"Ringo++" creates an intelligent link between different Internet users and thus provides personalized music recommendations.

"Ringo++" is a system which makes novel and creative usage of the World Wide Web.It provides a personalized music recommendation service to the Internet community by linking different Internet users with one another in an intelligent way.

When a user links to Ringo, he starts by giving the system some information about which music he likes by rating a selection of music albums. "Ringo++" then checks with other users in its database who have similar music taste. In particular, it computes how "similar" other users are to this user, by verifying whether their album ratings are correlated (i. e. if for those albums the two users have in common, similar ratings were assigned). Once "Ringo++" has found users that are similar to the new user, it can start making recommendations. It will recommend albums to the new user that the similar users have indicated liking (and which the new user has not rated) and tell the user to avoid albums which the similar users indicate disliking. As such, every "Ringo++" user will receive a personalized set of music recommendations. Users can connect to the system as often as desired and receive new recommendations.

Recent years have seen the explosive growth of the sheer volume of information.The number of books, movies, news, advertisements, music and, in particular, on-line information is staggering. The volume of things is considerably more than any person can possibly filter through in order to find the ones that he or she will like. People handle this information overload through their own effort, the effort of others and some blind luck.

"Ringo++" helps users deal with this information overload by automating the process of "word-of-mouth" recommendations. A significant difference is that instead of having to ask a couple of friends (whose taste you trust) about which albums they recommend, "Ringo++" can consider thousands of other people, and consider thousands of different albums, all happening autonomously and automatically. "Ringo++" even offers the user a mechanism for getting in touch ith users who have similar taste, thereby offering an opportunity to make new friends, based on the fact that they have similar interests, rather than that they happen to live in a nearby physical location.

"Ringo++" provides a range of functions apart from making recommendations. For example, when rating an artist or album, a person can also write a short review, which "Ringo++" stores. When a user is told to try or to avoid an artist, any reviews for that artist written by similar users are provided as well. Thus, rather than one "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" review being given to the entire audience, each user receives personalized reviews from people that have similar taste.

In addition, "Ringo++" offers a range of miscellaneous features which increase the appeal of the system. Users may add new artists and albums to the database.This feature was responsible for the growth of the database from 575 albums at inception to over 14,500 albums after only a few of month of use. Users can also add more information on an album or artist, such as a link to the cover of an album or the list of its tracks. Users can also view a "Top 30" and "Bottom 30" list of the most highly and most poorly rated artists on average. "Ringo++" can tell the user which albums are most similar to an album the user likes, and so on.

The beauty of "Ringo++" lies not so much in the elegance of its visual design, but rather in the fact that this system makes full usage of the power of the Web, and that a system like this could only exist on the Web . . .