Yuxi's first iPhone application!

I am absolutely ecstatic to announce the launch of our first of many new iPhone applications in the iTunes store today. RAD Estimator is a tool for radiology professionals to evaluate assets and research the value of equipment in today’s marketplace. It went live today and will sell for $19.99.

Earlier this year, Yuxi Pacific began soliciting local area entrepreneurs for their ideas and the response has been overwhelming. Now, in concert with our partners, Yuxi Pacific has almost a dozen iPhone applications in development and scheduled for launch in the 4th quarter of 2009 and 1st quarter of 2010.

The word-of-mouth on blogs is that iPhone app development is not practical. Most firms charge between $125/hr and $200/hr for iPhone app development, and considering the average app takes 6 weeks to develop, that is about $7,500.

However, Yuxi has changed the game with the off-shore and partnership model. We have received and evaluated hundreds of submissions. For those with viable business models, we build them at cost - which, because our staff is located in China, is often times less than $2,000. Yuxi and the partner share ownership of the application, and revenue is split. It's a win-win all around.

Automating Ontology Creation

While the idea of using ontologies to enhance data mining capabilities is now widely accepted in the publishing community, there is still widespread disagreement about ontology creation and maintenance. All too often, publishers resort to large scale, manual ontology projects that are expensive and quickly become impossible to maintain. Automated solutions present challenges as well, often providing confusing and unintuitive results.

At this year's On-Line Information 2009 conference in London, England, I will be giving a presentation that will discuss some of the common hurdles that must be cleared in development of ontologies, and how a publisher’s own content can be used to automate the ontology creation process and create an authoritative, vetted ontology at low cost.

If you will be attending the exhibition area of the conference, please join me for this presentation. The presentation will be held on Thursday 3rd December, 12.45-13.15. If you plan to attend, please RSVP to info@yuxipacific.com as seating is limited.

Please also stop by our stand! We will be in stand X14.