????Zite允許用戶添加版面，所以會給你一種報紙的感覺。雖然我的品味比較籠統（比如運動、科技產品、文學、小說、營銷等），但是Zite的版面也可以細分到讓人難以想象的地步（包括針織、調酒、量子物理、意識流等統統都是選項）。但它也不是完美無缺的。比如它有一次推薦了一則來自俄勒崗州麥克明維爾市的地方報紙News-Register的報道，講的是關于NCAA兩支橄欖球隊的故事，而我對它們一點興趣也沒有。另外在我添加的波士頓版面里，很多文章除了稍帶提了一下“波士頓”幾個字，完全和波士頓沒有任何關系。不過它的瑕疵還是很少的，而且我用得越多，錯誤就越少。那天我差不多對首頁推薦的四五篇文章都很感興趣，我差不多花了一個小時的時間，在我的主版面上翻了19頁，無論長文章還是短文章都看了，的確不錯。

????Zite背后的主要“極客”約翰遜畢業于斯坦福大學（Stanford）哲學系，曾在SAP工作三年，然后跳槽到了微軟(Microsoft's)，從事Bing搜索引擎的開發。另外，他也為Powerset和SideStep等搜索引擎創業公司工作過。后來他的腦中蹦出了完善一個推薦引擎的點子，這個創意讓他欣喜若狂，而推薦引擎原本是Bing的目標。推薦引擎這種東西不可能每次都是完美的，而且你也不會希望它每次都是完美的。約翰遜表示，從開發者的角度看，“任何這類東西的問題都在于，意外發現某種東西的興奮感是很容易創造的，我們喜歡把它歸于偶然，但你真正想要的，是某種有指引性的發現，而不是完全的偶然?！蔽矣肸ite用得越多，偶然性就越小，當然這就達到了目的。但是隨著偶然性的消失，發現某種全新事物的喜悅感也在消失。

????下一項是音樂。我當時還不想付費體驗最近廣受好評的Spotify，但是這款應用可以讓你免費在平板電腦上使用它的音頻設置。（這款應用是由30歲的丹尼爾?艾克的公司開發的）。一開始Spotify的用法和Pandora很像，輸入一首歌曲或一個歌手的名字，Spotify就會播放類似格調的音樂。一開始我輸入的是說唱歌手卡迪小子的名字，然后我又回到Zite上閱讀文章。在閱讀的過程中，Spotify播放了很多我已經聽過、而且也很喜歡的歌曲。還有幾個新歌手的歌曲我也很喜歡，但是也有不少是我不喜歡的。和Pandora一樣，用戶只能快進幾首曲子。Spotify里當然也有廣告，而且其中大部分廣告都是一個叫“戰前女神”的鄉村樂隊的幕后花絮，而我對這支樂隊一點興趣也沒有。Spotify和Pandora唯一顯著的區別就是，Spotify播放的大量音樂都來自我輸入的那個歌手，相比之下其他歌手的歌曲則非常少。比如在我輸入卡迪小子、布魯斯?斯普林斯汀等歌手時都出現了這種情況。這并不是壞事，因為或許你很喜歡你選擇的這個歌手，但是的確少了些發現的樂趣。

????當天晚上吃晚飯的時候，Ness向我們推薦了一家叫Birch and Barley的餐廳，我的朋友早就說過要到這家餐廳吃飯了，結果這家餐廳也沒有讓我們失望。我倆和另一個賣酒的朋友一起吃了晚飯。餐廳為我們端來了一道道的意大利面、魚和腌肉，每次還有三種不同的啤酒。第二天早上，雖然昨晚的美食還沒完全消化掉，我們又堅決地為中午的大餐做起了準備。這次Ness為我們推薦一家叫Estadio的西班牙餐廳，說我們有81%的可能會喜歡。不過，那家餐廳的菜讓人很失望，我的廚師朋友也覺得非常一般，因為我們認為Ness這一次推薦失敗了。

????當然，一款美食應用不可能每次都100%命中目標，一款音樂應用也難免會播放一些你不喜歡的音樂。就連Zite也是一樣，雖然大多數時候都是成功的，但也不可能報道我喜歡的所有話題。它不可能取代那幾家我作為忠實讀者每天都要訪問的新聞網站。使用Spotify的時候，即便有時候它給我推薦一首很好聽的歌，而這首歌來自一支對我來說比較陌生的樂隊，結果往往是我并不喜歡這個樂隊，我喜歡的這首歌對于這個樂隊來說也是超常發揮的作品。它的音樂品味永遠趕不上我的一個音樂家朋友，也趕不上我的某個音樂評論人朋友。對Ness來說也是一樣：如果我們放棄了Ness，只去我的廚師朋友推薦的餐廳，那么我們吃的每一頓飯應該都是非常美妙的。

????Zite allows you to add sections, giving it a newspaper feel, and although my own are rather generic (sports, gadgets, literature, fiction, marketing), they can get more hyper-specific than you'd ever think of wanting (knitting, mixology, quantum physics, and consciousness are all options). It is not without its flaws: The app once gave me a sports story from Oregon'sMcMinnville News-Register about two NCAA football teams I care nothing about, and in the Boston section I've added, stories frequently appear that have nothing to do with Boston apart from a mention. But its errors are rare and become more so the more I use it. When I fired it up in the apartment that day, I was genuinely interested in four of the five articles that showed up on page one. In total I spent nearly an hour swiping through the 19 pages of my main section, reading articles both short and long. Not bad.

????Johnson, the brainy geek behind Zite, is a Stanford Philosophy major who spent three years at SAP (SAP) and then worked on Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing. He also worked for search startups like Powerset and SideStep. Johnson is enraptured with the idea of perfecting a recommendation engine, which, after all, is what Bing is supposed to be. Such a thing, really, could never be perfect every time, nor would you want it to be: From a developer standpoint, he says, "the problem with any of this stuff is that serendipity is pretty easy to create -- it's what we like to refer to as randomness -- and really what you want is some kind of guided serendipity, not total randomness." The more I use Zite, the less I see randomness, which of course is the point, but as randomness vanishes, so does the magic of discovering something totally new to me.

????Next up: music. I wasn't about to pay for the much-hyped Spotify just yet, but the app (founded by 30-year-old Daniel Ek) will let you use its Radio setting for free on a tablet, which essentially works just like Pandora (P). Enter a song or artist and Spotify plays you tunes it deems similar. I began by typing in Kid Cudi and returned to Zite. While paging through articles, I heard a fair amount of stuff I already knew and liked, plus some new artists I liked, but also more than a few misses. As with Pandora, you may only skip a certain number of tracks. There are ads of course, and many are, well, bad -- the majority relentlessly pitched me "behind-the-scenes" footage of Lady Antebellum, a country group I had zero interest in trying. The only obvious, stark difference from Pandora I could identify was Spotify playing me an awful lot of songs by the artist I entered, as opposed to songs by similar artists. This happened with Kid Cudi, Bruce Springsteen, and others. That's not a negative, assuming you like the artist you select, but it does mean less discovery.

????That night, for dinner, Ness gave us Birch and Barley, which my friend had on his list anyway. It didn't disappoint. We ate with a third friend, who owns a wine shop, and the chef stuffed us with course after course of pasta, fish, and cured meat, plus three different beer samples each time. But in the morning, resolute to have another big lunch despite our food hangover, Ness suggested a Spanish restaurant, Estadio, promising an 81% likeness. The food disappointed, and my chef friend was unimpressed and had to conclude the app had failed us this time.

????Of course, a dining app isn't going to be on-target 100% of the time, nor can a music app avoid playing you some songs that you dislike. Even Zite, which I found most successful at what it does, cannot cover everything for me. It won't replace the handful of news sites to which I'm loyal and visit every day. On Spotify, even when I hear a great song by a band that is new to me, it often turns out I don't like the band, and the song I loved was an anomaly. The app will never have as much cred with me as one of my musician friends or authoritative, music-critic peers. The same goes for Ness: Had we ditched it and gone only to restaurants my chef pal already knew about, there wouldn't have been a single less-than-fantastic meal.