will now reach an estimated 200 million unique users across multiple devices, dramatically increasing the number of people benefitting from targeted and timely film and TV recommendations provided its unique relevance platform.

The partnership means that Vudu subscribers will have a personalized video-on-demand experience based on previous viewing habits. TechCrunch describes it as “a little bit Amazon, a little bit Last.fm, and a little bit Netflix…combining a wide array of statistical and rule-based analysis with artificial intelligence techniques that both learn and forget — all in an effort to provide smarter recommendations while protecting user privacy.”

In the article, Technology Writer Rip Empson points out that in a landscape where Vudu, Netflix, Hulu and YouTube are reaching a massive audience, differentiating content delivery services to provide the best recommendation options is becoming increasingly important, and “The Filter is becoming a big part of the conversation.”