Pandora: Make and Share Your Own Internet Radio Stations!

Looking for some background music while you work? Pandora is a free Internet radio service that works like this: First you create a station by telling Pandora what artists or songs you like. When Pandora plays music that is similar to the music you like, you decide which songs to keep playing on your station. When you get a station you really like, you can even share it with your friends!

Pandora is from the Music Genome Project, started in 2000 when a group of musicians and technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Step 1: Create a Station

1. Go to http://pandora.com. If you don't have an account, click create an account. If you have one, login with your email and password.
   

2. Click the Create a New Station... button.

3. You can enter the name of a favorite artist or song (example: The Beatles).

4. If your selection is in Pandora's database, Pandora will create a station based on your selection. If Pandora selected incorrectly, you can click Hey! That's not what I wanted.

5. Your station is named for the artist or song you selected. To rename it, click the Station Options arrow beside your station and choose Rename this Station.

6. To add more songs to your station, click the Station Options arrow beside your station and choose Add Variety to this Station.

7. You can create more than one station. To create another one, repeat these steps.
   

Tip: If you select a song, Pandora may never play the song you picked, just songs similar to it. We recommend adding artists instead of favorite songs.

Step 2: Decide Which Songs You Like

Once you have a station, Pandora plays songs that are similar to your favorite selection(s). You may hear songs you already know and like, as well as new songs you've never heard. Unlike real radio, you have control over the programming:

1. If you like a song, and want to keep it in your station, click I like this song (the thumbs-up icon).

2. If you like a song, but it doesn't fit the overall mood of the station you are trying to create, you can move it to one of your other stations. On the thumbnail image, click menu→Move song to another station.

3. If you like a song, but just aren't in the mood to hear it, you can skip up to three songs per day by clicking the icon that looks like a fast-forward button, or you can switch to another station.
   

4. If you like the song, but are sick of hearing it, on the thumbnail image, click menu→Don't play this song for a month.

5. If you don't like the song, click I don't like this song (thumbs-down icon).

Tip: The more feedback you give Pandora, the better your station will get!

Step 3: Share Your Station

1. Click the Station Options arrow beside your station and choose Share this Station With a Friend.

2. Enter Your Name and Your Friends' Email Addresses (up to 25, separated by commas).

3. You can click Add a Personal Message to compose a message to send with your station.

4. Click Share.

Note: Pandora also works with your AT& T and Sprint mobile phones, and with your iPhone!

Keyboard Shortcuts for Web Services

We previously published several tips that give shorthand ways to move around Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, copy or delete multiple files, print screens, etc.

This tip provides additional useful keyboard shortcuts, but this time for popular Web services. You’ll find shortcuts to please any Google fan: Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. You’ll also find shortcuts for Yahoo! Mail, Netvibes, Pandora, Wikipedia, and these two blogs: Blogger and WordPress.

You can find these Web services keyboard shortcuts in an addictive blog called http://mashable.com/. You might go to the blog with the idea of saving some time, but chances are you’ll find lots of reasons to stay a long while!


Example: Some Gmail Keyboard shortcuts


a | reply to all recipients

c | compose a new mail

/ | puts your cursor in the search box

f | forward message

k | move to newer conversation

j | move to older conversation

m | mute (archive, and make all future messages from this conversation skip the inbox

n | next message

o or Enter | open a conversation

p | previous message

r | reply to a mail

s | star a message or conversation

u | return to conversation list

x | select conversation

y | archive a conversation

! | report spam

ctrl+s | save a draft

Make Your Own Playlists with Grooveshark!

Do you want to stream music like you do with Pandora, but have a specific playlist in mind?  Then Grooveshark is for you.

Step 1: Create an Account

1. Go to http://listen.grooveshark.com and click the Create an Account button in the upper-right corner.
2. In the Sign up for Grooveshark dialog, create your account with a Desired Username and Password (as well as other information required) and then click Signup button.

Step 2: Create a Playlist

1. Click the New Playlist button on the left column.
2. In the Create New Playlist dialog, give your playlist a Name and optional Description.  Then click OK.
3. Select your new playlist.  An empty timeline will appear at the bottom of the browser window.
4. Use the search tool in the upper-left corner to find music.  When you find a song, left-click and drag the song to the playlist timeline at the bottom of the browser window.

Tip: You can left-click and drag the songs to reorder them along the playlist timeline.

Step 3: Saving and Sharing Your Playlists

1. Click the Save button on the playlist timeline.  (If you want update your playlist, choose Replace Playlist.  If you want to create a new version of this Playlist choose Save as New.. and rename the Playlist in the Create New Playlist dialog.)
2. Click your playlist from the left menu.  The list of songs will appear in the main pane of the browser window.
3. From the Options dropdown menu in the right-hand corner, click Share.  From here, you can shorten the playlist URL and email a link to your playlist.

Tip: If you want to create a Grooveshark widget with your playlist, click the Export button and follow the wizard to get the code you can use to paste a Grooveshark widget onto your Web pages.

Time's 50 Best Websites 2009

About this time every year, Time produces its recommended list of the year's 50 Best Websites. It's fun to peruse the annual list to see what's new, what's hot, and sites you might not yet know about.

We discussed ten of the heavy hitters on this year's list in earlier Tech Tips and Tech Updates:  Internet Archive, YouTube, delicious, Google, Hulu, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, drop.io and Pandora. To make an even dozen, here are two additional websites from one from this year's list that we suggest you take a look at.

• Academic Earth lets you experience the Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLC and Yale classrooms from your desktop. Here's a snippet from AE's mission statement: We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• popurls.   Launched in 2006, popurls is a gateway to a selective list of the world's most popular web sites. popurls describes itself as the mother of aggregators, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the internet. If the web site looks a bit manic, it's because in one place popurl provides access to YouTube, delicious, Flickr, Twitter, NYTimes, Technorati, and more. You can personalize the page to suit your own needs. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Now that we've whet your appetite, here's the link to all 50 Best Websites.  -buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the int