Meaningful information
The unprecedented growth in the volume of information presented to us via the internet means the new challenge is how to make such information meaningful rather than overwhelming. It’s a task taken up by Rummble founder Andrew Scott. Rummble describes itself as ‘a location based social search and discovery tool’.

The new online technology allows the user to find personalised search results on their mobile phone or via the internet that are relevant to their location. Your search results, for bars or restaurants for example, are based on the recommendations and insight from your social network of friends.

Trust
Scott explains, ‘Instead of having to do a search, then wading through search results, the idea is that we build profiles of ‘trust’ to fit a personal view. As you use the service it learns who you trust for different types of content. You might trust a certain source for its taste in restaurants, and others for their taste in music.’

Rummble is a filtering device which removes all the ‘information noise’, giving the user a personal map through the jungle of data a conventional search throws up.
‘Clive Cox, our Chief technology Officer,’ says Scott, ‘has developed an algorithm based on theoretical maths carried out by Audun Jøsang, a leading expert in this area. It’s called subjective logic. We take into account a series of factors within the network to be able to calculate paths of trust in different people’s content. The beta site is using Version 1 of the algorithm, but we are building it to be cleverer and more complex ’.

Friends nearby
And Rummble is not just about bars and restaurants, you can find out about friends nearby or as Scott suggests, ‘the ten things nearby that you are going to like most.’ He continues, ‘a friend of mine enjoys paragliding, and he has uploaded all the best launch sites from around Europe. We have been trying to give people something more creative. I know the best place in Estonia, for example, in Tallinn, to take a photo of the whole of the city from the top of a hilltop.’