Monday, March 17, 2008

Pandora

I think I've written about this a looong time ago (and it probably wasn't exactly new even back then), but if you enjoy music and haven't already tried it (or, like me, had almost forgotten about it), you might want to have a look at Pandora Radio.

It's free. All you need is a good Internet connection and a decent speaker system-- nothing fancy, but something that works. You can even give it a quick try without going to the trouble of registering.

Just type in an artist or song you like. The system generates a list of songs that it thinks you'd also enjoy. You listen and (if you want to) tell it whether or not you like the song (thumbs up or down). If you really hate it, you can immediately skip to the next one, but I think there's a limit to how many skips you can do in a row. There are more features, too, but you can figure all that out for yourself. ;o)

It's basically like having a radio station that's tailored to your personal tastes-- and it can be a good way to find new music that you'll love. Oh, and if you register, you can have multiple stations-- one for each of your different musical moods. So far, it's been almost uncannily good at knowing what I like based on a minimum of feedback.

Cleaning is easier when there's something worth listening to playing in the background. ;o)