June 11th, 2008
Peter Gabriel's The Filter has more Holes than Necessary
Music week staggers forward. The other day BuzzFeed pointed out that Peter Gabriel has become involved with The Filter.
‘What is The Filter?’ you ask.
Well you could risk being bored to death by Gabriel’s Tech Crunch’d explanation on why we need sites like The Filter:
… or I can take a stab at the general tagline. What it aims to do is collect data on your likes and dislikes, be them music or movies or TV shows(currently unavailable), and from this data it offers up new things that might be up your alley.
First off, the navigation is clunky as hell. It feels like I’m in an 80s video rental store trying not to knock down random other merchandise off the shelves as I make my selections. I browse the music section and randomly gave the CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY soundtrack a 70% good rating. The Filter, in turn, recommends Ennio Morricone‘s SQUARE DANCE. I’ve never heard of Morricone’s SQUARE DANCE but I know of his work via oh, so many, spaghetti western scores. So on some level I think The Filter is on to something.
But the movies need work. After toggling the necessary genres to get the ball rolling on movie rating I found that ball landed squarely in the 1930s era. There nothing wrong with a good old movie. I’m just not as versed in those flicks as I would be in the last few decades or so. Pinpoint searching and rating to tweak the movie finder didn’t help as most of the movies I liked denied me rating access. So here I am, stuck in the 1930s viewing pleasures.
I understand that The Filter is still in beta and because of this I’ll come back in a month or two to see if they’ve worked out the kinks. Otherwise, I’ll stick to Pandora to recommend my new music. I have hope for The Filter because just a few years ago Pandora was in the same place.
