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If you want the KNN model, use http://www.last.fm/

My roommate is a musician.

Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
Sun Microsystems Java: http://www.java.com/en/
Azureus: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
iTunes: http://www.apple.com/itunes
Winamp: http://www.winamp.com/
AudioScrobbler: http://www.last.fm/
Mozilla Suite: http://www.mozilla.org/
Opera: http://www.opera.com/
GIMP: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
GAIM: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

I also suggest to get:
B's Recorder gold: http://www.bhacorp.com/products/gold8/index.html
Corel Painter IX: http://www.corel.com/
Powerquest.. sorry Norton Partition Magic: http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/s ystem_performance/pm80/index.html

I'd like to write a small descriptions for each software but I have busy now so this is just fast reply. :)

By separating the physical storage from the information, MP3 players allow music to be transferred, backed-up, and cataloged, and leveraged by modern information management methods. Specifically:

• File-sharing: obviously old news, but important.
• Cataloging: I have 30 GB of MP3s, on both my computer and my HD-upgraded Archos. All of that is indexed in many different ways, using playlists, and Genre filters. I'm happy not to have shuffle around lots of MD disks. I also have hundreds of band-practice recordings of my own bands recorded on the Archos.
• Modern "Jukeboxes" such as iTunes enable entirely new services, such as http://beethere.net/ and http://www.last.fm/. As a major music listener and musician, these types of services are what I always dreamed of. For those not familiar with these:
  • BeeThere.net: Shows you the concerts in your area by all of the artists in your iTunes.
  • Last.fm: Makes a custom radio station using the music you listen to in your library as a seed for making recommendations. It is similar to Pandora, but uses collaboritive filtering to determine relatedness of songs. (and a bunch of social networking stuff)

There is really no comparison between MD and MP3 based audio management, they are in completely different leages.

Sure, the MB tagger isn't perfect, but it's better than anything else I've found. Typically, I rip a CD, letting the program tag it from whatever database it feels like, I confirm that it's the right tags, then I run it through the MB tagger to fix the typically atrocious spelling and capitalization problems that plague all the other places. That's never been a problem for me. Ever. If the ripper would grab the data from MB in the first place, I wouldn't need that extra step.

The only time I do have issues is barely tagged stuff that I get from miscellaneous sources.

As an automod over at Last.fm, I've had to do quite a bit of work myself (back when they had the moderation system) to try and make up for some of the horribly-tagged crap people get from other sources.

Internet radio is basically useless without broadband (128kbit mp3s, the standard, cannot be streamed on a 56k connection)

I know that there are some people that enjoy Internet radio, and I've played with it a little bit, but honestly, I don't know anyone that has kept consistently listening to an Internet radio station for years. I'm sure that there are Slashdotters that do so, but I'm suspicious that the number of people sticking with it may be low. I can listen to the song collection on my computer, and things like last.fm do a better job of recommending music that I'd like than Internet radio.

internet video is basically useless without broadband

I never figured out why people like Internet video. When I go to CNN, I find that it's almost always better to read the text with a few chosen video snapshots than to watch the video. They have the same concerned-but-not-overwrought talking heads and so forth. There's just no point in having someone reading my content aloud if I could more rapidly read it.

uploading/downloading is horrible on dial-up, even stuff like windows patches or linux kernal updates can take hours

Mmm...I do agree, but not really because of speed. I found that modem connections drop enough that with software that doesn't understand resuming downloads, it can be tough to download a large file. It's also an issue because a dial-up connection usually is contending with a voice line. However, simply in terms of speed...I never really had a problem batching things up. A steady, reliable 5K per second is not really a problem, at least for most legal content.

bittorrent? I don't think so

Agreed.

gaming? out of the question

This is kinda too bad -- there's no reason that modems need to add about 50ms of latency eacy way, but they do. However, back when I played online games (Team Fortress), I did have many enjoyable games over a modem.

I like my broadband connection, but, honestly, I don't find myself that crippled without it.

Try last.fm. It's a recommendation service based on the tunes that your music player submits to thier servers.

You should try Last FM : http://www.last.fm/

Close, it's a python script:
http://www.last.fm/group/LastFMProxy

Heh, bit late but I wrote a journal at last.fm on why last.fm is better than Pandora: journal here

Go here. You should download the program on the right, the Last.fm player. (You can compile from source if you want, but you'll need Qt4, so unless you already have that, save yourself hours of downloading and compiling.) That program sort of works as your "radio" and plays songs it thinks you will like.

If you use jscrob, it will read your "Recently Played" playlist when you sync your iPod. Likewise, iSproggler should do something similar. I haven't had the time to go through and check out both of them though. There may even be other such clients that will do more interesting things.

I'd rather the system actually track what songs I listen to and how frequently, for the purpose of building up useful information from that. I have songs on my iTunes playlist that I never listen to, and are only there because I haven't gotten around to removing them. I'd rather those not influence what last.fm thinks I like.

If you use jscrob, it will read your "Recently Played" playlist when you sync your iPod. Likewise, iSproggler should do something similar. I haven't had the time to go through and check out both of them though. There may even be other such clients that will do more interesting things.

I'd rather the system actually track what songs I listen to and how frequently, for the purpose of building up useful information from that. I have songs on my iTunes playlist that I never listen to, and are only there because I haven't gotten around to removing them. I'd rather those not influence what last.fm thinks I like.

I suspect that what's happening here is that data from Audioscrobbler ("what tracks are like / liked by people who like other tracks") is there but the actual track that you're after isn't yet, for example:

http://www.last.fm/music/Les+Barker/_/Hard+Cheese+ of+Old+England

Ones that are have a "preview" button, like this one:
http://www.last.fm/music/Runrig/_/Ribhinn+Donn

(to take the example of what happens to be playing at the moment).

I suspect that what's happening here is that data from Audioscrobbler ("what tracks are like / liked by people who like other tracks") is there but the actual track that you're after isn't yet, for example:

http://www.last.fm/music/Les+Barker/_/Hard+Cheese+ of+Old+England

Ones that are have a "preview" button, like this one:
http://www.last.fm/music/Runrig/_/Ribhinn+Donn

(to take the example of what happens to be playing at the moment).

check out this :
http://www.last.fm/postsignup.php

as i recently moved from xmms to amarok, i do not have to worry about downloading anything - amarok has last.fm support built in :)

Ah, but that's only true early on I assure you. And if you really want to get round this you can leave your PC playing stuff while you're out.

But it's really down to time. My profile initially had a lot of albums I'd only just got and most new albums will bubble up. Similarly, while I'm a massive Radiohead fan it's been 8 years since OK Computer came out so I don't really listen to it that much. But over time the new albums that were over-enthusiastically listened to have dropped.

Still, those artists in my Top 10 really do represent the music I've been listening to most and is a good idea of the things I'm into.

No system can be perfect but I'd rather not have to re-rate a song as I get bored of it or rate it again as I find I keep listening to it.

The main negative for last.fm is that you can only get through 3 or 4 tracks when listening to someone like Godspeed You Black Emperor while you could get through 28 Buzzcocks tracks in the same time. Moreover, tracks under a certain length are never counted, which is a not good for some hardcore acts.

As you're presumably a last.fm employee, you may be able to help me out... On your page at http://www.last.fm/tour.php?page=3 it notes that "The player is Free, Open Source, and available for Windows, Mac and Linux.". I've looked around your site and can't find any links to download the source though, so presumably I'm missing something. Could you point me in the right direction?

speaking of the social aspect of the service, there is a group for readers of slashdot at last.fm. i started it back when audioscrobbler first allowed groups, and there are 277 members as i type this. the charts reveal us as a crowd who do not diverge in a significant way from the rest of the last.fm population, which stands to reason, as at this point last.fm still attracts mostly geeky techie folk.

Sigh, indeed...we've been planning this downtime (which involves a major upgrade to our streaming capabilities) for weeks now, so it would figure that we would get Slashdotted at precisely this moment!

We're also busy readying some cool new features to be released by the end of the week...subscribers will also have access to a beta site (beta.last.fm) later today to try out some of these new goodies.

-----
http://www.last.fm/user/flaneur

That said, if it's on an RIAA label, I'm buying it used, so I guess one of the two is stealing. If it's non-RIAA, I'll buy it if I like it.

As to your searching for stuff, and finding recommendations, http://www.last.fm/ does exactly that. You submit what you listen to, and it builds up a list of that and finds similar users and matches your songs with theirs. As someone who listens to pretty niche-y stuff, I can honestly say that it actually works really well. It rarely if ever recommends me things that I didn't enjoy, and was pretty good at getting a few new things into my mp3 and eventually record/cd collection. It's a great site, I fully endorse going there and checking it out. I do not draw a paycheque from them.

Last.fm do it in reverse in that they play you back *their* legally owned MP3s based on your playlist. They're licensed as a radio station I believe, but allow you to effectively choose your own playlist. You need to use their player, but it's open source, BSD licensed and runs on Windows/Mac/Linux.

Best of both worlds, 100% legal, and untouchable (especially since they're UK based so the RIAA can't touch them).

Bob

Or you could use last.fm, which is completely free and whose software is open source, who does the same thing better and has a much larger/more active community.

Have you tried last.fm?

Bullshit. What last.fm does precisely is the same, and I don't see why this is bad. Take a look at my profile if you want to "spy" me. Of course, this is itunes and itunes is "good" and apple is "cool", so some people just feel the need to spread FUD in the hope they "free" people from itunes or "show people the reality behind itunes" or some crap like that - I call that "the superman syndrome"

About as much as is caused by record stores reporting sales of CDs.

The only way you could get me angry about this is if they were collecting personally identifiable information. In other words, information they could use to say, "Joe Smith likes these bands, his credit rating is high, he lives at 123 Maple St. and his phone number is 555-1234." Then, they bombard Joe with telemarketing and junk mail.

As long as it's anonymous and doesn't suck up too much of my bandwidth, I don't have problem. But then, I use Audioscrobbler/Last.fm so I'm not afraid of people knowing what songs I'm listening to.

I guess the issue here is that maybe iTunes isn't making it clear that it is tracking users in this way.

However, last.fm has plugins for various media players to do just this tracking, and I find it makes really good recommendations. I guess the other great thing is that last.fm also allows you to hear full tracks of its recommendations for free, as well as other concocted radio stations - I'm not sure I could see Apple doing this, although personally I've bought a lot more music since getting hooked on last.fm.

I could well imagine that for some people this iTunes functionality will be great.

You know, it sounds suspiciously like the features of last.fm, which collects data on your listening habits, then reports back to its servers, and recommends new things to listen to. The killer here is that using those data it queues up a streaming audio player that plays music similar to the stuff you listen to anyway.

Actually, I rather like this feature on last.fm, and I don't particularly mind broadcasting the type of music/audio I'm listening to at any given moment. The "neighbour radio" (last.fm's term for it) is the best part--it lets me tune out my cubemate's preference for '80s soft rock.

I've had last.fm's AudioScrobbler client (iScrobbler) running on my Mac for ages now. It feeds info on the songs I listen to into their web site, where there's a database and all that. I get recommendations, and so forth. Looks like the new iTunes functionality is basically identical to that, except that now it's integrated with the iTunes store...

http://www.last.fm/

does this already. its actually pretty helpful too if you're looking for related music.

From the website (last.fm)
Last.fm is the flagship product from the team that designed the Audioscrobbler system, a music engine based on a massive collection of Music Profiles. Each music profile belongs to one person, and describes their taste in music. Last.fm uses these music profiles to make personalized recommendations, match you up with people who like similar music, and generate custom radio stations for each person.

I personnaly get a lot of good suggestion from this web site,
my user profile: http://www.last.fm/user/Pocaille

Anyone who wants to see what I listen to can go to http://www.last.fm/user/ed1bletal2get, so what apple does is harmless imho.

So what's the problem here? The problem is that I don't like it. I don't want a computer program diagnosing me at a hospital even if it is built on solid Bayesian probability models and I don't want a profile of my musical tastes being generated on a company's database. My taste in music is my business and I don't want other people knowing that my most listened to album is Tom Dooley and Other Hits by The Kingston Trio.

It's not like recommendations by a program are a life or death decision like the hospital program you mention, and it's not like they can make you like the music just because they recommend it to you. The worst thing that happens? Their recommendations system is poor and you realize they're useless and start ignoring them.

BTW, music tracking can be very useful for those of us who actually want to expand our musical horizons. Last.fm is all about tracking a user's music and creating profiles, and guess what? Best thing I ever did as far as music goes. I've found a ton of new stuff and am enjoying music a lot more than I used to. Something I'd miss out on if I was too busy creating tinfoil hats to protect me from evil companies that can control my mind cause they know what I listen to.

To be fair, I agree that it's not a good thing for them to be sending music data like that without at least informing the user what's happening and asking if they want it turned off first. If they made users turn it on, and told them it would send data when active, I can't see how anyone could complain about the feature.

I think all that Apple should have done is pop-up a little window when installing iTunes 6.02 - or even running for the first time - that would inform the user that there is this feature that they can enable to suggest new music for them, and that it will send the name of the selected song to Apple to get the recommendations. Be up-front about it, and then nobody can give them crap about it. After all, if you don't like it, you never turn it on, right?

And heck, I think some Slashdotters are downright paranoid if they're worried about what's going to happen because some company figured out what music they're listening to. I'm like you - I use Last.fm to INTENTIONALLY track every single song I listen to. Because the recommendations there are amazingly useful - I've found entirely new types of music that I like, stuff I never would have considered otherwise.

I don't see that in iTunes 6 on the Mac at my office. Is this only for PCs or something?

Anyway, I love having new music reccomended for me. I have an account at Last.FM set up to do just that for me. It keeps track of every song I listen to, rates the artists I listen to most as well as the albums and songs I listen to most. It even has a community feature where you can find people with similar music tastes.

From TFA, file jumping will only happen "Based on what you have been listening to in the past and which files you already own". So unless you have a secret Backstreet Boys habit this should be avoided. The concept seems similar to http://www.last.fm/index.php which generates reccommendations, neighbours and radio stations based on the tracks you listen to on your PC.

Actually, that's not how I read the post or what I feel about music as a heavy CD buyer (OK, whose tastes are more mainstream than that - http://www.last.fm/user/eftpotrm/) BUT I would say much the same - because I feel that what is being pushed as the CURRENT mainstream is largely crap.

I would counter that by saying though that there have been times when genres were pushed as part of the mainstream that weren't crap - as a rock fan, I'd have to go for the early to mid 70s, most of the 80s (though tailing off towards the end) and the mid 90s.

If the mainstream were to move from its current obsession with vacuous kiddy / frat boy pop on one hand and hip hop on the other and embrace wider genres, that'd be fine with me. What? I don't really mind. Start signing Jazz artists with greater depth than Jamie Cullam and I'll be happy. Pick up some nice blues and I'll be happy. Or some proper rock, not the current punk / rap influenced group of clones (disclaimer - Green Day have definite potential IMHO). I just can't see the appeal of hip hop (so don't really consider myself best placed to judge its artistic merit) and consider the current pop market thoroughly silly.

I know my amount of CD purchasing has went up lately. But it's not mainstream crap that I just can't stomach, but more and more independent stuff that has nothing to do with the RIAA. But that's cause Last.fm has directed my music tastes in a new direction that is decidedly not mainstream. In fact, I think I'm going to get a handful of new CDs soon - The Cruxshadows, Icon of Coil, Autumn's Grey Solace, and Collide. Take that, RIAA, they're all artists that you don't have anything to do with. :)

When sites are designed using a fixed width such as 800x600, the layout aften depends on assuming a small font size so that elements align properly. My banking site is one such web site. When the font size is increased, elements can overlap to shift to the next line, losing some of the contextual imformation of their placement. At worst the elements may be overlapped by other elements thereby obscuring whatever it is that you needed to see. I see this happen often with navigation items.

My recommendation is that while you are designing your site, use the keyboard shortcuts for font increase and decrease in Firefox to test and make sure that the page looks as expected. Another option would be to create another Firefox profile with the font set to 20 points and the minimum font size set to 14. This is what I use in my Firefox settings. I have a small laptop screen with a resolution of 1400x1050 which, when combined with my poor eyesight, has made a font size like this required for easy reading.

I also want to stress that if the layout of the page breaks a bit, that is fine. Most users that browse with a large minimum font size are used to seeing the page mess up a bit. There are sites such as Slashdot and Wikipedia that continue to look fine at any font size. Others might be using absolute positioning for DIVs and may have navigational and other elements obscured when the font is large. The important thing is to make sure that the elements on your page that make it functional still work. If something isn't aligned correctly but it's not a big deal, don't worry about it. If the navigation is only partially visible because of the larger font size, then you should fix that. For example, last.fm has some display problems when a larger font size is used, but nothing that impeeds navigation or general usability.

Finally, let me stress that you should avoid specifying your font sizes using a fixed method such as pixels or points. Instead, please use a relative font size such as "x-small", ems, or a percentage. There are still many users that use IE. IE will not resize fonts that use a fixed specification such as pixels and points, even when the font size option in the browser is changed from the default.

I couldn't either until I had it. Now, the question of "I wonder what those guys have up to lately" is answered. Want to know what other albums they've recorded? Who they name as their influences? Popular singles? It's right there.

Last.fm... I have no idea what last.fm is. Can you elaborate on why I would want it? Maybe start with what it is?

It's a kind of tracking service - your player uploads the names of music you're listening to in near realtime (here's my profile). Now, I've got a few thousand songs in my MP3 collection (note to RIAA: ripped from my CD collection). I can "seed" my playlist with music that I'm in the mood for, and then Amarok can dynamically add more songs that people who like those songs also enjoy. It's a nice way to get a fresh mix of music from your old collection, and to revisit tunes that you'd forgotten you had.

Does the "album cover manager" do something that the cover art feature in iTunes doesn't?

Yes. It downloads cover art from Amazon.com based on the artist and album names in your library. iTunes didn't do that last time I checked.

Maybe I should spend some time listening to some top-40 radios. But then again, maybe not.

You might wanna check out last.fm instead. Not exactly to get more top-40-ish in your musical taste, but to find all sorts of cool music you would never come across otherwise. Just type the names of those bands you don't know into their interface, and listen to some preview tracks. Or let them analyze your listening habits and suggest music to you. They even give you your own personalized radio station.

No, I'm not affiliated with them, just an amazed user for a couple of weeks now.

Yep.

Personalized internet streams such as Last.fm and Pandora give people a much better alternative to radio while they're working at a computer. You can get the music you know you like, while at the same time get exposure to new music - and not new music that the labels are promoting like crazy, but new music that will fit into your existing tastes.

Then you take this information to buy music that fits you more, toss it on portable music players such as an iPod, and you've got a ton of music wherever you go.

But this wouldn't be quite as necessary if radio wasn't getting worse and worse. The variety has gone downhill as ClearChannel and other corporations take over mass control and standardize everything to a small playlist and shove more and more ads in.

Traditional radio is becoming more homogenized, and clearchannel rules the roost.
Personalised radio programmes based on induvidual taste are the way forward!
Compulsory Last.fm reference :)

I actually wish I could enable it to show what music I'm listening to or what I'm watching on DVD. I mean, I already advertise my music listening on the computer.

I can't recommend Last.fm enough. That site is responsible for single-handedly changing my music tastes significantly, a little at a time. Recommending new artists, and exposing me to others through the streaming radio they have - now I'm waiting to see what happens when my profile continues to change as new artists climb their way up the list.

Besides, Last.fm is almost completely effort-free to use (like 5 minutes to sign up and install the plug-in), so I can't understand why someone WOULDN'T want to use it.

Actually, Last.fm has something similar. You can sort through bands, songs or even genres, and tag them with a personal tag. So you could make your own "Party", "Happy", "Bored", "Depressed" and "Suicidal" tags - then go through your archive or the genre/band archive at last.fm and tag music with your own custom tags. Using the "personal tag radio" feature of the last.fm player you can then choose your mood and have the music to match.

the last.fm proxy is excellent and I truly love last.fm radio. the only complaint I would make is that the music selection when you select similar artists to any given artist isn't a massive collection, and quickly loops the same stuff again and again. more info can be found about last.fm proxy here too: http://www.last.fm/group/LastFMProxy/

I put in Kimya Dawson, Hank Williams, Public Enemy, Blue Oyster Cult, and then my machine crashed.

Makes sense.

I always dug Audioscrobbler for social recommendations, I guess it's operating as Last.fm now.

I have been a happy (and donating) user of Last FM formerly Audioscrobbler. They do a really good job of matching up music tastes and their radio program is good. They also have a plugin that allows you to submit what you play from most major audio players so you can track what you listen to and compare with others. They have full tagging capabilities and extensive forums as well as music 'groups' of like minded appreciators. I have been very impressed and I admit I haven't played with Pandora much but it doesn't seem too much better/different.

I find Last.FM a better method to find new music. Granted, the new Player REALLY SUCKS, I used it before they started the new player thing. There is a Proxy being developed which restores the old functionallity more or less.

Oh, that and the Pandora music project is not free:

Q: How much does it cost?

Pandora is available in two forms. Both versions have exactly the same features.

The first form is an advertising-supported version which is entirely free. Over time we'll be incorporating ads into this version of Pandora.

For those who want to steer clear of advertising, subscriptions are available in two different flavors:

        ANNUAL: 12 months of unlimited use for $36
        QUARTERLY: 3 months of unlimited use for $12



while the last.fm is free unless you want a "personal" radio.