Location: 1300 S. Bristol Street, Santa Ana, California 92704, United States

Founded in: 2006
Stage: Beta (public testing)
Number of employees: 6-15
Profitable year: 2009
Short URL: vator.co/clucast-from-clupedia

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David Saad
Chairman & CEO, Luristic Corporation

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Clupedia Corporation

Clupedia - Clues from Crowds
Startup/business
California, United States United States

http://www.clupedia.com

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Clupedia Corporation was featured in a VatorNews article: "Google/Demand Media blog wars over algorithm"

Google announces algorithm changes believed to target Demand, and Demand responds – Read more

Clupedia Corporation was featured in a VatorNews article: "Fundly raises $2 million for social funding"

A Kickstarter meets 33needs, Fundly helps nonprofits and educational organizations raise money – Read more

Company description

Clupedia is the encyclopedia of Clues from crowds. Clues consist of people’s opinions about anything and everything, from products to politics and everything in between. What Wikipedia is for words, Clupedia is for clues. While Wikipedia collects from the crowds the definitions of words, Clupedia collects from the crowds their opinions. If you have an opinion about something (and who doesn’t), Clupedia is the ultimate platform that allows you to express your opinion either at any point of interest anywhere on the World Wide Web using Clupedia Toolbar, or from a centralized location using our web site. Essentially, it is the ideal “expression engine” that propagates your clues, diffuse your ideas, and spreads your opinions like brushfire from anywhere to everywhere. It is no longer about just rating, reviewing, or even blogging, but rather, it is about influencing. You may write a review at any of the popular reviews sites, or you may write an editorial column in your magazine, or you may write an article in your blog, in all those cases, people have to go where your opinion resides. So you might be vocal, but are you being heard?!! Clupedia expands the walls of your web site, your magazine, or your blog to the whole World Wide Web by bringing your opinion to the people wherever they are at. In short, why limit yourself by hoping that they will come to you. With Clupedia you can go to them with just one click. That’s compelling!!! On the other hand, if you want to get the inside scoop about something (because what you don’t know might hurt you), Clupedia Toolbar sits eagerly in your browser ready to serve you with just one click from wherever you might be – no need to go anywhere or search for anything. Clupedia is where word of mouth travels and buzz hums so that you no longer need to hear it through the grapevine. It will forever change your surfing habits, leaving you wondering how you ever surfed the web without it. Clupedia brings you on a silver platter the wisdom of crowds - the collective opinions of people, which is often smarter than the opinion of a single expert. In his eloquent book entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds”, James Surowiecki explains why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes businesses, societies, and nations. Whether using our web site or our browser toolbar, Clupedia allows you to generate new clues or retrieve existing clues for free and with great ease, classic elegance, trendy style, and unparallel convenience. So if you think that YouTubing, MySpacing, or Starbucking with a “1/3 decafe triple grande sugar free vanilla white chocolate non fat stirred carmel Macchiato” are addictive, then wait until you start generating clues or peeking through people’s clues!!! Clupedia includes comprehensive features, advanced functionality, high usability, robust scalability, and very rich user experience. It combines the best computing paradigms found on the desktop, the web, and mobile devices.

Types of Clues

Clues can be ratings, reviews, pros, cons, suggestions, recommendations, notes, referrals, blogs, links, and favorites. You can select one or several of those different ways of expressing your opinion in a single clue. Thus, you can be very brief by just rating, or you can be elaborate by reviewing, recommending to others, and suggestiing to the manufacturer. Like unified messaging where different types of messages such as voice mail, e-mail, or fax messages are saved in a single inbox, Clupedia supports a single integrated clue that includes one or several types of opinions in a single transaction.

Formats of Clues Clues can be expressed in text, audio, or video. Clupedia lets your imagination and creativity wonder by supporting rich text format which can include all kinds of formatting, highlighting, alignments, bullets, fonts, illustrations, icons, emoticons, backgrounds, sound, animation, special effects, etc.

Privacy & Security Clues can be:

Private: only you can access them.
Sem-private: only those users that you named can access them.
Semi-public: anyone can access them except those whom you specified.
Public: anyone can access them.

Markers

When an item in a web page is clued, a marker appears next to it as shown in the screenshot below. In order to avoid cluttering with markers the web page that you are visiting, you can be selective by specifying in your settings the types of markers that you would like to have displayed. For example, you can choose that only markers about a specific category or by specific Clupedians ought to be displayed. When you hover your mouse over a marker, a pop-up appears with a list of categories of clues that have been assigned for the selected clued item. For example, if the word “Bonds” has been clued, the pop-up will include:

Sports Cards
Business & Industrial
Business organizations

The corresponding average rating and the number of clues are displayed next to each category. If the list does not include the category that you are interested in, that would mean that there are no clues for the desired category. In such case, you can create a new clue with a new category that interests you. If you click on a particular category, then you will get the corresponding list of clues, which you can then search, sort, group, and filter. Standard filters include top rated clues, most visited clues, most recent clues, clues that were generated by specific Clupedians who belong to your trusted circle, etc. , etc.

Pages & Items Clues can be about either a web page or an item in a web page. An item in a web page can be any word or a combination of up to 10 words that can be highlighted using the highlighter located in Clupedia Toolbar. Hence, a highlighted item can be a person, company, product, service, activity, pet, idea, social issue, politics, religion, education, or anything and everything displayed on the web. Once you highlight an item to be clued, you must then select its category from a folksonomy (i.e., a collaborative taxonomy of categories created by the crowd – a term coined by a technology blogger Thomas Vander Wal). Such folksonomy allows you to handle homonyms. For example, the word “Bonds” can be tagged as a name of a person, a relationship, or a financial instrument. Furthermore, in order to avoid clutter, common words or prepositions such as if, then, than, the, a, and, else, and the like cannot be clued without permission.

Propagation & Aggregation of Clues Clues are instantly propagated and aggregated. For example, if you create a clue about a product from one web page, your clue is instantly propagated to all web pages that include that product. Vice versa, if you go to any web page and click on the marker of that clued product, all its clues from all sources from all Clupedians are brought to you with just one click at that point of interest.

Grading, Voting, & Censoring A valid clue is a good clue which includes a positive, neutral, or even negative opinion. On the other hand, an invalid clue is a bad clue which includes incomprehensible, illogical, irrelevant, bashing, libeling, slandering, insulting, disparaging, vilifying, defaming, offensive, profanity, slur, smear, or pornographic material. In addition to our own internal editors, we rely on our Clupedians to police clues by reporting invalid clues, grading clues, and voting for Clupedians. As a result, a meritocracy system establishes the merit, status, and reputation of Clupedians which helps safeguard the integrity of Clupedia.

Referring & Blogging Once you create a clue, you can refer it to your friends as well as post it onto your blog. In doing so, you increase your probability of diffusing or spreading your opinion around beyond the walls of your blog.

The Meta Web The World Wide Web consists of millions of web sites with billions of web pages that describe companies, people, animals, products, services, activities, ideas, politics, etc. Some of it is good but a lot of it is not. We’re drowning in a sea of irrelevant information. Fortunately, here comes our savior - the meta web - the web about the web built by the people for the people. The meta web consists of the opinions of people about what is displayed on the web. The meta web is a shortcut that cuts through all that clutter. However, the meta web can’t be built without you. By sharing your wisdom and your experience with others, you will contribute to this ambitious endeavor which will make the web much more informative, collaborative, connected, and convenient. While the web has introduced democracy by leveling the playfield, the meta web is about meritocracy (i.e., who has merit and who doesn’t). You deserve to rely on information that has merit which can be delivered with style to you through the wisdom of crowds by Clupedia – the encyclopedia of clues from crowds.

Benefits

By generating clues, you will:

Help others by sharing your opinion
Contribute to the wisdom of crowds
Earn recognition and notoriety
Establish your online merit
Become famous
Win prizes

Earn some cash

By retrieving clues, you will:

Never, ever, be caught clueless
Be “in the know”, which is always cool
Get a second, third, or nth opinion from the crowd
Cut through all that clutter
Boost your surfing habits
Find influencers
Discover some interesting trends

Team

Dr. David Saad - Founder, Chairman & CEO

Dr. David Saad is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Clupedia. He is responsible for the overall direction and management of the company. He has invested over $2 million to date in Clupedia. He is a seasoned veteran in the software industry with over 25 years of experience in marketing, sales, and R&D making him uniquely positioned to lead Clupedia. After 5 years of extensive study and research, he became one of the leading authorities in referral automation and viral marketing. Dr. Saad started his career as a system programmer, became a data base consultant, and did some public speaking covering topics such as relational databases, data modeling, methodologies for logical data base design, software engineering disciplines, etc. Prior to founding Clupedia, Dr. Saad founded Braintec in 1986. He developed ProofReader - a suite of utilities such as spelling checker, grammar checker, style checker, dictionary, and a thesaurus. ProofReader included a very sophisticated technology based on computational linguistics, heuristics, and artificial intelligence. Subsequently, Braintec focused on the fast growing and lucrative IT consulting industry and became the largest Unix engineering firm in Southern California with customers such as AT&T, IBM, Sun, NCR, and Teradata. Braintec was sold to Technisource – an IT firm listed on NASDAQ which was taken private by IntelliMark Holdings. Prior to Braintec, Dr. Saad worked for Mathematica Products Group – a software division of Martin Marietta where he was instrumental in establishing the Canadian division. Dr. Saad won several awards for his software sales achievements including the ICP award. Prior to Mathematica, Dr. Saad worked as a programmer and data base consultant for IST - a consulting and service Bureau based in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Saad earned a PhD in Computer Science with high honors from University of Paris, an M.Sc.A. Cum Laude in Computer Science from McGill University, a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Concordia University, and a D.E.U.G. in Mathematics & Economics from University of Paris. Dr. Saad speaks four languages. He had a very successful athletic career in Judo. He participated in the European Championships, World Championships, Pan American Games, and the Olympic games. Dr. Saad was also the executive producer of a Rhythm & Blues (R&B) album by a female group called Foxx Empire.

Mr. Steve Valenzuela

Mr. Steve Valenzuela is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Clupedia. He is responsible for the design and the architecture of all Clupedia’s products. Technology wise, Mr. Valenzuela is also in charge of keeping Clupedia at the leading edge by researching, evaluating, implementing, and enforcing new technologies, methodologies, and standards. Mr. Valenzuela has 7 years of software engineering experience. His expertise includes architecture of web based distributed systems, graphical user interfaces, system programming, application programming, and database modeling. He has extensive skills in XML, HTML, DHTML, ASP, ASP .Net, VB .Net, Visual Basic, Java, Javascript, CSS, Ajax, web services, C, C++, C# .Net, SQL, Stored Procedures, Triggers, Views, Frames, Patterns, etc. Recently, he has been working on Microsoft’s Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and browser kernels.
Prior to Clupedia, Mr. Valenzuela was the IT Manager at Cal State Fullerton where he was responsible for their IT infrastructure, web site, and application development. Mr. Valenzuela is the co-author of a book entitled “Building Websites with VB .Net and NotNetNuke 4.0”. He is also writing a new book on programming patterns. He has presented at conferences such as UCEA-West, TechEd, and CVC as well as Southern California developer user groups such as LA C# and SoCal DotNet.

Business model

Advertising and Affiliate Referral Networks.

Competitive advantage

Patent pending for the propagation and aggregation of clues from crowds.
Integration of all types of clues in a single integrated clue
Text, audio, and video clues
Posting of clues onto blogs
Folksonomy
Two paradigms of clueing, namely: distributed from a point of interest from the browser toolbar, and centralized from our web site.
Slick user interface with high usability

public playlist

Clupedia - Clues from Crowds
Posted: November 09, 2007
(22483 views)

AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC 2008
Posted: February 11, 2008
(7 views)

The Opinions of the Few
Posted: July 13, 2008
(7 views)

The Opinions of the Few
Posted: July 13, 2008
(350 views)

Testimonial from Contest Winner
Posted: November 10, 2007
(1080 views)

CEO's Testimonial as a User
Posted: November 10, 2007
(587 views)

CEO's Testimonial as Investor
Posted: November 10, 2007
(259 views)

CEO's Testimonial as Executive
Posted: November 10, 2007
(268 views)

CEO's Testimonial as Chairman
Posted: November 10, 2007
(267 views)

Clupedia - Introduction
Posted: February 11, 2008
(5 views)

David Saad - Vator.tv
Posted: January 28, 2008
(113 views)

The Ultimate Wisdom of Crowds Platform
Posted: April 22, 2008
(352 views)

Viral Marketing best Practices
Posted: April 22, 2008
(364 views)

Clupedia Corporation was featured in a VatorNews article: "Google/Demand Media blog wars over algorithm"

Google announces algorithm changes believed to target Demand, and Demand responds – Read more

Clupedia Corporation was featured in a VatorNews article: "Fundly raises $2 million for social funding"

A Kickstarter meets 33needs, Fundly helps nonprofits and educational organizations raise money – Read more