06 Jan 2006
Wal-Mart apologizes for snafus

Man, heads are gonna roll in Wal-Marts's IT division, but, to be honest, writing good software that recommends purchases, no matter if it's based on a theme as is the case here, or on prior purchases, as with iTunes and Amazon, can be a really tough nut to crack. iTunes consistently suggests that I'd like music from "Mary Poppins", and Amazon seems to think I'd really enjoy the Christian section of their online store. And theme based engines usually don't code an entire tag database - they try to discern the meaning of words - Africa is the home of the great apes, after all, and chocolate is dark...

You get into the same kinds of problems with filtering software as well. There was a purchasing site for forestry products run by Lumberman's Exchange, called, naturally enough, "lumbermansexchange.com". Numerous filters blocked this site as porn! Sounds silly, until you break the domain down like a computer would. Then it becomes "lumberman sex change" ... and the company had to shut the domain down and move to a new location.

It seems that Wal-Mart has proven once again that, while computers are excellent for intensive computation, they have no sense of context and meaning, and until they develop one, we'd best stick to letting humans make buying suggestions for e commerce.

The retail giant apologized Thursday after its Web site directed buyers of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Planet of the Apes" DVDs to consider DVDs with African American themes.

(link) [CNN.com]

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