Martello

I first came across the Live Plasma project in early 2006 but rediscovered it again recently. This article on Visual Complexity describes it as:

Liveplasma maps and displays music and movie search results with linkages and groupings, making a good use of Amazon.com’s API. After the search term is submitted, it’s immediately surrounded by other artists; the closer they are, the more similar they are in style to the target. The user can search, map, discover new movies or artists then save and share their maps.

It really is quite a lot of fun to use, and good for discovering similar bands to ones you already listen to. It’s also good for finding movies with your favourite actor that you may not have seen before.

I also noticed on Michele Neylon’s recent article that the Last FM Playground project looks to be doing something along the same lines. I wonder if the are also using the Amazon APIs.