Cool Products & Hot Companies

Pandora: The Coolest Music Site Around

My wife recently told me about Pandora, a music site that quite frankly is one of the most interesting sites I've seen in a long time. With Pandora you'll find all kinds of incredible new music, from artists you know and artists that are very similar to the ones you like.

Simply go to their site, type in an artist or song you like, and Pandora streams you songs and artists that are similar. It's like having a smart Itunes playlist that gives you suggestions customized to your personal tastes. Not only have I found some incredible new bands that I like, but I also have heard many of the "B" songs from artists I like that never got radio play and that I never knew existed.

Now if I could just use Pandora on a portable player or on my radio in my car. :-)

I can name that tune in... One Website.

Got a song stuck in your head but you can't remember the name of it or who the artist was?

Try midomi out. All you do is go to their site, click on a button and start humming or singing. It then returns a list of songs that match what you are looking for.

My results? It couldn't recognize America Pie, but it did get God Bless America.

Check Out Jaxtr

There's a very interesting new service in beta from a company called Jaxtr. It allows you to link your phone to pages in your social networks, your email signature, your blog etc. so that anyone worldwide can call you with just a click of the mouse. Your phone number is kept private, and you don't need to download or install any client software.

This gives you the ability to have a "virtual" phone number that you can link to your existing phone numbers or future phone numbers when they change. Should be quite interesting if they can pull it off and provide an excellent user experience.

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

A few months ago I started having problems with IE 6. It would crash, was slow and gave me major problems. After reading Microsoft's recommendation that I should completely reinstall Windows XP since there is no easy uninstall and resinstall of IE by itself I started using Firefox. 

Firefox is a pretty cool browser - RSS feeds, tabbed browsing (which I don't think is that useful) and a few other features (along with the fact that it wasn't crashing on me) made it my browser of choice. There were a few problems: websites didn't always render correctly, I couldn't view MSNBC video content (Microsoft requires IE to view their content), but for the most part it worked well.

Don't get me wrong - I'm no fan of Microsoft and I understand why people support Firefox. That said, I use the best solution I can find, and I'm glad that the Firefox guys are forcing Microsoft to get their act together.

This week I got brave and decided to install Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 to see if it would solve my IE crashing problems. I'm happy to say that it was an easy install and did solve the crashing. And along with that it turns out I really like what it has to offer.

What I've found so far:

• Performance seems very snappy
• HTML rendering has worked correctly on all the pages I have checked
• The new mechanism for managing RSS feeds and favorites is very cool - simple and fast to use
• The interface is streamlined and VERY simple (this is NOT what I expected from Microsoft) :-)
• Integrated search with your choice of search engines is nice - I can now get rid of the Google toolbar. Microsoft even kept Google as my default for me.
• Correct printing of Internet pages is quite nice
• I like being able to zoom in and out on pages
• Built-in support for anti-phishing and managing IE add-ons is useful
• The research toolbar is very useful - search Encarta, dictionaries, company profiles, etc (though you will never find the toolbar because it isn't obvious at all)

The two things I don't like:

• It is harder to immediately see the status of pages being loaded
• The refresh page button is in the upper right corner - if it were in the upper left corner by the forward and back button it would be more intuitive

Competition is a GOOD thing, I can't wait to see what the Firefox guys do to one-up Microsoft!

Yousendit: Large email attachments

Sending large email attachments easily

Ever have a problem sending large attachments in your emails? Yousendit is the answer. It allows you to upload files up to 1GB, emailing the file recipients and providing them with a link to download. Up to 100 people can download the file, and it remains up for seven days.

Best of all, the basic service described above is completely FREE. There is also an enhanced service for only $4.99 per month.

bypass registration with BugMeNot

I recently needed to access a newspaper article and was reminded of a site that is one of my favorites: www.bugmenot.com . BugMeNot lets users share logins for websites that have compulsory registration. The concept is quite simple, type in a URL and it will return user names and passwords for the site that other BugMeNot users have registered. Each user name and password lets you record “yes” or “no” on whether it worked. This way, passwords that are inactive drop to the bottom of the list.

Wetpaint joins the WIKI wars

Wetpaint announced their new WIKI product this week. I've been a fan of JotSpot and Socialtext since they first came out. Wetpaints appears to have two differentiators: ease of content creation for users and (according to their home page) it is free. Should be interesting to see how this market sorts itself out.

Plogs--Blogging Meets Smart Marketing

Do you have a blog? Do you have the hottest blogs on your watch list?

Well, it's time to step up to the next level...plogs!

I came upon plogs on Amazon's web site. A plog is a marriage of "blog" and "personalized marketing content".

For Amazon this means you see items that are likely to have high relevance for you, based on your browsing and purchase behavior. As the site states, "Posts in your plog come from many sources, including authors of books you have purchased on Amazon.com. In the future, your plog also will help you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders and much more."

You will see your plog when you access Amazon's site with your own sign in. Generic info can be seen at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/16385881/sr=53-1/sr=53-1/qid=1141701899/ref=tr_284821/103-2067258-0909418

I can only imagine how the the next wave ofconsumer oriented "plogs" will play out.
For me, I look forward to my Nordstrom shoe plog!

iKarma: eBay-style reputations on the web

iKarma is working on a cool new idea. It allows a service provider to set up an account and create an online reputation (much like a seller or buyer's reputation on eBay). Imagine if you you were going to do some work on your house and you could look up your contractor and see what kind of a reputation he has with previous customers. Or your doctor or dentist.

Not sure if they'll get critical mass to make this viable, but it's an interesting idea.

Ning | Andreesen's Latest Startup

Want to create your own customized version of Friendster, Myspace or LinkedIn? Ning, Marc Andreesen's latest startup allows you to do just that. For any group you belong to you can use Ning to create your own social networking site. Use their templates to find an application that does what you want, clone it and you are up and running.

Cool idea. Not sure about how well it actually works - need to spend some hands on time with it.