Monday, February 4, 2008

Goodies

I stumbled upon stumbleupon the other night and am still stumbling. This website allows you to put in search parameters/profiles and then feeds you random websites in these areas. Before you groan "another one of those" check it out. It's giving me a mixture of really strange and interesting sites. (thanks to jordan)

Google Reader is an interesting addition to the rss feed world. It allows for maximum customization and organization. It incorporates visual feed as well as text. Still fiddling around with it.

Rhapsody is a music service similar to ITunes yet not. It has a huge catalog of music including some pretty bizarre stuff (fugs, praxis, albert ayler) and allows free listening of 25 tracks a month, with some pretty reasonable rates to cover it all, as well as devices. De vice is nice.

Pandora. Pandora is old school by now but I love this service. It's essentially a free (although they have fee-based plans and devices too - don't you wish you did?) service and has been a boon for many indie artists. Choose a station based on a particular artist, and they match up similar artists based on an algorithm that actually uses some elements of theory, as well as astrological data. Very cool product. I often run it for hours. Try the Paul Bley station, or Mathew Shipp.

3 comments:

Robert Lopresti said...

SO if you join Stumble Upon can you go to the websites they pull up? In test mode you can see but you can't touch, so to speak.

I love Pandora, even though they rejected my Cd. I have about 20 stations on them.

Rhapsody is fun too. I have bought a few songs there. And occasionally someone pays to listen to one of my songs and I get nine-tenths of a penny. My retirement fund.

piper said...

Retirement is highly over-rated.

Cile said...

I was referred to "Radio Paradise" and have been enjoying that from time to time. Very low key, varied yet pleasant with interesting variety in their play list. A big plus is a direct link to a shopping cart to put things on a wish list for later purchase through Amazon or one-at-a-time tune purchase through iTunes to eat up all of my highly over-rated retirement.