DaveTraynor.com

A while back, I had a post about Pandora, a cool new music streaming service that lets you create your own radio station, tailored to the kind of music you like to listen to.

If you still haven’t tried out Pandora, here’s an article from Fast Company that might get you interested. It introduces us to the guys behind the Music Genome Project and some insight into why Pandor is much more than just another music matching service.

I’m still using Pandora regularly, especially at work, where the fact it runs in Flash means it doesn’t get blocked by our vigilant web-blocking software. This article gives you some extra details on how to work with the software to make it even more powerful and help it to introduce you to a whole lot of music you would never have found otherwise.

I was going to write about this major security flaw in Windows, but Shel Holtz has already done so…and I couldn’t have said it better myself. So click over to Shel’s blog, A Shel of my former self, to read all about it.

Just one thing to add. (This will only make sense after you’ve read Shel’s post.) I’ve been following this danger since it was first discovered, via a very cool Podcast I subscribe to, called Security Now. If you haven’t listened to it, you should consider it. It’s an incredibly valuable collection of programs on how to safeguard your computer and your life from the bad guys out there.

Sure, it’s nerdy, but I find it fascinating. And the host, Leo Laporte, and security expert Steve Gibson do a fabulous job of making all this complicated stuff interesting and compelling. I’m addicted. And they were all over this Microsoft problem long before the company said a word. See this posting on Steve’s GRC website for all the details.

Update — Late Thursday, Microsoft saw the light and released their official patch for the WMF problem. So if you’re a Windows user, make sure your automatic update is working or go to Microsoft’s Update site to get the fix.

Happy New Year, everyone!

This will be an interesting year for me and my family, as we enter a new chapter in our lives. We’ve already bid adieu to two of our flock and in June, the youngest will be finished high school.

I know some parents like to keep the family home as a base for the kids to rally back to from time to time, but Heather and I have other ideas. So by the fall, we’ll both be setting up shop in Victoria, BC, a long way from our current abode. In fact, Heather left a couple of days ago for an extended stay in Victoria. She’ll be working as a midwife and preparing the way for the launch of her new practice in the summer.

Over the holidays, I’ve been reflecting on what a home means to a family, as we’ve enjoyed having our family all back here again. In a perfect world, perhaps we would stay put in one place…but we won’t be doing that.

Fortunately, we have our summer place at Buena Vista, just outside Regina. It’s a spot I’ll always keep and a great place to spend the summers. So far, we’re all committed to spending time together there every summer. So no matter where we all end up, it will give us somewhere to come together fairly often.

Wherever you are, I hope the coming year unfolds the way you hope and that you and all those close to you get all the happiness you deserve.

Happy New Year!

One of the uses I’m enjoying with my IPod is having a few Audiobooks with me at all times. I’ve got a number that I’ve bought from various sources and with all the storage available on my IPod model, it’s easy to keep them handy for listening when I’ve got some time.

I’ve been waiting for someone to come up with a way to turn some of the public domain books that are out there on the Web into audio books. I figured it was just a matter of time and with sites like Project Gutenberg out there, there’s plenty of material.

Well, someone has taken up that challenge. Check out LibriVox to see the result. They’re serving up public domain books that you can listen to on their site or download to portable player and enjoy wherever you are.

This is a very interesting site that is built on the open source model, where like-minded people come together to create something useful. It looks like a great idea and one that you can participate in if you’re so inclined. They’re looking for volunteers to read chapters and contribute, so if you’ve always thought that those years of reading to your kids were wasted on them, try those pipes on a wider audience. Maybe you’ll be able to quit your day job!

Sometime in 2005, the world passed a significant milestone, as the one billionth Internet user signed on.

This week, Internet usability guru Jacob Neilson explores the significance of this in his latest Alertbox newsletter. Here’s some interesting tidbits:

• According to Morgan Stanley estimates, 36% of Internet users are now in Asia and 24% are in Europe. Only 23% of users are in North America, where it all started in 1969 when two computers — one in Los Angeles, the other in Palo Alto — were networked together
• It took 36 years for the Internet to get its first billion users. The second billion will probably be added by 2015; most of these new users will be in Asia. The third billion will be harder, and might not be reached until 2040.
• In 2002, NUA estimated that we had 605 million Internet users. Since then, Internet use has grown by 18% per year — certainly not as fast as the 1990s, but still respectable.

The implications on how we use the Internet and what it is used for (like e-commerce) are sobering.This is a good piece to whet your appetite for thinking some big thoughts about where all this is taking us. Personally, I’m finding it more and more exciting every day. But just how significant the changes are is not necessarily that obvious in a day-to-day sense. It’s only when you look at how quickly things have changed in such a short time that you start to grasp that something big is truly happening.After all, as I am fond of telling my kids, when I went to school, computers were kept in separate rooms. I only ever used a typewriter to do term papers and when I started my first job in the newspaper business, I used a manual typewriter! And I’m not really that old!What about you? When did you start using computers? And when did they become a part of your life that you couldn’t imagine doing without? Or have you yet to cross that Rubicon?

For some of you, the whole question of whether Wikipedia is alive or dead may be a moot point.

But if you’re familiar with the on-line encyclopedia, you might be interested in Dan Gilmour’s report about a study published recently in the journal Nature, comparing Wikipedia and the Encylopedia Britannica on the accuracy of their scientific postings.

Wikipedia, which is unique in that anyone can post an entry, or edit an existing one, has been under fire in recent weeks. (For a bit of background on some of the controversy, read this post from Bruno Giussani.)

But in recent days, it’s been getting some good notices, like this one.

I use it often and I think it’s a tremendous project. So long as people realize that there is no such thing as an absolute sure thing when it comes to sourcing information, we should use it, contribute to it, if appropriate, and enjoy the benefits of yet another open source project. (Like the Music Genome Project I wrote about last week.)

OK, this isn’t up to my usual high standards… (I do so have them!)
But I couldn’t resist.
See if you can figure out what this guy is doing…

(WARNING — This clip is not office-safe!)

Watch it here