Information Retrieval Gupf

Music Information Retrieval continues to be an excellent place to play around with the intersection of search, recommendation, user-guided exploration, and explanatory (transparent) algorithms.
First, check out the announcement of Music Explaura from Stephen Green at Sun Research.  Stephen writes:

It has now officially been ten years since Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger wrote the Cluetrain Manifesto, rekindling and reminding us of the centuries-old notion that markets are conversations between people, buyers and sellers. The following are a few of the Manifesto’s points that resonate with me: