The Netflix Prize

Another lunch-time conversation sticking in my head today - talked with some colleagues about the Netflix programming challenge - aka the Netflix Prize. Netflix is offering up a million bucks to the developer(s) who can improve the performance of their recommendation software by 10%. Lots of big boys are participating, and some solo artists as well. Not by design, but is proving to be a pretty collaborative effort - folks are posting their work to the blog, and their performance numbers - and others are picking it up from there. Surprising, with a million dollars at stake; but the money is probably only meaningful to the smaller players. The Google team probably isn't motivated by the cash (you only need 2000 shares of GOOG to be a millionaire. I, on the other hand, need 35,700 of MSFT. Unless we're planning a 6:1 split anytime soon, I gotta keep working).

I don't have a $1M to offer, but I do have a partially refurbished utility/snowmobile/motorcycle trailer for whomever can design me an e-learning course viewer that raises my NSAT by 10 points. You haul it...