Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas

For my 3rd emerging technology post, I decided to check out http://www.pandora.com. Pandora Radio is pretty awesome. Pandora Radio allows users to create their own radio stations based off of musicial artists or songs. Pandora Radio was created to allow people to access the Music Genome project. The Music Genome project, in the simplest terms, is a mathematical categorization of songs that allows similar songs and to be grouped together.

To use Pandora Radio all one has to do is sign up using their e-mail address and create a profile. Next comes the fun part, create a radio station! The site prompts you to enter a song or artist and then it starts to create the radio station for you. The cool thing about your radio station is that Pandora Radio allows you to give your feedback on each song. When the song is playing you can select thumbs up or thumbs down, and if you click in the center of the tile for that song you can say that you don't want it played anymore. I don't know know about anyone else but that is a feature I wished the regular radio had! One of the stations that I decided to create was a Christmas station. I love the song "White Christmas" and entered that as my song to base the radio station on. So far this radio station has been a blast. You can check out any of my radio stations I've created by visiting my profile http://www.pandora.com/people/hddick#. I could see myself using Pandora Radio in my classroom during creative writing times. It would allow a teacher to access different songs/artists without having to spend a ton of money on all the cds.

My tips for Pandora Radio are pretty simple. Have fun! This site is a great way to find new, different music! I absolutley love music so I've enjoyed this site because it has allowed me to find artist similar to some of my favorite artists. It's also given me different versions of some of my favortite Christmas songs. Also don't be afraid to click on the different buttons. In the menu section at the center of each song you can ask "why was this song selected?". This feature is so cool because it'll explain the connection of the song or the artist to your original selection.

Enjoy your new radio stations!

Welcome to the World of Microblogging

For my second emerging technologies post I decided I wanted to focus on twitter. Twitter is a microblogging site that allows you to tell the world what you're doing in 140 characters or less. All one has to do is go to http://www.twitter.com and register. After you've registered, there are literally millions of people that you can "follow." By "following" someone you are able to see their postings on your timeline.
Twitter is an amazing tool to keep people connected, share links to interesting/important articles, and to promote yourself. Initially I was very hesitant about signing up for twitter. It seemed like just another social network/blogging fad that would be here one day and gone the next. I felt this way until I talked with some of the "techies"(guys who work within the tech world.) at the coffee shop that I worked at. Douglas Karr, author of http://marketingtechblog.com/, explained to me that twitter allows people in his world to provide help to others stuck on projects, get out word of their latest projects, and even tell about cool things happening in the technology world. While I, myself, am not a "techie," I could see the benefit of being able to reach out to others. The great thing about twitter is that you can adjust privacy settings so that you can choose who can follow you and who can't. For my twitter account, www.twitter.com/darlinghollie, set to private. If you decide to sign up for twitter after reading this post feel free to add me, but be warned I tweet about silly things!
The tips that I have for twitter are pretty simple.

1. When selecting your user name, keep it short and simple. If it's a long name people will forget it.
2. Don't post something you'll regret...this is going out to everyone! If you don't want people to know it, don't say it!
3. Have fun! There are some many different unique people on twitter. I'm currently following Elizabeth Taylor. Twitter is pretty wide spread!

I hope everyone has fun tweeting!