APML

I guess the future is now. Finally. Attention Profiling Mark-up Language is taking care of all of my on-line needs.Is there other kind? In a little while I-myself will cease to be necessary.

No more surfing the net,
Facebook-Orkut-Amazon-Ebay-Twitter-Google-Last.Fm mash-up will know exactly what to do.

Except, I kinda like the discovery part of online experience. It's the same with a lot of people and shopping, they don't want to find that perfect accessory in the very first store. They enjoy the process way too much.

Still, lately I have been fooling around with Engagd and I've been using Particls for quite some time. I also use Piggy Bank browser add-on and Last.Fm and Jango for my background music needs while using my laptop.

What I'm unhappy with is the quality of the recommendation engines. Maybe it's just me since even I consider my taste in music odd. It ranges from old hardcore punk like Black Flag to mellow crooner k.d.lang. My likings of movies are no better.

Even if it is me, there's still no question these engines don't work. Netflix is working hard on improving theirs, but hey - after entering around 200 movies I like, it still showed "Dude Where's My Car?" as one of the recommendations.

Personally I still like Amazon's - "buyers who bought this, also bought these".
It's not really an engine and there's no algorithms involved, but quite often it works for me. Maybe it's the human factor.

I don't know what I don't know and too often I don't know what I want. It also doesn't look like truly semantic web is happening any day soon. It could be a good thing.

I dread the day my browser will know exactly where to take me.