New reputation score follows you online

New reputation score
follows you online

NEW YORK — Buy and sell enough goods on eBay and you’ll accumulate a score based on feedback left by other users. Visit another site, however, and you must rebuild your reputation from scratch.

A Boston-based startup is trying to change that with a reputation system that travels with you, whether you’re seeking roommates at a classifieds site such as Craigslist or love at a dating site.

“We believe reputation is something that needs to be horizontal,” said Shawn Broderick, chief executive of TrustPlus Inc. “If I’m a good buyer on eBay, that should be reflected when I’m on Craigslist.”

People who’ve had dealings with you can rate you using your e-mail address, eBay Inc. username, telephone number or another identifier.

For example, someone who bought a couch from you on eBay can leave feedback using your eBay ID. Someone else who received computer repair services from you through Craigslist can rate you based on the e-mail address you used.

The company also is partnering with smaller classifieds, commerce and other sites to incorporate reputation data they already have on you. (It doesn’t have deals, yet, with larger sites like eBay).

Meanwhile, users of the online hangout Facebook can pull up your combined reputation score by using the e-mail address, which is the Facebook login. So can an eBay user who knows your eBay username.

The service is free, though the company is looking to provide premium services for Web sites and sellers, including the ability to process credit cards.

Startup Veveo
mines mobile search

BOSTON — Internet access on mobile devices such as smart phones can be great, but it’s still often limited to what can be found in “walled gardens” of channels selected by the wireless carriers.

And typing search terms or making other queries can be annoying on the gadgets’ cramped keyboards, making a desktop search more convenient all around.

Veveo Inc. intends to tackle both problems.

To expand the content that’s available, Veveo indexes Web video and converts it to a format that can play on most mobile phones. So someone with an iPhone could watch most any video on YouTube.

The other half of Veveo is a keypad-entry technology that begins running searches and delivering results even before you finish typing a phrase.

Because Veveo produces a new set of search results every time a new character is entered, you can find what you’re looking for in minimal keystrokes, which is a blessing on cell phones and other devices that aren’t optimal for typing.

The service, at vTap.com, is available for iPhones and devices running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system. Eventually, Veveo expects to support other phones as well.

Veveo is not alone in pursuing these concepts. This month, Kannuu Inc. is expected to launch a mobile service that also anticipates searches based on the user’s initial entries, and it uses on-screen directional arrows for input to avoid phones’ tiny keyboards entirely.

Despite the competition, Veveo CEO Murali Aravamudan, a former Bell Labs researcher, has raised $28 million from investors and is now lining up the cooperation of wireless carriers, which could benefit if users can more easily find content that encourages them to spend more time online.

IBM has developed
virtual deaf interpreter

Here’s a productive twist on the animated characters known as avatars that carry out fantasies in virtual computer worlds. IBM Corp. researchers have developed an avatar that can translate spoken words into sign language.

The technology is meant for use in the real world and could be useful when human interpreters for the deaf are unavailable, or when a conversation is sensitive. Imagine sitting through a lecture and seeing a digital character projected on a screen behind the speaker, interpreting the speech in real time.

The IBM team and advocates for the deaf caution that the system is still a prototype. It also works only with British Sign Language for now because it was created at an IBM research center in Hursley, England.

But the system, known as SiSi (for “Say It Sign It”), is expected to move out of the labs and into commercial products. It is designed to be baked into other vendors’ deaf-accessibility products and expanded to include other countries’ sign languages.

SiSi works by using speech recognition to convert a conversation into text. From there, SiSi translates the text into the gestures used in sign language and animates a customizable avatar that carries them out.