The Sentient Search Engine

Thing #18 for CML’s Learn & Play program is to explore different Web 2.0 tools (and toys).

I looked around on the SEOmoz list of Best Web 2.0 sites. There was a lot of cool stuff there to be sure, but what really caught my eye is a site called Pandora Radio. This site is truly astounding! It allows you to create custom “Radio” stations based on the music you like. Everything you can imagine is in here! From Top 10 Hits to Classical to Progressive Metal, nothing seems to be too obscure. Once you’ve started your station you just listen and tell the site when you like something.

The interface is very slick and compact. I quickly figured out where the basics were and how to navigate around effectively. You can query the system about why a song was selected for you after clicking the “more” button under the album art. You can click on your station name and select “add variety” to include other song/artist styles. You can also go deeper and set up a station in more detail by selecting edit. 

It seems that it becomes harder and harder to impress me these days (a source of some concern). Pandora led me to say “wow” about a website for the first time in a long time. Try it, I think you’ll like it (musicphiles especially). Four Stars!!

Thing #17 in CML’s Learn & Play program is to work with Web Applications like Google Docs. Since I have experience with these, I won’t get too info what I did. Basically I created a doc, and shared it with myself (using my work email) so I could re-familiarize myself with the process. I also published it to share it with the world!

The implications of things like Google Docs are tremendous. You never have to worry about leaving your report behind again (or spreadsheet, or presentation…). One can also easily collaborate on a document from a distance and even make presentations with the presentations component!

Libraries could get a lot out of this. We Google Docs affords a great deal of flexibility for transferring and sharing documents. I personally don’t think it replaces Productivity software on one’s PC (the internet does experience outages, from time to time). I imagine the utility would go up for smaller libraries that may not have the software and network resources that CML enjoys.

On the other hand, there are some more fearful implications that libraries should heed. If everyone switches over to Google Documents (as Google hopes) for all their routine document creation needs. Think of the power this gives Google, a for profit corporation. They would literally control everyone’s information. I probably sound like some sort of survivalist nut, but this makes me personally and professionally…uncomfortable. All the reports we write, the data we collect, and the presentations we make would be stored on servers owned by Google. We would be trusting Google to keep their fingers out and to keep prying eyes away. If you can trust them, you’re a better person than me.

Its not that I think Google’s a bad company (now anyway), its just that I don’t really think its a good idea to keep all that information quite that centralized. Maybe I’m just being a cranky old librarian.