Pandora Music gets a face lift....

I don't know how long ago I decided to create a user account at Pandora, but I forgot about it until a friend of mine mentioned it again. He's become a serious fanboy of the site (but he's a frustrated musician from way back) and we chatted about it, why he liked it, what makes it different, that sort of thing.

What he mentioned to me as a reason why he likes it -- is because of the variety of music available, the way they "serve" the music and how you can refine your "preferences". Also, he purchased the Squeezebox for home listening - and just loves it.

Now just in case you don't know what (or who) Pandora is, here's their background (from their site)....

When was the last time you fell in love with a new artist or song?

At Pandora, we have a single mission: To play music you'll love - and nothing else. To understand just how we do this, and why we think we do it really, really well, you need to know about the Music Genome Project©.

Since we started back in 2000, we have been hard at work on the Music Genome Project. It's the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Together our team of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song.

It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics ... and more - close to 400 attributes! We continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.

With Pandora you can explore this vast trove of music to your heart's content. Just drop the name of one of your favorite songs or artists into Pandora and let the Genome Project go.

It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings - new and old, well known and completely obscure - to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. Then sit back and enjoy as it creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs for you.

You can create as many "stations" as you want. And you can even refine them. If it's not quite right you can tell it so and it will get better for you. The Music Genome Project was founded by musicians and music-lovers. We believe in the value of music and have a profound respect for those who create it.

We like all kinds of music, from the most obtuse bebop, to the most tripped-out drum n bass, to the simplest catchy pop tune. Our mission is to help you connect with the music YOU like.

We hope you enjoy the experience!

It's very cool - music served specifically to you. Different "stations" based upon your mood (I've got one for easy listening, one for harder rock, one for contemporary jazz, one based upon the music listened to when I lived in Boulder). I can listen to music when I'm at work, cruising the net, and right now while blogging.

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ZOHO Creator -- some web 2.0 goodness....

First of all, if you have not signed up and gotten an account with Zoho, do it now. Don't wait to read more, click the link and get it done (that's not a suggestion).

OK, now that you have an account, you can read on. Zoho has a service called Zoho Creator, that allows you to create applications (you know those little web driven things). It's really cool and below is an example of something I did last night. I took me about 15 minutes to peck though and get it done - one table, a few items and done. And obviously, you can embed it within a web page. Once again, I give a double-thumbs-up for cool.

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Google Analytics gets an upgrade

For all those thousands of people that come here to read, I want to highly recommend using Google Analytics to view your web traffic (blogs, sites, boards, etc.). The improvements are too many for me to mention (and besides if you didn't use it before, you won't realize how cool it is now).

But the people at google have really stepped it up with this version - making it easier to see your trends, change the dashboard to your preferences and generally make it much easier to use. And of course there two other major benefits - 1) It's free (always good) and 2) It's fast (can't beat the Google Grid for speed).

OK, now here's my balanced view of what Google is doing. Google wants all the information they can get, including your web visitor stats (even down at the end of the long tail). Every bit of information they gather, their value goes up - then they aggregate traffic to millions of web sites - all categorized by region, type, content, keywords, etc. Now hopefully, they will continue to have a "do no harm" attitude towards all these mini-datapoints they gather (and I believe they will as long as the current leaders are in place, once they leave, all bets are off).

So balance the good with the bad, but at least check it out.

BTW, I also use Statcounter it is my quick view for traffic and I really like and would also highly recommend it.

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Do you have the chops?

As you know (or may not know), I recently put a question out on LinkedIn to test how their "Answers" section works, what kind of answers you could expect to receive, etc. My first experiment was positive - I got 21 thoughtful answers and created dialog with several who participated. But one answer in particular got me thinking - it was not the one I chose as "best" - but he answered within the spirit of the question, here it is...

"If you have some programming chops, you can just do Ruby On Rails." answer from Huy Le

Well maybe he has a point. I know some of us have a problem programming the VCR (but like many things, that's really not a problem anymore, VCRs are quickly going they way of the dinosaurs). But what if programming becomes a common as creating your own presentations (remember when that little skill was reserved for few select people in your company). Or doing some financial analysis with a spreadsheet. Or how about running reports, creating a database, developing a project plan, I could go on, but you get the point.

What if the tools used to program something where easy to use. I'm not saying Ruby On Rails is that platform - it has some interesting capabilities and is getting lots of press. But from my standpoint, using RoR is still the domain of programmers (and I think they like it that way).

So here's the deal. If we all become programmers, where's the value of "programming" (you can make parallels to design or writing or whatever). Is it in the code? Is it in the process of programming? Is it in the design of the program? Is it in the planning? I don't really know, I just know that at some point in the future, there will tools that any of us could use to program - at the point, the "value" changes from the physical act to something else.

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Thanks for the mention....

Just wanted to thank the folks over at Humanized.com (their product is called Enso) for putting me up on their "buzz" list. I had previously checked out the company, read most of their pages and viewed their demo video. It all looks very cool (and I'll have to see if my wife wants to get, since she's my resident MAC expert). Congrats to Aza, Jono, Atul, and Andrew for making their dreams become realities - and hopefully their realities into rewards (financial or otherwise).

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WEB 2.0 - an instruction video.....

For those that don't know (for those that don't care, I can't help you) about Web 2.0 and would like to know more, then here you go. This is a 5-minute instructional video to get you up to speed. [source: YouTube - Michael Wesch]

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Update: Cutting the Microsoft Apron Strings (Thinkfree, Google, DesktopTwo)

Just wanted to get an update of a previous blog entry. I've been doing some additional "using" of the Office Productivity apps (that are available online) and I still believe Thinkfree is winning the race - Google Docs & Spreadsheets is pretty good (and there is the power and deep pockets of Google behind it) and really as one of my commenters mentioned, DesktopTwo is really more about a virtual desktop/webtop, not really so much about OPAs.

Testing -
Spent sometime with Google Spreadsheets and really enjoyed the ability to share and collaborate on a spreadsheet. I got two other people working on it at the same time and as someone make changed, it "told" you they were active, then showed the changes. Also, you could use GoogleTalk while working on it. But I believe the best scenario would be have something people around the world work on.

Now, Thinkfree is really creating online applications that provide an easy transition off the MSFT platform. The only gotcha is using these apps with my "work" computer - there is extra security at work, with all sorts of "you can't do that" warnings that pop up. But, working from home or offsite (non-VPN) - these apps work great. I uploaded a few complex spreadsheets and documents - and they showed up and I could work on them. Also, created a presentation with "slide transitions" - once again, much like the MSFT interface/workflow.

zoltandragon said...
Hi, I am a ThinkFree user, and have transferred the editing process of a journal completely to the online application offered by ThinkFree. Before doing that I also tested desktoptwo, writely, and many others - but they are no match for thinkfree. If you look at the word processing applications offered, ThinkFree is far beyond all: it is the sole competitor for Microsoft's Office. If you check out Desktoptwo, you will get a stripped down editor that does not really have more to offer than a tinymce editor - certainly nothing to compare with ThinkFree's full online office support. Oh, one more thing: Desktoptwo uses OpenOffice - a software I have been having a lot of
problems not only in terms of editing options, but also in terms of compatibility.

On DesktopTwo, I got the following comment from an un-named resource, so add a dash of salt will reading....

Anonymous said...
True, but it doesn't appear as if Desktoptwo is focusing on the office prod. apps as much as they are on the desktop itself. I agree that OpenOffice (the suite that's included in Desktoptwo) is not as good as ThinkFree, but Desktoptwo, as a virtual desktop or webtop, is phenomenal. Looks like they created everything but the OpenOffice suite so I wonder if they could port ThinkFree in there instead of OO. That would be great....

So, at the end of the day -- big money may win, Google has a money to burn and lots of resource. But they also have limited focus on anyone particular technology (beyond search). Money covers up lots of "holes" that become huge when the money start getting tight. On the other hand, I value focus - and both Thinkfree and DesktopTwo have focus. Have you ever noticed how a smaller (but extremely focused) group of people can change the world!!

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Forget Google - go ahead and search with style....

Quick post - because why not. There's a new search engine in town (powered by MSFT's Live Search) called Ms. Dewey. Staying power (we'll see), novelty value (stratospheric), Google displacement value (low). But, it's fun and different. Just make sure you're using a high bandwidth connection (no dialups) - enjoy...

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Web Based Office Apps - Could You Live With It?

Following the recent theme of my entries, I thought I'd pass along an article in on how well web-based office productivity apps hold up (if you don't have another choice). I thought the article was great, and provided some additional insight in the world of web-based applications.

The graphic comes from the Infoworld article: "Can Web-based applications outwit, outplay, outlast the desktop?" by Oliver Rist, read the full article here or download the PDF.

It's a good article, but I was thinking beyond the basics and wondering about other scenarios....

1. What if this was your only choice for these applications? I don't own a computer and my only access is at the local library, will these apps work for me? Would they make me "competitive" (if I'm using them, but my competitor is using MSFT Office or OpenOffice.org)?

2. Are they really ready for business use? Or are they interesting today, better used as "generic" tools, a way to write anywhere, but if I want to do serious work, I use one of the big boys.

3. How about that $100 PC the UN is working on, will these work in that environment? I'm a 14 year old living in a remote village in Africa, can I use these tools?

4. I have the ability to buy and install MSFT Office, would I choose "web only"?

All interesting questions, but the reality is, web-based applications do level the playing field. They provide access to tools that otherwise require much more "resources". They may not be "better" than MSFT Office, but are the good enough for now? Do I believe they will get better in the future? How about future technologies that allow some of the application to reside (in some type of mini-mode) while I'm offline - AJAX has done some interesting stuff, will it go that far (mini apps running on my machine, without all the code bloat of our established standards)? All good questions, all for the future.

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