From the website:
If you can’t bring the data to the code, bring the code to the data.
…
How do we do this? Simple. RecLab solves the intractable problem of supplying real data to researchers by turning it on is head. Rather than attempt the impossible task of bringing sensitive, proprietary retail data to innovative code, RecLab brings the code to the data on live retailing sites. This is done via the RichRelevance cloud environment-a large-scale, distributed environment that is the backbone of the leading dynamic personalization technology solution for the web’s top retailers.
Two things occurred to me while at this site:
1) Does this foreshadow enterprises being able to conduct competitions on analysis/mining/processing (BI) of their data? Rather than buying solutions and then learning the potential of an acquired solution?
2) For topic maps, is this a way to create competition between “merging” algorithms on “sensitive, proprietary” data? After all, it is users who decide whether appropriate “merging” has taken place.
BTW, this site has links to a contest with a $1 Million dollar prize. Just in case you are using topic maps to power recommender systems.