A Timely Update

Warning: This is not an advertisement. Drop that frown and listen.
   I was Stumbling, because I wasn't watching Modern Family and I still had another half hour to kill and facebook wasn't coming up with anything interesting apart from outdated re-posts by friends who were living a light year away and a century behind. Remind me to post about how joblessness/availability of net connection in rooms ensures that a small, elitist (and therefore, condescending) group of college-goers stay internet savvy and  always get wind of the latest viral video/meme, way before their cavemen friends.
   Lets not digress. So, I was Stumbling.
   Well, there was this website. Its called The Music Map.
   What does it do? Its like Cleverbot,  a self-adapting system, but this one learns about the outer world by asking its visitors what they like and what they don't like. Like their music tastes. And based on entries by millions of visitors, it suggests bands to listen to, based on your favorite bands. It nicely puts all these 'similar' bands on a nice "map", the funda being the closer two artists are, the greater the probability that people will like both artists. 
   Now I'm actually a stickler for not classifying music by genre (Read "The Grand Unified Theory") but the Music Map is a pretty kickass way of running into bands you had never listened to and you never thought you would like. It also tells you about the powerful force of joblessness of millions and millions of people, in creating a database of thousands of thousands of bands. There you go. 
   Do check it out on http://www.gnoosic.com/ 
   And if you haven't heard of Cleverbot either, go get some leaves, stones, sticks, some deer hide, a beard and a huge club. http://www.cleverbot.com/ is a "web application that uses artificial intelligence to hold conversations with humans". Yup, you can talk to him/her/hmm. And he/she/shh will talk to you.
    It's reported that the high suicide rates at Kanpur & Kharagpur can be primarily attributed to socially awkward students having hour long conversations with Cleverbot and asking themselves (to no end) what they are doing with their lives. Sad, no?


PS: Checkout Reddit too. And try inventing the wheel, life is not all about facebook.