Some have referred to the new Alfred app as “Pandora for the real world”. With a recommendation like that, we couldn’t help but take a look!

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock (or don’t have access to it in your corner of the world), Pandora is a streaming music service that asks you what kind of music you like, then comes up with related songs that you’ll probably like using complex algorithms.

When you run Alfred for the first time, he asks you a short series of questions. He uses your answers to make immediate suggestions about other places and has you rate them. This teaching process take about three minutes. Once he has this information, Alfred uses your tastes, the time of the day, and the day of the week to offer suggestions of where to go for meals, socializing, and night-life.

The more you use the app (and report on what you like) the better Alfred will get to know your preferences, and the better his suggestions will get.

All this is possible through artificial-intelligence and machine learning. Honestly, that’s the bigger story. That’s also why Google acquired Clever Sense, the developers of Alfred.

When you consider that Google is working on a project called Majel (which some are calling Google’s response to Apple’s Siri) it makes sense that Google would want some pretty technologically advanced artificial-intelligence that has the ability to learn. We have to assume that Google will take full advantage of the Clever Sense tech and show us some amazing things in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, Alfred is available free in the Android Market (currently only in the US, but with plans to expand to other countries soon).

Source: Android and Me