Model Based Recommendation Agent

I became interested in a new recommendation smartphone App called Alfred,  which recommends restaurants, etc,  It is glowingly described and reviewed in ReadwriteWeb,  The description says it uses Model based learning as opposed to simple collaborative filtering, which is used by most every other recommendation system out there.   As well as a strong semantic analysis component.  We used this learning technique for some internal systems. How well it works further deserves a test.