IBM Watson Supercomputer (Photo : Twitter)
The International Business Machines' (IBM) Watson Trend app can help users with holiday shopping whether they start on Black Friday or Christmas Eve, showing the hottest gifts and latest trends including tech gifts. In a press release on November 18, Wednesday, IBM provided details about the mobile app for iOS devices including iPhones and iPads, which digs through 10,000 online sources including ratings, reviews, blogs, forums, and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. It then processes the data to show a product's overall reaction and whether it is trending up or down.
Here is how it works. The Watson app daily scores shopping items on a scale ranging from 0 to 100, based on how many mentions they get and the rate they increase.
IBM's new free app can help consumers learn how popular the items on their holiday shopping list are. The top-trending holiday item is the Apple Watch with 100 points, while the iPhone 6s earned a paltry 4 points, according to Cult of Mac.
Pebble Time is the only other smart watch on the "Tech" list. Other top items include Samsung and Sony TVs, and Canon and Nikon cameras.
Shoppers can learn about which products are selling like hotcakes, and which ones are collecting dust. The Watson Trend app can help people shopping for a HDTV, pair of sneakers, family PC, or hot toy.
One of the key features of the app is that it provides a story about the holiday trends. For example, IBM's supercomputer will explain why netizens are talking about the Apple Watch, as well as features they love or hate.
The Watson Trend app is available for iOS devices on the Apple Store, according to BGR.
Apple Watch recently received new watchOS 2 software and an official first-party charging dock. Big sales figures for Apple's first smartwatch could give the company happy holidays.
IBM's Watson supercomputer has been making headline news since 2011. It defeated two past champions of the Jeopardy quiz show by accessing 200 million pages of offline content.
Here is how IBM's Watson supercomputer invented new recipes:
