On April 29, Prince William and Kate Middleton will tie the knot. Gossip rags are in a frenzy, England’s declared the day a bank holiday, and look, now we’re even talking about it on Hunch. We don’t have stats on how many Hunch users are going to be glued to the royal wedding YouTube live stream. But we do know that 45% of total users believe they are in a relationship with their soul mate.

Meanwhile, 17% of Hunch users don’t believe in soul mates, and 10% no longer speak to their soul mates. Which is worse? Talk amongst yourselves.

But back to the royal wedding. Kate and William have made a splash with their upcoming nuptials. For starters, the prince is settling down with a commoner. (Heavens!) The couple dated for nearly nine years and shacked up before getting married. At 29, Kate will be the oldest royal bride, as well as the first English princess with a university education.

They’ve also made some interesting wedding choices. Kate’s eschewed a royal carriage and has chosen to take a car to the wedding. William proposed with the late Princess Diana’s unusual sapphire and diamond engagement ring. Kate and William are aiming for a smaller wedding at a smaller church and a larger reception dinner. (This is compared to Prince Charles and Diana, not your average wedding — it’s all relative.)

We wondered what Hunch data would say about wedding choices. Do people in Europe and North America have different wedding-related preferences? What does age have to do with one’s approach to nuptials? We crossed Teach Hunch About You (THAY) questions with topic results to investigate. Mind you, these findings are based on small samples.

Let’s start by looking at two of the biggest wedding expenses/obsessions — the dress and the ring. If you’re not married or looking forward to putting a ring on it soon, you might not be familiar with the lexicon. So we’re including pictures straight from Hunch.

North American Hunch users are all about bling. (Incidentally, 39% of North American Hunch users don’t think rap lyrics send the wrong message to today’s youth.) The most popular engagement ring results for Hunch users in North America are in princess or pavé settings. Or both. Shiiiny.

Hunch users in Europe get more subtle results, including diamond solitaire and plain platinum bands. Pear-shaped diamonds and channel-set bands are popular, too.

It’s only fair to point out that while these diamonds are forever, the marriages they symbolize often aren’t. According to the United Nations Demographic Yearbook, the U.S. has the fifth-highest divorce rate in the world. England has the highest divorce rate in Europe, but divorce rates are lower in Europe overall than in North America.

On a lighter, slightly less expensive note, let’s talk about wedding dresses.

People in North America — we’d guess mostly women, but we’ll keep this general — are really into wedding dresses. What do you expect in a country with the reality shows Say Yes to the Dress and Bridezillas? The most popular wedding dress results for Hunch users in North America are floor-length satin numbers with lace, beads, and embroidered details.

Even if you’re not a princess — and your country doesn’t have one, either — you can still dress like one. For one day. For a lot of money.

Sweetheart necklines and strapless dresses appear to be universally popular. The most obvious difference in the top wedding dress results for Hunch users in Europe is that two dresses are a more casual cocktail length. They’re just as ornate as the dresses recommended to North American Hunchers, but they’re less voluminous.

Right now, the royal wedding cake — a multi-tiered fruit cake — is busy fermenting. I think I speak on behalf of most North American Hunch users when I say, “Eww.” The most popular wedding cake results for North Americans are marzipan, white cake with buttercream frosting, chocolate raspberry, and cake with red roses. Meanwhile, floral cake, lemon sponge cake, cheesecake, and pumpkin cake are most recommended to Europeans.

Other results for North American and European Hunch users suggest that the two groups approach weddings differently.

Wedding Venue

North America: museum, church, theme park, historic landmark

Europe: cruise ship, beach, hotel, private home

Wedding Theme

North America: fall, whimsical, color, cultural

Europe: floral, poolside, holiday, casual

Wedding Flowers

North America: rises, lavender, poppies calla lilies

Europe: narcissus, carnation, sunflower, jasmine

Ways To Cut Costs

North America: nix the wedding planner, choose a photographer who offers flexible packages, make your own wedding invites, get married in the off-season

Europe: have a wedding brunch/lunch, get married at a relative’s house, elope, pick a day other than Saturday

Reception Cocktails

North America: mimosa, mudslide, margarita, dirty blue martini

Europe: gin and tonic, bramble, caipirinha, cosmopolitan

Wedding Dance Songs

North America: “Lucky” by Colbie Caillat and Jason Mraz, “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds, “At Last” by Etta James, “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service

Europe: “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes, “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams, “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” by Nina Simone

William and Kate aren’t the only people who waited a while before setting a date. Most people are getting married later in life. According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, the median age of first marriage was 26.1 and 28.2 for women and men, respectively. These numbers are slightly higher in Canada, as well as in Europe. (Rates do vary by country, though. Countries with the youngest newlyweds also have the highest divorce rates.)

Everyone’s got their own tastes, but wedding preferences also correlate with age. More mature brides and grooms may have different wedding priorities and bigger budgets. Even William and Kate are trying to keep the costs of their wedding down to £12 million.

There’s also the chance that older Hunch users have previously been married and are giving marriage a second go-round. So we’d guess they’re not going to register for dish towels from Target.

Check out how wedding topic results vary by age:

Wedding Venue

18-34: zoo, cruise ship, historic landmark, beach

35-49: private home, ski resort/lodge, botanical gardens, gazebo

Wedding Entrance Song

18-34: “Fly Me to the Moon” by Frank Sinatra, “Boys and Girls” by Blur, “Dream a Little Dream” by The Mamas and the Papas, “Truly Madly Deeply” by Savage Garden

35-49: “Baby, I Love Your Way” by Peter Frampton, “Beautiful” by Gordon Lightfoot, “When I Fall in Love” by Nat King Cole, “At Last” by Etta James

Wedding Registries

18-34: Bloomingdales, Bed Bath and Beyond, Macy’s, Target

35-49: Neiman Marcus, Tiffany and Co., Honeyfund.com (a honeymoon registry), Williams-Sonoma

Wedding Favors

18-34: personalized Jones Soda, homemade mixed CDs, personalized Yankee Candles, caramel apples

35-49: seed packets, personalized mint tins, picture frame, donation to American Cancer Society

Wedding Flowers

18-34: orchids, lilies, tulips, hydrangeas

35-49: gerbera daisies, lavender, irises, daffodils

Kate and William have been tight-lipped about their own wedding planning. The latest rumor is that Jay-Z and Beyoncé will perform at the reception. We’ve got a hunch that the young couple would definitely enjoy this and can also afford it. As for the dress, bouquet, and everything else, we’ll know soon enough whether Hunch data and the details of the royal wedding are a match made in heaven.

Our latest data project was to analyze how self-described Mac and PC people are different. The infographic below, designed by the talented folks at Column Five Media, breaks it down. Keep reading after the Infographic for more background and analysis, including some comparisons to findings from 18 months ago when we first looked at this issue.

Oh, and once you’ve checked out the infographic, head back over to Hunch.com to create an account and get personalized recommendations that are customized to your tastes.

Back in ye olden days of Hunch — November 2009 — we explored the differences in personality, aesthetic tastes, and media preferences between Mac and PC users. Since then, the Hunch user base and question pool have grown many times over. The 2009 report started with more than 76,000 responses to its base “Mac or PC?” question. The same question now has nearly 400,000 responses. This is all in the context of the more than 80 million “Teach Hunch About You” questions which have been answered on Hunch to date.

Mac’s a mover and shaker. Since our original report was released, we’ve seen the launch of the iPad (and the iPad 2 already), the iPhone 4 for AT&T and Verizon, and the latest versions of various computer models.

In the PC world… Well, they stopped showing these commercials.

Only kidding! Most Hunch users probably know better than I do — I’m in the 25% of self-identified Mac people. Almost an equal percentage of Hunch users would prefer not to define themselves as Mac or PC people, thank you very much. But 52% are on Team PC. Surprised?

The percentage of PC people among Hunch users is a smidge higher now than we noted 18 months ago. Back then, about 48% of Hunch users identified as PC, and the percentage self-identifying as Mac was also a bit higher at 31% vs. today’s 25%. Still, the concentration of Mac fans on Hunch is more than double the amount of Apple’s estimated world share of operating systems (11% or so, according to Canalys).

Hunch users tend to think debates about operating systems are pointless, but Mac people are more likely to think weighing the merits of Mac vs. PC vs. Linux is important. Meanwhile, 13% of PC users draw a blank if you bring up the operating system debate.

Many PC people still use Mac products. For starters, it seems as if almost everyone has an iPod nowadays. Out of 95,562 Hunch users, 48% report that they either have an iPhone or are seriously considering getting one. Keep in mind that this is a long-standing question on Hunch that once answered, isn’t asked again. So we’re guessing there are many more Hunch users who now have the iPhone. Since it’s finally carried by Verizon, perhaps some of the 52% of Hunch users who weren’t interested in an iPhone have gone to the smart(phone) side.

Are these correlations true for you, or would you say Hunch data does not compute?

Starting today you’ll notice a new look to the activity feed on Hunch.  The “recommendation feed” combines several longstanding Hunch features — an activity feed, personalized recommendations, machine-based predictions and a follower system — into one comprehensive feed that also includes several new social features.

The Hunch Feed helps you discover personal recommendations made by people you follow, and lets you share your own recommendations among people who follow you.  The recommendation feed supports embedded video and audio, hi-res imagery, and a threaded commenting system.

You can “re-recommend” something which appears in your feed, which will in turn push it out to your own followers, creating a potential viral wave of recommendations.  You’ll also notice the introduction of a commonly-requested feature: the ability to save something for later. So if you find a book, movie, recipe, handbag, or sprocket that seems intriguing, you can save it for later when you have time to read, watch, make, wear, or buy it.

Hunch’s machine learning algorithm continues to be the core that powers your recommendations

As always, recommendations on Hunch are never “just” recommendations.  The recommendations you see in your feed will draw upon Hunch’s Taste Graph to show an algorithmic prediction for how much Hunch thinks you’ll like them. This means that if you’re following Jane, and you love her book suggestions but aren’t so keen on her taste in movies, Hunch will come to understand this over time and will adjust its predictive ratings (and the visual prominence of Jane’s respective recommendations) accordingly.

The previous version of the feed, which we introduced in March 2009, was designed to recognize initial seeding and training of Hunch. This helped populate the site and train the Taste Graph to the point today where it has more than 20 billion correlations, or “edges” in tech-speak.

Now that Hunch’s Taste Graph is well-populated and trained, the new version of the feed places emphasis on positive endorsements and more social features:

But…whom to Follow?

For existing Hunch users, chances are that you’re already following some other people on Hunch. So your existing followers will form part of the basis of your recommendation feed.

The first time you use the enhanced feed, you’ll also be asked to choose some broad areas of interest.  Hunch will then propose new people to follow based on those interests.  Some suggestions may be Facebook friends, others may be users who are influential ‘taste makers’ in your areas of interest.  Soon you’ll also begin to notice some high profile and influential bloggers, companies, brands and reviewers coming on board to make recommendations about their passions, products, causes, and content.

How to recommend something to your followers

There are two ways you can ‘push’ a recommendation to your followers: 1) you can use the ‘Recommend’ icons at the top of your feed, or 2) you can use the bookmarklet to quickly add something to Hunch while you’re browsing another web page.

How your past ratings and pros/cons fit into all this

The enhanced Hunch recommendation feed is designed to highlight positive recommendations/endorsements that you would want to provide to other people. At the same time, we know that many users rated content on Hunch before this change was made. So we’re in the process of merging these two approaches using the following guidelines:

1) If you previously rated something on Hunch as ‘like’ or ‘favorite’ AND you provided some pro/con text, then the item will appear in your followers’ feeds as something you previously recommended.

2) Not yet implemented but coming shortly: If you previously provided pro/con text to an item on Hunch, but you didn’t ‘like’ the item (either because you didn’t rate it at all, or because you rated it ‘dislike’), the item won’t appear in your feed. However, your historic pro/con will still appear on the result page for that item as a ‘review’.  The key here is that we are distinguishing between the helpful information in a historic pro/con, vs. the positive endorsement of a current, active recommendation. At the same time, we’re retaining all the valuable content that contributors have added to Hunch over the last 3 years.

Going forward, pros/cons have been replaced by two ways of sharing your opinion about items listed on Hunch. First, Hunch will always ask you to provide a written reason why you’re recommending something to your followers. Second, you can comment on things recommended by other people.

Browse

In addition to using the revised Hunch recommendation feed features, you can still browse Hunch as you always could in order to find specific recommendations on any number of topics.

One thing you’ll notice is that we’ve combined previously separate topics into broader topics, which allowed us to eliminate duplicate results which appeared in a number of topics (a common request).

We’ll be working to improve the integration of recommendations which appear in the feed vs. recommendations which you’ll find in the browse sections of Hunch. This will include harmonizing how the result pages look. In fact, there’s a lot we’ll be continuing to refine and improve based on your feedback.

As always, we value your input and suggestions.  Once you’ve tried the revised Hunch recommendation Feed, we’d love your feedback via a quick, 5 minute online survey. You can also leave comments, questions, or suggestions in the Hunch forum.

We’re very pleased to announce our most recent API partnership: Samsung and Digitas have teamed with Hunch to create The Smart Living Room. This innovative site leverages Hunch’s predictive technology to make movie recommendations that can then become a true social experience.

The Smart Living Room invites movie viewers to learn more about their own and their friends’ movie interests, and ultimately create a customized, social movie watching event.  The site uses stunning computer generated animation which dynamically reflects the genre recommendations for each movie viewer.

Here’s the full press release, which makes us happy for two reasons. First, it’s informative and explains the initiative clearly. Second, it somehow — implausible as this may seem when 3 companies come together like this — manages to avoid any use of the hackneyed phrase “We are thrilled…“. (But, truth be told, we are.)

Now, head over to the Smart Living Room and have a blast.