2005 August

Pandora - Your Own Radio Station

I’ve been hearing a lot about Pandora thanks to the profile by TechCrunch, and at first I wasn’t aware as to why it was deemed so wonderful. Since it has gone public today, however, I’m realizing why it may just be revolutionary for music lovers everywhere.

Here’s how it works: You tell it what artist you currently like. It then takes your choice, and does a lot of computations and educated guesses to find out other artists you like and play their songs one-by-one like your own personalized radio station. For example, when I asked why it played a particular song, Pandora said, “We’re playing this track because it features mild rhythmic syncopation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality, repetitive melodic phrasing and mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation.” This is based on my choice of Snow Patrol as the artist I gave it to start on. So it doesn’t give you random artists, or choose based on who bought what album, but actually uses mathematical and scientific algorithms to find what you like.

It gets smarter as it gets a feel for your listening tastes. You can rate the song easily, choosing whether you like it or not. After about 6 songs that I really enjoyed, it played a song I didn’t care for, and when I told it so, it skipped it and went to a song that I really like. Best of all, no ads, no talking, no interruptions of any kind. Other features; you can buy the album of the artist you just discovered via Amazon or iTunes Music Store, create multiple stations based on the artist’s style/genre you’ve chosen, and find out why Pandora chose the particular song for you.

You can listen up to 10 hours for free, and then you can subscribe for $36 for a year’s worth of musical bliss (that’s $3 a month.) If you ask me, that’s a steal considering how great this service is at this point, and the creators are intent on making it even better as time goes on (you can read their blog).

Aged Sumatra Coffee

Normally I don’t consider myself a coffee nut, but recently when I purchased a new coffee maker and grinder (see related post), I’ve been dabbling in gourmet whole bean coffee beans from Peet’s. It wasn’t until I ordered and am now enjoying the Aged Sumatra coffee beans that I’ve fallen in love with coffee all over again. It’s amazingly rich, aromatic, and mops the floor of any already ground coffee you buy from the local grocery store. It’s described as being a “very rich coffee with a slight hint of a tropical wood flavor, a concentrated dried fruit sweetness, herbal notes, and ample body.”

The best part of waking up? It sure ain’t Folgers.

Duck Doom

Combine the NES lightgun classic, Duck Hunt, with the legendary first-person shooter, Doom, and you get Duck Doom. It’s pretty hilarious, and quite fun. At the very least, it brings back good memories.

Google Talk Released

Once again Google has done it again. They’ve released a stellar software that you can’t help but love. Google Talk hopes to compete against AOL’s AIM, MSN’s Messenger, Yahoo’s Messenger, Cerulean Studio’s Trillian, and GAIM. Essentially it’s an instant messaging software with quality VOIP capabilities so you can call someone up over the internet and chat via voice in case you don’t feel like typing. If you have a Gmail account (required right now for beta testing) it’ll notify you of new emails.

The UI is clean, snappy, and feels nice as you use it. No advertisement, no bloat, no useless features. It’s classic Google goodness. I’ve been using Trillian for years, but the feature creep bloat has me itching for something new, and Google Talk may just be the ticket. Here’s a review from DownloadSquad.

Protopage - Personal Start Page

Here’s a nifty web app that I’m finding very useful as my own homepage. It’s called Protopage, and it allows you to have your own page where you can put in links to any webpage you want and create sticky notes.

All of it is done via a simple interface that you’ll grasp right away. They mention more features will be implemented (perhaps RSS feeds can be put in, further customizing of the interface, widgets even?), so it can get even neater.

You can see my page at protopage.com/mattjaybe/ (it can be made public or private, your choice.)

Update: These cool web apps have a name, and I didn’t realize it until now; Web 2.0. With my newfound love for these cool services, I’ve discovered that the best way to find new ones is via TechCrunch. They stay on top of the web apps world with updates on new ones that you should check out. Nice!

Christopher Walken for President

From an expert song & dance man, to being one of the most respected and well-known actor, and now Christopher Walken plans on running for President for 2008? There’s no word on his party affiliation, with which they said shouldn’t be important; it’s the platform that counts. I agree, wholeheartedly.

I can’t say much about how great Walken would be as a President, but I can say it certainly would be interesting. I don’t think the choice of pictures in the Biography section are appropriate for the subject matter, though.

Tunes Now Back Online

Update: There are now 2,748 songs. As a thank you reward for a donation to help with bandwidth from sharing the whole collection, you get access to all of the songs, which totals 18GB. See the Tunes page for more details.

Later than I anticipated, the tunes are now back up and available for your listening pleasure. One of the reason for the delays was that I wanted to have 3 new volumes available, and they are; volume 4, 5, and 6 are now up, making the grand total of over 2,300 mashups. Thanks to those who have donated, these tunes should be up for a lot longer this time around. Enjoy!