more on Under Recommendation Engines' Hood

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rob Raisch <info () raisch com>
Date: June 19, 2006 9:08:54 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Under Recommendation Engines' Hood

Dave,

My experiences with Pandora are the same as others who have reported  
here.  It's a incredible way to discover new music and artists within  
multiple categories you define.  As another who believes that once  
our appreciation for new things wanes, so begins our intellectual  
decline into senescence, I have been driven to purchase a lot of  
music I didn't know existed before Pandora.  (Age: 47)

   First you create a "channel" based on an artist or song you  
particularly like.

   Next, Pandora presents songs from similar artists and asks you to  
rate them
   as either "thumbs-up" (likable) or "thumbs-down" (unlikeable).

   Finally, once you have "primed Pandora's pump", you can listen to  
your new
   personalized streaming radio station of those songs and artists  
Pandora
   believes you will like.  Once you discover music you wish to  
purchase,
   Pandora provides easy links to iTunes or Amazon.

But most interesting of all to me, Pandora is now integrated into the  
wonderful Slimdevices' Squeezebox.  -- http://www.slimdevices.com/
For those who have yet to discover it, the Squeezebox is a high- 
performance streaming music device that receives music from any local  
computer, any Shoutcast-compatible Internet radio station, or from  
the Pandora service, and then converts it directly into audio for  
performance on your stereo.

The Squeezebox is simple to set-up, supports WIFI (802.11b/g) out of  
the box, handles many encoding formats (MP3,AAC,WMA,OggVorbis), and  
is very reasonably priced.  It also allows you to add one or more  
server-side "plug-ins" for such things as management of personal  
favorites, integration with iTunes and MusicMagic, browsing PodCasts,  
creating randomized playlists, etc.
The Squeezebox's Slimserver software is free, runs on PC, MAC and  
Linux, and is extremely easy to install and configure.  It's written  
in Perl and is completely open-source which makes it community- 
supported and very easy to modify.  (I've adapted its standard music  
library and "playlist" features to support multiple, independent users.)

All interaction with the Slimserver happens over a skin-able web  
interface allowing you to control one or more players, either the  
Squeezebox device itself or the desktop Java-based "Softsqueeze"  
player. You can control players separately or collectively to play  
the same music on all.  And finally, the Slimserver allows you to  
stream any of your music to standard streaming music players (like  
WinAmp) locally or over the Internet.

I have two Squeezeboxes, one for the living room stereo and another  
for my bedroom.  The bedroom device acts both as my background, low- 
volume sleep-inducing music player and my high-volume, jarring  
morning alarm clock.

Pandora's integration with the Squeezebox is only a little less  
flexible as Pandora's own online player and provides a very effective  
way to hear many, many new and interesting artists.

/rr

--
Rob Raisch (Techno-junkie and Internet Greybeard)



-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/