MarshWorks

Discovered only a few weeks ago, I quickly became a big fan of Pandora.com. This is the result of the music genome project, which tracks hundreds of musical properties and therefore can match songs and artists you like with new artists you may not be aware of. The result is a wonderful free internet music station.

How is it different from the other Internet radio stations? The matches come from the qualities of the songs themselves. Other stations match your likes and dislikes with the likes and dislikes of other users. But the likes and dislikes only can come from the original playlists in the system. The problem is how to get new music into the system, besides random insertions.

With Pandora, 70% of the music is from independent labels. This represents a huge change from the traditional record label's system of music distribution. We already know that the labels are in deep trouble, and Pandora is helping the artists instead of the traditional power structures of the music industry. Not only is this exciting for musicians, it promises to radically increase the range of musical choices available to listeners. Instead of executives at six global record companies being gate keepers on the world's music, the consumer now has the power to make and break new artists.

I met the founder last week, who told Me that they were currently growing at a rate of 500,000 new users a month.

For all these reasons, and the fact that I am listening to Pandora about 8 hours a day, makes Pandora definitely a part of the cool web.

Every day a new post with a mind-expanding photo and highly-linked short paragraph.... find it at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html.

Someday I'll take the time to grab this feed and use the daily images as my Windows wall-paper... so that the balloon of my mind can imitate the ever-expanding universe.

This is a separate Journal where I can quickly post things I find online that are just "cool." Not always sure how to define cool, but I know it when I see it!

Perhaps cool is elegant, where ideas mix together where the influences are still intact, not at all like frogs in a blender. Usually, cool is manipulative, not passive. And it is always striking. Sometimes it is as practical as finding just the right color combination, like kuler , and often it is just meaningless techno-geek. Usually it is not commercial: the opposite of popup advertising that feels like tinny mind-mosquitos scratching your mental eardrums from the inside.

Enjoy!