recommendation

Nanocrowd is a little video discovery app for the iPad that approaches the problem of finding you a movie to watch in a new way.

Rather than collect your viewing history and asking you to rank what you've seen (as Netflix and Tivo do), Nanocrowd lets you start with one movie and then it tries to tease out what it is about that film that you're liking right now. Then it finds more like that.

For example, if you say you liked "District 9," the app will give you a list of three-word options to narrow … Read more

TripAdvisor is the comprehensive companion app to the popular travel Web site of the same name. It's a great resource for discovering hotels, restaurants, and things to do in destinations all around the world. It even lets you read reviews, talk in forums, and look through tons of photos shot by other travelers.

From the main Dashboard, you can jump directly into a section, and conduct a search for Hotels, Restaurants, or Things to do. But the better way to use the app is through the global search tool at the top of the screen, which pulls up all … Read more

A bucket-load of community data, Facebook-styled "like" and "dislike" of user comments, and a pile of interface tweaks that make the program easier to use capstone SlimCleaner 2.0 (download), available exclusively today from Download.com.

The update to its sophomore version makes some big changes from version 1.6's collection of robust tools. There's a registry cleaner, for sweeping up all the detritus left by unruly programs after you uninstall them, a faster scanning engine, and recommendations for similar programs. The recommendation engine appears to be accurate, so if you're looking at … Read more

You almost can't go wrong giving the gift of music, so take a look at our top audio picks in this year's Holiday Gift Guide.

My opinion is that one can never have too many headphones since each model offers a different sound profile, but check out these alternatives for the audiophile on your gift list.

A good place to start is obviously a portable music player like the versatile Apple iPod Touch, but I also love the Logitech Wireless Boombox for iPad.

It lets you stream music from any device with a Bluetooth connection (most current smartphones, … Read more

eBay has bought recommendation engine Hunch for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today.

New York-based Hunch launched in 2009 as a place to find personalized recommendations on a range of topics, including video games, movies, and technology, based on a user's personal preferences. In order to make recommendations, Hunch asks a series of multiple-choice questions. Upon choosing an answer, the service learns a bit more about the user, and offers up some topics or products they might like based on that.

Although Hunch and eBay don't look like a perfect match at first glance, it appears that … Read more

Lots of people in the music industry believe they know what kind of new "twist" Google has planned for the company's upcoming download store.

Android chief Andy Rubin made news earlier today at the All Things Digital AsiaD conference by confirming reports that Google plans to launch an MP3 store to complement the company's cloud-music service. And he piqued interest by adding this: Google's offering will "have a little twist--it will have a little Google in it."

Multiple music industry sources told CNET that Google has spoken to the major record companies and … Read more

The ever-popular and unique Web recommendation engine StumbleUpon has made its way onto the Android platform by way of a native app. And from what we've seen so far, it looks fantastic.

With the StumbleUpon app, there are two ways to pull up recommended sites, news, pictures, and videos. You can tap the Stumble button or simply swipe to the left. Either way, the sleek interface makes for some incredibly fluid stumbling. You can also rate each recommendation with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, filter your recommendations according to your interests, and share any of your recommendations on Read It … Read more

Are you ready to try another recommender app? Even if you've been burned by less-than-stellar automatic recommendations in the past, free restaurant recommender app Ness is worth a shot. The iOS app, from Silicon Valley startup Ness Computing, boasts serious technology put together by an impressive team of engineers, all in the service of giving you tips on where to grab a bite.

Ness learns over time and builds a "taste profile" of you. The more it learns, the better the recommendations, a la Pandora. Facebook and Foursquare recommendations and check-ins from friends all show up on the Ness search results page.

The app makes recommendations by crunching together your taste profile, your similarity to other people, recommendations from friends, and overall popularity ratings.

The company's Likeness Engine gives you a Likeness Score from 0 to 100 for each restaurant. I'm glad they're producing fine-grained ratings. Five stars, even with half stars, have never felt adequate.

You can also filter the results. Choose "Hide Places I've Rated" to make sure new restaurants show up at the top of your search results. And choose "No Big Chains" to stick to local businesses. Of course, if you and your friends are foodies, the chains shouldn't show up in your search results anyway, right?… Read more

GetGlue is a Foursquare-style social networking game that lets you "check in" to the movies and shows you're watching, books you're reading, games you're playing, and more. It then takes your check-in data, along with your Likes, Favorites, and other Ratings, and recommends other forms of entertainment it thinks you'll enjoy. The more you interact with the app, the better its recommendations get. Plus, if you perform certain actions, you can unlock stickers for your profile. Unlock at least 20, and you can actually request that physical stickers be sent to you, free of … Read more