Not to be confused with the Mac OS application launcher utility of the same name, Alfred is a new local recommendations Android app from startup Clever Sense. Previously only available to iPhone users, the app was able to grab 20,000 users in two weeks during a trial run in July and has been praised for its personalized, context-aware suggestions generated by their proprietary “Serendipity Engine”. Not only is the app available in the Android Market right now, but it’s also been given a complete redesign and new features specific to Android users.
The goal of personal assistant apps of any kind is to learn what the user wants, and Alfred is no different. That’s why it starts with a quiz to better train the recommendation engine. Recommendations for restaurants, nightlife, and other local events are automatically aggregated based on your personal preferences, and maps with directions, ratings, and sharing features are built-in.
The company’s CEO, Babak Pahlavan, explained to Appolicious how the Serendipity Engine works:
The engine truly curates recommendations to be relevant for the user and his or her situation — serendipitous — by taking into account multiple factors. These include a user’s interest, past preferences, time of the day, day of the week, information about places around the user the way people talked about them and eventually, who the user is with. Alfred is different from other personal assistant apps because he has suggestions before the user even asks. The serendipity engine that powers Alfred constantly learns about locations in the physical world by looking at how people talk about them on blogs and on the general web and goes above & beyond a traditional location-based database of places.
You can grab Alfred for free from the Android Market now.
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