the bus blog

Yes, for the first time in my life I’m suffering with hay fever, and it sucks! The kind of thought that usually runs through my mind when I hear people complaining about hay fever, or allergies as Americans call it, is something along the lines of “get over it“. But it really is very crap, like the thought of having a bad cold that might not go away for a few months…

In addition to this my Sky+ remote stopped working, not a huge deal you might say, and I’d say your right - unless you want to watch a recorded program. To do this - a fairly major part of the Sky+thing - you need to press the green button, which doesn’t exist on the box itself! I did find a work around, by pressing the play button twice you’ll play what seems to be a random recoreded program, from this pressing the ‘back up’ button you’ll get to the list of recorded programs, where you can select whatever you want to watch. This is simple enough - but surely its an oversight on the part of Sky, or whoever designed the box / interface? If any of the people behind Sky see this then sort it out!

This site has changed how I listen to music, simple as. Its got to be the best implementation of any ‘Web 2′ type of site I’ve seen, more people should take a leaf out of the book those guys were reading when they created that service. Pandora lets you create a personalised radio station based on bands and songs you like, it then plays songs that are deemed to be similar to that music. In my opinion the best bit is that to use the service all you have to do is type in a artist / song name into the funky flash based player- no need to sign up.

That’s important, so many people don’t bother using really good sites simply because they don’t want the hassle of signing up. With Pandora you can use the service for a limited time and then decide if you want to sign up, I defy anyone who listens to music on their PC and has broadband not to sign up after a few minutes of using Pandora.

The really cool part of Pandora is highlighted in this video interview by Robert Scoble with Pandora’s CTO Tom Conrad, its really worth a watch. Pandora (if you live in the US) will work on your mobile phone, advertisement free, for $3 /month. Thats something I’d love to try, the ability to listen to any music on the move without having to actually have it with you is really cool.

Aside from DMCA restrictions (thats a whole other post) potentially ruining this I think its going to be the way that we’ll access music, I hope so anyway.
The interesting part of all this is, is this the end of the iPod? If my phone could access Pandora there is no way I’d buy a MP3 player that cant.