This month I will introduce you to Pandora.com and its paradigm shifting way of serving music. Although many people still purchase their music in the form of a CD at the local retail store, people are beginning to move to more convenient ways of consuming music. Ever since the internet became mainstream and everyone began to use it more and more, music consumption started another phase of its evolution.

History

In the mid 90′s the MP3 file format was created giving a way to compress music tracks to a more manageable size than the original track in a CD, which are typically 10 times larger. The MP3 format is able to accomplish this by not only applying compression, but by eliminating sound that the typical person is not able to hear. The internet explosion helped to propel the MP3 format forward and by the end of the decade became the most popular standard for storing most music tracks in a size that the typical computer could handle in scale.

Portability

Soon MP3 CD players came into the scene, being able to store about 15 typical albums or about 256 songs. Back then hard drives were physically too big and solid state memory was too expensive. MP3 CD players are still around and many after-market automobile CD stereos are able to read MP3 formatted CDs.

When the price of memory came down and the physical size of hard drives was brought down to a manageable size, a variety of MP3 players surfaced. There were some growing pains associated with the first versions of these players. They often were too dense and heavy or outright too big. Their interface was complicated, hard to use, and not at all intuitive.

Apple introduces the iPod

In 2001 the iPod was released as a refined version of the numerous MP3 players out before it. Its ability to dynamically organize your music and the very convenient way to purchase music made it the leading player soon after.

Evolution

The iPod soon evolved and build on the technology pioneered by its competitors by refining their methods and providing an intuitive simple way for users to access and play not only their music, but videos and movie files as well. Today you can buy music with one click and even rent movies.

Storage

Storage is a common link between all MP3 players in the industry. Storage has been a problem since the beginning of the first record player. The more storage you have the more music you can listen to and vice versa. This dogma has been plaguing the music player since the beginning. Desktops have been streaming for a while, but streaming really came into the mainstream with the introduction of the iPhone and now more phones have since harnessed the ability including the BlackBerry. By streaming music storage problems become mute.

Streaming

Though genre internet radio has existed since the mid 90′s, custom radio is fairly new. The leading two services as of this writing are last.fm and Pandora.com. These services are ad supported and as a result are essentially cost free, but it’s not to say that the services will blast you with ads. The ads are very well presented in a way which doesn’t detract from the experience in an overbearing way.

Social & Genre Music Streaming

Pandora.com and last.fm both are taking streaming radio to next level by implementing sophisticated algorithms. Algorithms which themselves not only take into account genre, artist, song, and music instruments, but also taking into account it’s users’ voting preferences. Notice it’s not a rating it’s like, don’t like, or indifference vote that it takes from the user. It takes all the voting from all the users and produces a very accurate playlist from a simple input of a song or artist name.

Pandora in addition to the above also implements what it calls the Music Genome Project. This project takes input from music professionals to define what it calls the DNA of a song and tries to classified all the music played in Pandora.

Pandora.com provides a very easy way to try and use. When you first visit the site you’ll be asked for a song or artist name to be inputted. It quickly sets up a radio station customized for you, seeded by your selection and the music begins. Last.fm is similar but not as simple. Both offer a way to register for free and doing so provides the benefit of remembering the stations you’ve created and provide a way for it to learn your selections by taking into account your song preference by your votes.

Benefits

Some benefits provided by streaming rather than storing music for later use are as follow. Aside from rendering storage limits irrelevant it is a free service so you get to listen to your favorite music cost free. It also provides a great way to discover new music artists similar to your favorites. A great way to “share” music, just tell your friends the name of the music artist and they can also create the same radio station.

Detractions

The main detraction of the service is not being able to play the song you want on demand though you can skip songs. This obstacle I seldom encounter, simply because when I want to listen to music I don’t care to setup a playlist of very specific songs and decide the order I want to listen to them. When I want to listen to music I know what song represents the type of music I want to listen to at the moment.

The other detraction just as important is of course the requirement of an internet connection and the difficulty of having it while mobile. The latter can be overcome by an unlimited data plan from a wireless carrier such as AT&T or Verizon. Not a detraction at all if you have an internet connected computer around when you want to listen to music.

Challenge

Though perfection is impossible I challenge you to try the two services. I’m partial to Pandora.com because of its simplicity, but last.fm provides more in the form of information and media of the singer. So I challenge you to think of your favorite song and input it into Pandora.com and listen to the first five songs it picks without skipping. You’ll be surprised at how accurately it picks the right songs for you.

When you buy a new computer you’ll find that most computers have Microsoft Works and sometimes a time trial of Microsoft Word which expires within months. Works can not open documents from Word and so it becomes almost useless in the real world because you can not use it for business or school.

There are two free options. OpenOffice.org can provide you with a very robust office suite capable of opening Word documents and more. But then if you move to another computer you have to reinstall in that computer. You also have to transport the document through email or USB. Download then save again then upload or copy. Simply to make a small change. Keep in mind everytime more and more copies are being made which make it easier to loose track of which version is the most current. Then if you want to send the document to someone for editing and maybe to another person to add some graphics or tables, more and more duplicates are being created.

Zoho Writer

Here’s a strategy to simplify everything. Create or upload the document in Zoho writer. Zoho is a free registration web based full suite of applications of which Zoho Writer is one. It has plenty of editing functions to satisfy all, but the most demanding users. You create the document once in the web. It stays there. You can open it like an email at another computer without any difference to the experience. You want to share it with multiple people click on share and type in their email address. Then they have access to view or edit the singular original in the web. Still no copies are being made.

While editing by two or more collaborators the Writer locks part of the document so both users can still work on the same document but on different blocks of data simultaneously in a maximum way to keep integrity. It keeps integrity by locking blocks of the actual content to become read only while that block is being edited and still letting the other user visually see what part of the content is being locked because of the editing being done while still letting you see the edits by the other collaborator. I know hard to follow, but basically its a very intuitive way of working on the same document without bothering the other user.

This allows for every person in the group to have the most up to date view of the most current changes virtually in realtime. Virtually means you see your changes instantly but it takes 0 to 7 seconds on average for the other users to receive your changes depending on the browser chosen. (On my informal test, edits went from Firefox to IE from one editor to another in 3 to 4 seconds from IE to Firefox in 6 to 7.)

While editing, Zoho Writer keeps track of the version so you always have copies in case you want to recover that brilliant paragraph a collaborator deleted yesterday. This copies are basically invisible until you need them. Simply click History to see them.

If you wonder about capability here’s the toolbar:

It may not suffice for elaborate publishings and fliers, but for communication and collaboration of large documents and even less complex fliers Zoho is robust.

Zoho-A full office suite in the cloud

The link above will take you to the start page of the Zoho services site. This is the most robust office suite that is all web-based. This means that you don’t have to install anything on your computer to use it. Just sign up for a free account and you are done.

Now you’ll have access to a full suite of applications that do a great job at editing most MS Office documents. It even saves(exports) to a PDF file if you want. Though it does not let you edit PDF files it does create them for you.

Since I have been really busy lately I won’t be able to go into full depth that this website deserves. I will follow up with some great ideas on how to use the Zoho services in the future, today I just want to go ahead and let you all know about this great tool.

Enjoy your exploration.

Also, I made a very important update to the article on the “USB drives” category. Be sure to check it out if you are relying on U3 encryption to safeguard your data. The update is highlighted in red.

Today I am going to walk you through a very practical, but great method to collaborate in any business even if you already have company email.

Google Documents

Google Documents gives you a great cloud computing desktop. Though it won’t replace a full on desktop suite like MS Office. It does give great benefits.

• You can open and edit MS Word docs on any computer, even if the software is not installed.
• You can work on Excel sheets.
• You can also work on basic Power Point Files
• The biggest point is Collaboration.

You can Collaborate with anyone. The reason you want to do this is because of the quickness that originals get duplicated and modified. This creates numerous outdated and conflicting copies of the original. Collaboration with Google Documents is a quick way to view, edit, distribute, and maintain one or more documents. Once you make a change it gets saved and the changes will be viewed next time someone else opens the document.

A Simple Metaphor

A metaphor would be to imagine a hard drive in the internet where you can put documents and spreadsheets in, which you can then edit directly from the net without having to download them. Since the document is online you can share it with only people you know and even allow some to edit the document.

Here’s a video to give you an overview.

So how do you use it? On your Gmail page, once you are logged in. Simply click on Documents near the top of the page. That’s it now you are in the Google Docs desktop. From there you can upload a file or simply create a new one to get started.

Quick Tip: If you receive an email with a document attachment there is an option in Gmail to transfer that doc attachment to Google Docs. Simply click on the link, it will then import it to your Google Documents.

Though this is a toned down experience of what Cloud Computing means it is a great example and glimpse of what is to come. For now I find it a very practical and useful method to collaborate with anyone.

This USB drives are the best way to transfer electronic files, including spreadsheets, music mp3′s, pictures, etc, from computer to computer. When you plug one in to a computer it shows up as a new drive in which then you can drag any file to it and even simply use the File Menu | Save As … option.

But there is more ability than simply storing and transferring files. They can also store full applications.

PortableApps.com is a great resource for portable applications. There are programs there which are Free that can replace many commercial programs. These are mainly Open-Source applications which you can use on any computer without having to install them.

Keep in mind that it is recommended that you have at least a 1 Gigabyte drive.

This allows you to put a photo editing program and an office suite on your USB drive and not worry whether your friends computer has the capable software to edit that picture or edit a document you’ve been working on.

There is a suite which installs the basic recommended software including a very functional startmenu which you can use on whatever computer you plug your drive in.

You do have choice if you want it though. You can choose just the platform with the start menu. Then install only software you want, which is what I recommend to save space.

Methodology

Choose platform only and install to USB drive.

From the that start menu click on options | Get more apps

Download the ones you want to install to your desktop. Then click install a new app and point it towards your desktop then your new app. It will then automatically install it to your USB drive.

This is a list of some apps to get your started:

Firefox – Internet Browser

OpenOffice – Office Suite to edit Word documents, etc

Pidgin – universal instant messenger

Gimp – Photo editing software

Security and Encryption

When you install Firefox first thing to do is to go to Tools|Options then the Security tab illustrated with a locked padlock. Set a master password so that whenever you ask it to remember a password it will always be protected by a master password.

The way it works is that if someone finds your USB drive they will be prompted for a password before remembering any of your passwords. For you, it will ask for the master password once on each session. Its convenient and its more secure. Remember the memory on the drive is persistent meaning it won’t erase over time unless you erase it.

Because of its persistent nature always make sure that you don’t have sensitive information stored in the drive unless it is encrypted. An easy way to do this is to use Winrar and set a password for compressed file. Set it to encrypt filenames, this way it will prompt the user for a password before even displaying a file name or directory name stored within the file.

Options in USB Drives

If you are looking to buy your first USB drive you might want to look into U3. This is a great option to keep your information safe. It hides your information and won’t let anyone access the information unless they have the right password.

I recommend it for its ease of use and for being the only technology which will protect the entire USB drive under a password. Only thing is, I recommend you disable all optional software and auto start programs that it comes with. It makes it slow and on slow computers it becomes extremely slow. Like portable apps it does have a start menu. So just uninstall everything and keep only what you do use to keep it lean and quick.

Update & Caution!

Recently I decided to plug in my U3 drive to my Ubuntu Linux laptop. It proceded to open the drive without a hickup, including without asking for a password. I was able to open all my files.

Meaning that the drive was not trully encrypted it seems that Linux can still load the drive bypassing the U3 security measures. This was very unacceptable and so I proceded to uninstall all the U3 software and made it a regular jump drive and used the techniques mentioned above, to encrypt my data. Which, by the way maintains security even when on Linux asking for passwords before I can access my encrypted data.

Hope this has been a good overview of what a USB drive can do.