So Microsoft filed a patent on a machine learning algorithm that predicts what media you'll want to consume next (e.g. pro-active playlists):The Real Deal On Microsoft's Playlist Patent - Forbes.com
Can anyone give me an example of any program that usefully predicts what you want and pre-fetches it for you? It seems like such a huge leap from giving you stuff you asked for in the past (e.g. that document you opened last) to predicting what you want next (e.g. songs from your favorite singer, ready to go). Sure, Amazon can use the hive mind to tell you other stuff you might like, but they're not pushing a trailer down to your computer, just in case you want to view a movie. There's a cost to pre-fetching (bandwidth, configuration effort), so you've got to make it worthwhile. Perhaps there could be a Akamai-type solution that balances the cost of distributed deployment of stuff with the value from accelerated retrieval. Hell, you could use BitTorrent as the protocol, but what type of personalized content would drive this?
There's also the question of competing alternatives. I can subscribe to news/data/media feed for my favorite writer/singer and control it myself, thank you. If people are doing this effectively, then what's left over for predictive algorithms to help you with? The more non-core a pre-fetched item is, the less value it has (when i do want it), and the more likely it is to be junk (when i don't want it).
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