One day he's calm and happy as can be and the next day...well he is a little sad about something...and then the day after that he is content and full of energy.

Well it would appear that I am suffering from a severe case of MoodSwings...and I am!

My Professor Dr. Youngmoo Kim and I have been working on an advanced human computation video game that they have so fittingly named MoodSwings! Professor Kim was featured in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, where he explains the goals Drexel's Music Entertainment Technology Lab.

This past Summer Dr. Kim and I sat down and discussed the future of digital music and how we could create a way to organize the hundreds of millions of songs available today. Current methods of digital music organization do not rely on subjective feedback about each song and you run into problems where you want to listen to songs of a certain mood, but can not quickly find what you want. When you do find the song you want, the next song in rotation is never one you want to hear, and usually ruins your "vibe".

Well I decided to face this problem head on and developed what is referred to as a "human-based computation" game. Essentially, what that means is as you play my game for hours on end, you are performing complex computational tasks that my computers simply can not do. In the case of MoodSwings, you and a partner attempt to agree on a subjective mood of song clips. As you play, your position on the game board is being sent to me, and at the end of each round, I have complete recording of your exact moves. In exchange for you and your partner's complex mathematical computations, you receive points (that will be worth something soon!).

I've created a interactive tutorial that explains the game in more detail. Once you think you've grasped the concept, feel free to play the beta version (requires Firefox)! (This is a test version so bear with me as I work out the bugs).
I plan to have MoodSwings 2.0 complete by the end of the year. That (just like anything with a 2.0 upgrade) should be ready for the masses!

So what are you waiting for!?? Let your MoodSwing!!!

Posted by Guru Lloyd | tagged: MoodSwings, engineering, Lloyd, music, games, Techno-Guru