Maven Mapper's

This afternoon I was turned on to Pandora an old(even though many people haven't heard of it before) internet radio station company that reinvents itself on a regular basis.

I've read about them dozens of times in magazines like Wired, but never gave them a try. Today I was doing a few things in FaceBook when I was given the quick ability to give them a try.

I was hooked.

I was rapidly finding some music that I liked and that was virally pointing me to some new music I hadn't heard of before.

Then Pandora's Box must have come completely off its hinges. Before I knew it I had Journey getting mixed into play on channels that were supposed to play disco, Peter Gabriel was following hard rock on the Nine Inch Nails Channel and for dozens of songs in a row I was stuck listening to garbage!

I was in Internet Radio Hell!

Pandora is supposed to look at your musical tastes, compare those tastes to other people and with the music selections that the music experts at Pandora use, make music suggestions to you that should help you keep your groove on.

But when it goes wrong and sends you a series of songs that you don't like, you can skip through two or three until you get a message stating that their license does not allow them to let you skip through more music until you listen to some more (crap).

From a Facebook perspective I rapidly ran into some problems as well. I was able to subscribe to some of my favorite groups and singers. However, I rapidly learned that many or most of them only had their most current albums listed in Pandora. So I could not really get in there and share or list my favorite songs by my favorite singers and groups.

The most annoying thing about the service though seems to be the fact that once it gets off track, you can't redirect it. Its like having a friend come over to your house, jump in to your music collection and suddenly pull out a bunch of really bad music that you received for christmas from a distant aunt that has no clue what music you like and then having that person play that music over and over again.

You can't hit stop, you can't hit skip, you can't tell them to turn that crap off or play something in a different genre.

That last word is the key here. There appears to be no genre of music on Pandora to help get the service guided back on track. So if your resident Pandoran expert chooses unwisely (for you), you are stuck with their suggestions and can't say, "Hey you fool, that's not rock n roll, that's not funky dance music, that's techno dance music, that's not acid house that's house, that's not rap that's R & B, that's not hip hop, that pop. You can tell it song after song that you don't like the song, but that doesn't seem to register quick enough to improve the next song in the play list.

Maybe even more important, if you want to hear 'more' from an artist, you just can't. This is (internet) radio and they don't really play requests like that. You can buy music anytime you like, knock yourself out. But if you suddenly get the notion or reminder to listen to this great song by an artist you're just hosed.

For those of us that have lived for decades now in the instant gratification world of MP3 files, digital cameras and mobile email, this is a real bummer. The introduction to new music is nice, but be prepared to take a deep breath before diving through the chaff.

The service has some interesting potential, but it just doesn't seem intelligent or responsive enough yet to really live up to its true potential.

I am increasingly beginning to think that no manufacturer can create a decent wireless mouse.  This week I have witnessed the demise of yet another wireless mouse. A laser optical mouse that I paid $50 for just 4 months ago.

This mouse sucked down close to 12 AAA batteries a month and truly was not worth the total cost (after batteries about $100).  If I can find one, I am from now on going to utilize a wired mouse, both to save money on batteries and to save landfills from more batteries.

More importantly I will make the switch to save myself the hassle of utilizing equipment that fails to work when I need it.  It may make my work while traveling or staying in Mykonos villa rentals or in a Howard Johnson or even a Holiday Inn Express.  Lugging a wired device seems a bit like packing up too much of the desktop to go on the road, but when you count many of the devices that plugin via USB to communicate with the actual mouse, traveling with a wireless mouse can be even more bulky than a wired device.

The trick is likely to find a mouse that has a cord that is manageable and does not make a mess of all the other packed devices and cords in your bag, backpack or briefcase.

Google and Viacom have agreed to keep the identities of all those people that Viacom would argue illegally shared their content on Google's YouTube video sharing network.

Google said it had now agreed to provide plaintiffs' attorneys for Viacom and a class-action group led by the Football Association of England a version of a massive viewership database that blanks out YouTube username and Internet address data that could be used to identify individual video watchers.

"We have reached agreement with Viacom and the class-action group," Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes said. "They have agreed to let us anonymize YouTube user data," he said.

Reuters

But Viacom does not necessarily want to upset its consumers any more than they already have by not enabling their content to be uploaded on to YouTube, especially shows, such as The Daily Show.

So after taking Google to task for buying YouTube, a company with a serious content ownership flaw in the business plan, they are now delving through the class action lawsuit with kids gloves, hoping to protect their content rights while keeping their viewers (and advertisers.)  With this level of civility, you would almost expect lawyers from opposing sides to send each other personalized gifts along with evidence and data.

This weekend as I took a short time to relax, I found an interesting new product that makes an improvement on the technology of hot tub covers.  This improvement did not come in the way the covers work, or what they are made out of, but how they look when your hot tub is - uncovered.

I've owned several hot tubs over the years and most hot tub covers are not terribly sexy nor relaxing, especially their under bellies.  In fact, underbelly is exactly how most hot tub covers look on the under side.  They look like the belly of a giant slimy cat fish and when you are trying to relax in a hot tub, staring at a glaring white behemoth, well its just not terribly relaxing nor peaceful.

Well, this company called SpaScenes.com has come up with an easy to install screen that attaches easily to hot tub covers with a special adhesive resistant to hot tub environments and chemicals.  It can add a great looking scene that will definitely be more peaceful and relaxing than the giant white underbelly ambience that comes standard with hot tubs today.

The price on these massive hot tub cover murals goes for a little over $200.  Your average hot tub cover itself can cost anywhere from $350 - $600 plus accessories like lift arms, so adding an accessory to deck your hot tub out like you are in a resort or spa could definitely be worth the investment.  Plus, if you look at these for what they are, a massive water proof/ chemical proof mural the price is likely a great deal cheaper than a mural would be if you tried to install it on an ordinary wall.

Now, personally, I prefer to keep my hot tub outside.  I enjoy relaxing under the stars and the trees.  The beauty of these hot tub covers is that it can help to quiet down the light that would normally reflect off your hot tub cover and help you to focus on your environment and nature instead of staring at what looks almost like a big bright screen.  After looking at it, I can't hardly imagine going back to my old hot tub cover where I'll probably always think of a blank Microsoft Word Document from now on until I upgrade my cover.

You might have missed this deal announced by Microsoft and Circuit City just before the holidays.  They are going to sell Microsoft office and Circuit City stores for $69 a year through a subscription plan.  This is part of Microsoft's effort to try and keep up with Google who has offered Google documents as an online application to compete with Microsoft office which is notoriously been rather expensive over the years.

At about $70 year, Microsoft office would not really seem all that expensive to many people especially those people they're buying a new computer in looking at a teaser 30 or 60 day trial offer of Microsoft office.  Paying $70 to get another year of Microsoft Office versus paying a few hundred dollars is a whole lot easier.

That said I don't think Microsoft is going to be terribly competitive with Google based on this one item.  It will definitely help sales but it doesn't assume to make product any better or any more competitive with Google documents.  People that use Google documents justify the use with the price but they tend to make the choice based on lifestyle and culture.  Necessity does come into play at times, but it doesn't seem to be the overriding concern of many buyers.

Regardless of seems like pretty good idea for a soft, it's a solid baby step in the right direction to stay competitive and keep their army of software engineers gainfully employed and out of the unemployment lines looking for IT jobs.

The strange thing about this product offering is the choice of channel.  Offering this deal exclusively to Circuit City is a little peculiar.  Most people that run in that situation where they need to buy Microsoft office, for example when they're 30 or 60 day trial has just expired, need the software right away.  It would seem that this model would work a whole lot better if Microsoft sold it directly from their own website as a download as opposed to making people jump into their car and pay $10 to drive a car across town to pick up some software and Circuit City.

I can deftly understand why Circuit City jumped at this deal, but Microsoft seems to have made a misstep in their choice of partner.