I don't understand why people are not making a HUGE deal out of Pandora internet radio service. I mean, they've made bigger deals about Facebook or Twitter to the point that some people would probably be unable to cope with life without them. Pandora actually does something for you; it provides you with the kind of entertainment that is so much needed these days, music!

I've waited almost my entire life to hear of a radio station that plays entirely music you tell it to. How many times in the old days you tuned to a radio station to hear some good tunes but after a few songs it turned into some crappy annoying collection of retardness, not to mention those extensive commercial blocks and absolutely ridiculous talk shows that are usually aired just when you want to listen to some frikin' music.

Pandora has solved all those problems at least as far as internet radio is concerned. Not going to waste myself explaining in detail how it works (for that you may use its Wikipedia) but basically you create your own station that plays the artists/songs you like and Pandora analyzes it and plays even more songs from similar artists and with a similar beat, rhythm, etc. There is only one(1) short commercial for every few songs and absolutely no shows, phone calls or things of that nature. The site itself is simple and easy to use, and you can create up to 100 stations although you'll probably never need that many. All this for free; of course there is a paid version called Pandora One where there is no commercials and you can play unlimitedly but I haven't tried it yet.

Waa! waa! I can't repeat a song, I can't rewind a song. Jeez, it's a radio! try doing that with DC-101 you'd have to call one of those idiots and beg them to repeat a song at which point they'll probably give you the finger. Some people also cry about the fact that Pandora is Flash based but I really don't have a problem with it, almost everything now a days is Flash based. The problem with that is that some organizations such us the one I work for tend to block Flash from their computers, but that is not Pandora's fault, is the organization's fault. In any case if you have a smart phone you can still access Pandora anywhere.

Now here's why I thing this is really serious. If Pandora continues to expand and improve you basically won't need to buy music anymore. You can spend 1000.00 bucks for a thousand songs only to find out you need to buy more after a while to keep you entertained. Why spend that much money in songs when you can just tune to a service like Pandora and listen to the same music for free or for much less than you'd spend buying every song you like or will like? Also, I believe this is another step in what I hope will be the final demise of regular radio. Not that I want the folks that work in radio to loose their jobs but lets be realistic, with the implementation of XM radio and now services like Pandora there is essentially less and less room for the daily junk you have to go through just to listen to a good song in your typical radio station.

I hope I see more and more services like this one in the future; in fact, there is already similar services such as Slacker and Jango but their websites are just too convoluted and full of ads, pop-ups and their music repertories are not that great yet. If there is anything I'd like to see Pandora improve upon in the future it's the ability to have more hours of music than the current limit of forty in the free accounts, add more features to its mobile app, and of course add more songs to its already rich repertoire.

I bet is safe to say that most of us like having some sort of background music when we are at work. It relaxes you; it keeps you from feeling bored in a cold and lonely cubical or office. Now everyone has its own preference for the type of music. Some of us prefer to listen to some radio station, I personally hate doing that especially in the morning, those morning shows just drive me nuts and completely add to my working stress. Listening to music from your iPod or your CD player is another option, however I find that somewhat distracting because we're talking about my favorite songs playing one after another. So I was looking for that relaxing, comfortable, yet energetic type of music that would help me get through my day without falling asleep and I've found the answer, trance.

Trance plays continuously in the background, by the most part it has no vocals and it has lots of different sounds that makes it pretty relaxing. Further, its constant heart beat rhythm keeps me from falling asleep or getting too bore when I'm digging through piles and piles of paperwork. So I've found a very decent trance radio station that broadcasts from Holland, Trance FM. If you're remotely interested in trance music you may try the player below. Another player will be on the left side of the screen from now on, and you can always try their website which is filled with events and all kinds of interesting stuff: www.trance.fm

If you search for these words on Google, you’ll find an incredible variety of definitions of this set of terms, including surveys to test how “geeky” you are, etc. Truth is, a lot of people have their own ideas of what kind of person qualifies as a computer geek. However, throughout my many years of loitering around the interwebs, I’ve seen quite a few individuals claiming to be computer geeks but in reality they couldn’t be further from falling in that category regardless of any dictionary definitions of the word geek.

There are many characteristics that separate a computer geek from the average person and they are not to be confused with other similar yet entirely different groups of people.

Computer geeks generally have or pursue higher education; they’re not just empirical although they have the ability to teach themselves. More often than not, they win computer science contests and have the highest grades and honors in math.

Computer geeks seek challenge, they like to configure stuff, program, develop something from scratch, and fix things; they don’t just drive to Best Buy and spend thousands of dollars on the latest gadgets and brag about that. They are not afraid of running on old stuff and in many cases they even love it. Most regular people prefer consumer electronics that just work out of the box and never have to deal with them or even try to think how or why it does what it does. We have to keep in mind that tech enthusiasts are not necessarily considered computer geeks.

A computer geek will grab an old useless machine sitting in a basement and convert it into something useful such as a server o a homemade modem using all kinds of tricks and knowhow, whereas a tech enthusiast or a wannabe would just purchase a $200.00 networked external drive, install it, and call himself a geek. Where is the “geeky” on that?

I don’t consider myself a geek, as a matter of fact I don’t think I’ll ever earn the title. Although I’ve been called one a couple of times by a buddy of mine, I think this post will very well serve as a response to why I can not be called a geek. I prefer to be called a geek admirer though. After all, most of what I know and do is inspired by them.

Photo property of New York Times

Like most geeks here, I sure love the internet. It blows my mind how this technology has evolved throughout the years and it continues to do so to the point where people can literally control the world through their computers by the click of a button. It amazes me how the internet

is capable of bringing people together in a way that it would've been thoght impossible in the past. But what it impresses me the most is how this technology can be so simple yet so complex that it requires a real geek to fully understand it.
Unfortunately I’ve not always been this close to the internet. I grew up in Bolivia, a country pretty much known for being several years behind compared to others in almost every aspect including, of course, technology. The first time I heard about the internet was somewhere around 1997 at the age of 17. It wasn’t much more of an urban legend to me back then, only rich people had access to it and most of the content was occasionally summarized in computer magazines for the less lucky ones to see. It wasn’t until late 2002, when I moved to the States, that I finally had a computer that was connected to the web with a turtle dial-up connection.
From that point on, I dedicated myself to go back and look all that I have missed for so many years and; to be completely honest, I felt terribly ashamed. I couldn’t believe there was a point where people became millionaires starting internet based companies. After realizing the so called dot-com bubble had burst over a year ago, I thought there was never going to be another opportunity where people would be able to make a living online, but I might have been wrong.
So what do I understand for what the dot-com bubble was? Well, according to some sources (intenet based of course), it was nothing much than a speculative economic bubble in which stock valuation was at its highest and where some people seized the opportunity by founding internet based companies called dot-coms. With high stock prices for the industry, people involved in this trend saw their income skyrocket in record times. Although all that wealth seemed to be only on paper, it showed how powerful the internet can be when it came to make a living working online; even if it required some trade tricks and cheats.
Any old way, when I came to the realization the so called dot-com bubble had burst long ago before I had my first taste of the internet, I limited myself to surfing and looking for anything interesting and looking for ways to contribute in some way in the scene; in other words, I was just having fun.
Time has passed and as we enter another decade I notice yet another shift in how the internet is behaving. It is taking a huge step forward and entering more than ever in our lives through what seemed not so viable years ago. Today it seems that there is nothing that you can not do on your web browser, and if there is, web developers (something I wish I was) will eventually address the problem and find a solution or an application that will be able to do whatever is what we want. There is more new software

and hardware than ever before and there is websites committed to make our lives easier and at the same time make good profit for themselves just like it happened a few years back with the dot-com bubble. Some people like to call this movement Web 2.0.
So, is Web 2.0 the next dot-com bubble? Well we are talking about making money through the internet, which the first dot-com bubble was all about. Although the circumstances and the procedures are not quite the same, we are talking about that same principle I mentioned earlier, profit, profit, profit!
Furthermore, today’s web based businesses actually provide you services, they tend to make your life easier with countless innovations, they are not just speculative on stock prices or ghost millions, they are real and they are solid companies; and that is what makes this new dot-com bubble (if you want to called like that already) even bigger are better.
In conclusion, whatever the internet is currently facing; it is a significant turning point in the way this technology is used. And there is definitely a huge potential for people who want to work on it and make a living off of this. It keeps growing and in the future it only seems that it’ll get even bigger. So whether you want to call it Web 2.0, the second dot-com bubble, or whatever comes to your mind; this is a great opportunity for many of us cyberfanatics to fulfill out dreams of living off of we love to do, specially for those like me who missed the first chance. It is a real technology wave, and I wanna be part of it, no matter what it takes or how long.