Internet Radio in Trouble

I am a big fan of internet radio. I listen to Pandora almost everyday because I love the way they classify and categorize their music. Instead of heavy handed labels from journalists or casual fans they do listeners a great service by actually analyzing the music and letting the music dictate its classification. If I am a fan of Rod Stewart's "Hot Legs" I can search for this song and Pandora will create a radio station with songs that are similar to "Hot Legs" no matter if the song comes from as an unlikely a source as Bob Seeger or Great White. This is really brilliant and much better than its most common rival last.fm.

Internet radio sites like Pandora may become a thing of the past though as the recording industry starts demanding higher royalties for the use of their music. The industry sees internet radio as a way for them to recoup the money they are losing through album sales. It is unfortunate that they would try to hit these quality resources for the sole purpose of making up for a change in industry. They may not even understand how internet radio works but what they do understand is a chance to make a buck. Why don't they create their own internet radio and provide the quality of a Pandora. That would require creativity and ingenuity. Something that will be lacking if these internet stations are priced out of the game.

6 Things I Couldn't Do Four Years Ago

The Olympics help us mark the decade into sections. Here is a list of things that I couldn't do four years ago but can do today because of advancements in internet technology.

1. Watch the Olympics live online. More than 2,000 hours of events will be streamed through the NBC Olympic webpage. This is great for us who consider the Olympics more than gymnastics, swimming, and track.

2. Watch ESPN sports broadcast through my computer. I refuse to get Cable or a Dish but can watch countless College basketball games and foreign soccer games on my computer through ESPN360. This has been my greatest web discovery of the past year.

3. Watch TV shows online. Do you see a trend here? My wife and I have a handful of shows that we must watch every week. Whenever we miss one, we usually have the option to watch the replay online through the network website. The quality standards of these broadcast are getting better and better by the week.

4. Streamline my web reading content to one location. RSS was probably around four years ago but I wasn't using it. Today, instead of wasting time clicking around to all of my web hot spots, I go to Google Reader and get my news, commentary, and blog posts in one location.

5. Do database and word processing through the web. Google Docs has been a life saver for my wife and I over the past two years. We were a Cares Team at our apartment complex and we used Google Docs to manage the resident database. It was so helpful to not have to be at one computer to make updates and changes. I have also used Zoho to do word processing.

6. Save trees. Before becoming a Delicious user, I would print out sites or pages that I wanted to keep or read later. Now when I want to remember a web site or page or need to set aside something for later use, I simply tag it with my Delicious Firefox Add Ons and skip the printing process.

What are you doing now that you weren't doing four years ago?

*photo from striatic