New Favorites

Stemming from my new obsession with listening to TWiT Podcasts at work, I have been exposed to a lot of new stuff in the last couple of weeks. These are some of my favorites:

Pandora

This site allows you to listen to streaming audio that is customized just for you. To start, you just give it a name of an artist or a song, and it then starts to play songs related to your choice. As it plays, you can tell it if you like the songs or not, and it gradually gets better at picking songs that you should really like. The service is FREE if you don't mind a small advertisement on the page, but it really seems to be worth the $36/yr. to get the ad-free service. Just like Flickr, I'm going to play with it a bit before subscribing, but so far, I'm very impressed.

Slim Devices' Squeezebox v3

To make Pandora even better, just add a Squeezebox. This device connects to your computer network, either wired or wireless, and allows you to play your music collection on something other than a computer, like maybe that expensive home theater system you hardly ever use now that you have switched to iTunes or Shoutcast. The really cool part is that it now allows you to play your Pandora customized stations. Plus, it just looks cool. :)

Songbird

Keeping with the musical theme so far, my next new favorite is Songbird, a "a complete desktop media player or 'jukebox' with a uniquely open approach to Internet digital media network services." With the problems Microsoft Windows Media Player has while running with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, I have been in desparate need of a new media player. I used to swear by Winamp, but it also seems to be a bit buggy and bloated ever since AOL took it over. So in comes Songbird, and just in time. It is still in early stages of development, but I'm really liking the change. I'm going to start using Songbird to listen to the TWiT podcasts and Shoutcast radio stations when I'm not listening to Pandora.

Flock

Like Songbird, Flock is another open source application built on one of Mozilla's platforms (not XULRunner, though). You may remember that I said I prefer IE 7 Beta 2 to FireFox, the most well-known Mozilla-based browser, but Flock actually may turn me away from my Microsoft bias. The big advantage it has is its built-in integration with Flickr and blogging. It also has a new way to handle your favorites list, an area where both IE7 and Firefox disappoint me. Like Songbird, Flock is also very early in its development, so it may not be "ready for prime time," but you may want to keep an eye on it and grab a copy as soon as it goes to verison 1.0.

Google Calendar

The new Google Calendar has been greatly anticipated by many people for a very long time, and its recent Beta release to the public is very impressive to say the least. My favorite part about it is its ability to share information with other iCal-compatible calendar programs or Web sites. You can view your Google Calendar in other locations, and you can view your other iCal calendars in Google Calendar. Very cool. Hopefully, Yahoo follows suit and makes their personal and group calendars iCal-compliant as well. I'd love to be able to keep using my group calendars on Yahoo but interact with them on the Google site where I'm currently keeping my personal and Sypher Technology company calendars.