Abstract: Determining preference activities to present to a current user includes: obtaining a plurality of candidate preference activities; determining a recommendation weight for one of the plurality of candidate preference activities with respect to the current user; and presenting at least some of the plurality of candidate preference activities based on recommendation weights corresponding to the plurality of candidate preference activities.

Abstract: Matching users with similar interests is disclosed, including: obtaining, from an external source, items of interest as indicated by a plurality of users; storing information about the plurality of users and their respective items of interest; and identifying, for a first user of the plurality of users, a set of similar users who have overlapping interests as the first user, wherein the overlapping interests are determined based at least in part on items of interest to the first user and items of interest to the plurality of users.

Abstract: Developing, deploying, and operating an application in a plurality of environments is disclosed, including: defining runtime specific configuration information for a plurality of environments, wherein the runtime environment specific configuration includes topology configuration and security configuration, wherein the runtime environment specific configuration information is stored separately from other configuration information and is protected by an identity management system; executing an application in one of the plurality of environments, wherein execution of the application is controlled by a first role; and presenting a credential associated with the first role to the identity management system to obtain a portion of the runtime environment specific configuration information corresponding to the environment associated with the executing application.