Client side smarts and Central:
JD points to smartplaylists.com, which lets you share “personalized listening experience by creating Smart Playlists based on features like My Rating, Last Played, Keywords, Total Play Count and share.” As data on the client side gets richer, the user can setup rules automate routine processes. Central has the ‘set alerts’ feature, which along with smart rules in the preferences can help automate routine tasks. A glimpse into this is provided in the screenshot in the central movie finder alerts. Smartplaylists.com goes a step ahead and provides a nice way to share these rules. Looking ahead, if the smart rules for shopping applications are shared, for example in digital camara shopping, buyers not familiar with camara specs can also find the best camara that fits them. The simple table or the data grid with various meta-data collected can be used to produce interesting results using rule based sorting of columns. If the rules were set by navigation instead, it would be even easier for the user. Instead of going to a seperate window to set the rules, the user interacts with the application to get a result and clicks on a set alert button. The process that the user follows can be setup as a rule, but it may not be suitable in all scenarios. Macros in many applications have tried the same strategy but did not have significant success due to User interface complexity. Another post on Loki labs points to research work which makes rule setting in excell better by enabling test cases when the rule is set.
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