Caddickisms

No, I’m not talking about downloadable, put-it-on-your-iPod-and-go music (well, the sites do make it easy to buy the singles as a download). I’m talking about music to listen to when you’re connected to the internet.

There are lots of sites that provide ways to listen to songs online. There are three that I want to briefly touch on. Each require a free registration to do anything beyond listen.

On-Demand: iMeem

First, imeem.com bills itself as “a social network where millions of fans and artists discover new music, videos, and photos, and share their tastes with friends.” That’s great and all, but for my money, it’s a place to get on-demand singles to listen to. Do a search and you can come up with at least one song for most artists. I’ve even searched for artists I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have and gotten a hit. There are a few that don’t have representation yet, but it is a social site, so you can even upload it yourself if you want. It’s like YouTube for music. As a social site, one of its focuses (foci, for you elitists), is sharing. It’s easy to embed clips (not full songs, usually) on your blog, or Facebook, or wherever. That’s a nice feature, though I’d prefer to be able to choose the part of the song for the clip.

Other than YouTube, that’s the best way I’ve found to get a quick hit of on-demand music.

Internet Radio

The other two sites I’ve played with are both “self-programmed” internet radio stations. “Self-programmed” is a bit of a misnomer, though, because it’s not like you choose the individual songs, or even artists, to play on the station. You identify some criteria and it pulls together related songs for you to enjoy. As the songs are playing, you can rate them and that affects the frequency of that and similar songs/artists on the station. That’s still a step up, in my opinion, from a traditional radio station where you have no control over the playlist at all. And because the choices are based on some criteria you entered, any songs/artists you haven’t heard before have a better chance of being something you like.

LAUNCHcast

Years ago I found a site that has since been bought by Yahoo! and is now Yahoo! Music’s LAUNCHcast. I put a lot of time into rating songs on my station, but there are still some surprise entries in there every once in a while that I downright hate. The self-referential ads inserted between every fifth song or so get annoying too. Still, it’s a good eclectic mix of my favorite types of music, and the good far outweighs the bad.

On LAUNCHcast, music is chosen by identifying artists and genres initially, then rating individual songs, albums, and artists. I like that you can be pretty granular in your ratings (scale of 1-100 or a 5-star method - your choice), which gives me a sense of better control.

The downside of this one is that it only works in Internet Explorer, which means I rarely listen to it anymore, because I rarely fire up IE. Plus, it drives me crazy that they refuse to support the other browsers so I stay away on principle for the most part. Still, I do enjoy listening to the station every few months and would listen more if they were more open. If you’re on IE all the time anyway, this may not be an issue for you.

Pandora

More recently (today, in fact), I ran across Pandora.com. This gets my vote for the best way to listen to internet radio. The interface is Flash-based, so over 90% of the world should have no problem with compatibility. It’s also incredibly simple to get started. Just identify a single artist or song that you like and it will identify characteristics in the Music Genome Project database that are shared with other songs to build your playlist (called ’seeding’). These guys know music, and they are matching that knowledge with technology to support them. It’s a beautiful thing.

There are ads supporting it, but they are visual, and therefore easily ignored.

There are three minor downsides that I’ve found in the few hours I’ve been listening to Pandora. First, the rating system is kind of limited (thumbs up/down), but that’s only a problem for the obsessives among us, I’d imagine (others would use terms like ‘elegant and simple’). Second, there is no easy “embed this song” or “embed this station” options that I’ve run across yet. Again, not a huge deal, but it’d be nice. Finally, a few songs seemed to repeat in a relatively short time period (an hour or so). I’m guessing that’s because I marked them as “thumbs up” and I have relatively little other information that I’ve contributed at this point so it will improve as I add further variation.

Overall, I think I’ll be spending a lot of time on my Pandora stations. The experiments I’ve been doing on it so far are promising. It does a better job of pulling together playlists I’m interested in than Yahoo! does with less interaction. Once I really start putting together ratings and additional seeds I think it will be a great station (or set of stations, as the case may be).

If you’re looking for some background music at your computer, you could do far worse than Pandora. If you’re looking for on-demand tracks, give imeem a shot.

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As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve recently reconnected with a lot of friends from my high school youth group through the wonders of Facebook. It’s been a lot of fun. There are now over 40 of us, and over 150 pictures, many of which are proof that the 80’s should never return.

But all of those pictures are of teenagers having fun - even the couple that show us in serious mode in Bible studies. We were enjoying learning how to apply the Bible to our lives, and simply being with each other. But most of the pictures are of someone doing something odd or funny (there are a surprisingly high number of cross-dressing photos… almost all of which were part of skits). We had a lot of fun.

Predictably, this has had me reminiscing a lot about those days, and about what it felt like to be a teenager. It’s been a long time and I don’t think about it often. When I do, it’s usually the moments that make me cringe that come to mind. But in truth, it’s a mixed bag of experiences: awkwardness, isolation, triumph, and togetherness all collide in both messy and wonderful ways. I remember the excitement of what it felt like to have a crush on someone, yet be unable to act on it because of fear. I remember feeling inferior in every athletic experience I had (because I usually was), yet thrilled when I somehow pulled it all together to win a game against the top player or be a useful part of a winning play. I remember feeling completely alone in a crowd, until someone caught my eye and genuinely smiled, happy to see me.

Now I’m a father, and in my mind’s eye I’m watching my two daughters grow up to be teenagers. Right now they are two and three years old. They’re playing in the park with their friends. It struck me today that it’s likely that at least some of these same friends will still be around when they reach their teen years. In ten years, will they have a crush on one of the boys they’re playing with now? Will those friends feed or starve their sense of self-worth? Will they be sure enough of themselves to have fun acting goofy, or will they be too worried about what others will think?

Will they want to spend any time with me?

I’m getting ahead of myself. I know that. I can actually influence a lot of those situations with what I teach my girls and how I treat them. I look at those pictures on Facebook and I pray that my daughters will grow up to have the quality of friends and fun that I had.

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I joined Facebook almost a year ago, if I remember correctly. I joined as an exercise for work. I was hearing a lot about how Facebook and similar social networking tools could be used within a corporation as a learning and collaboration tool. I understood the theory, but I wanted to see how well it was implemented. Could I really figure out some way to bend it to fit our corporate environment? The answer, I swiftly realized, was “no.”

So my profile sat there. I checked in on it every once in a while, connected with a couple online acquaintances and colleagues, and looked at some of the applications to see if anything struck me as useful. Every once in a while I’d see something intriguing, but nothing that I wanted to spend much time with.

Connecting with a few friends from church spurred some activity. It was fun to learn a little more about their lives as they chose to summarize it in their profiles. But for the most part, I spent my free time on other projects.

Then Walt showed up.

Walt led the church youth group I was in during high school. He also has an amazing talent for keeping in touch with people. When he created the Facebook group for our old youth group members (and yes, I mean old… it’s been 20+ years, sadly), I joined. By the end of that week, I was catching up with 25 people I haven’t seen in 20 years. Then the photos showed up. Photos like this one (those are approximately 20 marshmallows in each mouth):

I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time. I’m talking to people I haven’t seen in decades, and it’s like I just spoke to them yesterday; we’re picking up right where we left off. The group is continuing to grow.

Now I have a problem. I’m spending all my time on Facebook. I’m constantly checking to see who else has joined, or what photos have been uploaded, or what comments people are making. It’s getting out of hand. I gotta step away, or I’m not going to get anything else done. The lawn’s not going to mow itself!

It’s a lot of fun, though. This is a group of people I genuinely care about and have missed (as opposed to almost everyone else I knew in high school).

Hey, Walt… thanks for the new addiction. I sincerely appreciate it. My wife would like to thank you, too… next time you see her, guard your shins.

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Quitting Facebook just got easier - NY Times

In the wake of the recent controversy, including NY Times coverage, Facebook has announced it will delete users permanently upon request.

The request must be made through a form on a revised Help page:

The updated Facebook help page now includes the question “How do I delete my account?” The answer: “If you do not think you will use Facebook again and would like your account deleted, we can take care of this for you. Keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account or retrieve any of the content or information you have added.”

The entry then says, “If you would like your account deleted, please contact us using the form at the bottom of the page and confirm your request in the text box.”

This is a good move. I’m a bit more comfortable now. Though the generic warning to users to be careful what you post still stands (after all, anyone could copy anything you post), it’s good to know that at least the company I’m trusting with my data isn’t going to be the one using it without my permission.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, privacy

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How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free - New York Times (You may need a free account to read that article)

Okay, I’m on Facebook. I have a love/hate relationship with Social Networking sites. I see the benefit they could offer (though I don’t think it’s truly being realized), but I also see huge opportunities for abuse in multiple areas, including security.

There have been commercials lately, targeted at teens, mostly, that warn about the permanancy of things you post online; once you put them out there, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully take them down. This is another example of the same principle.

The network is still trying to find a way to monetize its popularity, mostly by allowing marketers access to its wealth of demographic and behavioral information. The retention of old accounts on Facebook’s servers seems like another effort to hold onto — and provide its ad partners with — as much demographic information as possible.

“The thing they offer advertisers is that they can connect to groups of people. I can see why they wouldn’t want to throw away anyone’s information, but there’s a conflict with privacy,” said Alan Burlison, 46, a British software engineer who succeeded in deleting his account only after he complained in the British press, to the country’s Information Commissioner’s Office and to the TRUSTe organization, an online privacy network that has certified Facebook.

While I sympathize that the Facebook wants to get some profit out of their business, and they’re certainly entitled to it, there is NO excuse for them refusing to delete my personal data if I specifically request it to be deleted. Throw up any number of confirmations and warnings you want, but when I get to the end of that string, do it. While I’m on the system, do your best to make money off me (ethically, of course, and with full disclosure of methods), but if I want out, I want out of it all. I’m not signing up to be a member for life.

I’ve been hesitant to truly use my Facebook account, and this just reinforces that feeling.

Technorati Tags: social networking, facebook, invasion of privacy, bad business practices

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