Guest Post: Finding Atlas Wearables

Originally published on the Clarify.io blog. View archived copy.

Today is a guest post from Andrea Kalmans who serves as an investor, mentor, and advisor for companies all over the Austin, TX ecosystem.

There are few more exciting ways to start a day than to receive a text from a friend saying, “I just heard your name on the radio.” I didn’t know what she was referencing, so I wrote back, “?” and she responded, “from Peter Li, founder of Atlas Wearables, on KLBJ”. I quickly googled Atlas Wearables and KLBJ and found out that yes, Peter, had been interviewed by KLBJ for a “People in the Neighborhood” segment. I downloaded the MP3, but it was 54 minutes long!

Who has 54 minutes to find the segment and the highlights? Certainly not me!

Luckily, I am an investor in Clarify, so I knew about an amazingly helpful tool called “Try it Now” in which I can upload files just like the Atlas Wearables MP3. I uploaded the file in just a moment and the results were returned while I had lunch with a friend. Given that the Atlas Wristband will deliver the full promise of fitness trackers, I typed in the words I was searching for in the results: Peter, Atlas Wearables and Jumping Jacks! Boom, I found the specific interview segment in seconds instead of having to listen for 54 minutes!

You can try it yourself here!

There are a few things that I find remarkable about this experience. First, I am the LEAST technical person in the world. If I can do this, ANYONE can! Without Clarify, I would’ve had to listen to the entire file to find the relevant content; that may or may not have been interesting, but certainly not efficient!

Of course, this is just a great coincidence, but the potential impact of this technology is huge. Imagine someone in a media company or in government with thousands of hours of audio and video looking for something that they know was said in an interview sometime last quarter. Using a traditional search system, they might narrow it down to dozens of hours of audio or video files, but with Clarify, they can search into every recording with the same efficiency. To me, that’s a game-changer.

Andrea Kalmans
akalmans@lontraventures.com