Gadgetopia

Interesting idea from Manuel Amador over on OSNews as to how music players could better decide the next song to play:

You see, Shuffle is very good at helping you find previously unheard songs, but it’s rather bad at selecting the most appropriate song for your current mood. Shuffle can do wonders with a small list of songs, but small lists of songs means you do not get to experience songs which aren’t on the playlist. This means you have to either create lists (strategy 1, anyone?), or to interrupt your business every two or three minutes, maybe seven out of ten times.

I bet you have noticed this as well. Lots of music gives you wide variety, but does not guarantee enjoyment.

The basic idea is that music players could learn that song A sounds good after song B based on whether or not you ‘Next Track’ed it before it played for very long. That’s something I always thought would be a great feature, but Manuel has thought it out right down to the pseudocode.

It’s interesting how sometimes the design of the smallest feature of an app can make the difference between ‘fantastic app’ and ‘ho-hum’.