So I vaguely remember using Pandora in college, but I hadn't taken a look at it in awhile. It is awesome. And impressive/probably beyond my comprehension.
According to the creators, here's how it works:
"Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like."
Has anyone done this with books? I've used Novelist and What Do I Read Next? (or whatever it's called), and I always assumed there were some book monkeys sitting in a room and manually putting together lists of read alikes, which seems much less effective than what Pandora does. (Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows. That happens from time to time.)
But if I'm right, why not do what Pandora does? Why not take the literary attributes that "capture the unique and magical [literary] identity" of a book: writing style, pacing, character development, plot structure, language, etc. then let a computer magic up a list of which titles/authors are similar to each other?
It would be a big but awesome undertaking. Or maybe some sites or databases out there already work this way, and they've just tricked me with the way they appear to work.
In any case, thanks for taking me back to Pandora, Web 2.0 committee. In the twenty minutes I've been playing and blogging, I've already found a couple new bands that are making me smile.
May 13, 2009
May 5, 2009
What's a pirate's favorite letter?
Arrrrrrr!
My friend Eric is infinitely more savvy than I am when it comes to anything related to computers. (And this is coming from someone who does not use the word infinite lightly.) In high school we were on roughly equivalent academic tracks. (I have to say roughly, because I never spent fifth period traveling to the local community college to take computer programming classes.) But then Eric went to do a 5 year Master's program at MIT, and I went to get a B.A. in English, and our paths diverged irreversibly. What that boils down to is that Eric now owns a house and works for Microsoft, and I'm back in school again.
Anyway, Eric used some sort of interwebs magic that I don't understand to create an iphone app. I believe, and I certainly hope, that he will make billions. Because then he will build a house so large that I can live in some secluded atrium undetected for YEARS.
Eric's app is particularly relevant to this week's "fun photos" topic, because it is the piratizer, and what it does is this: you can take a photo of someone with your iphone, and YOU CAN TURN THAT PERSON INTO A PIRATE. I kid you not. Behold:
That's Eric "giving us a nice pirate pose" and saying what I assume is probably the only line he could master: Arrrrr! (Eric is many things, but not necessarily an actor.) So if you 1) Have an iphone 2) Would like yourself and/or your loved ones to look like pirates and 3) Haven't been offended by my shameless shilling, you can go here to learn more about piratizer and to drop a dollar in exchange for untold hours of amusement.
My friend Eric is infinitely more savvy than I am when it comes to anything related to computers. (And this is coming from someone who does not use the word infinite lightly.) In high school we were on roughly equivalent academic tracks. (I have to say roughly, because I never spent fifth period traveling to the local community college to take computer programming classes.) But then Eric went to do a 5 year Master's program at MIT, and I went to get a B.A. in English, and our paths diverged irreversibly. What that boils down to is that Eric now owns a house and works for Microsoft, and I'm back in school again.
Anyway, Eric used some sort of interwebs magic that I don't understand to create an iphone app. I believe, and I certainly hope, that he will make billions. Because then he will build a house so large that I can live in some secluded atrium undetected for YEARS.
Eric's app is particularly relevant to this week's "fun photos" topic, because it is the piratizer, and what it does is this: you can take a photo of someone with your iphone, and YOU CAN TURN THAT PERSON INTO A PIRATE. I kid you not. Behold:
That's Eric "giving us a nice pirate pose" and saying what I assume is probably the only line he could master: Arrrrr! (Eric is many things, but not necessarily an actor.) So if you 1) Have an iphone 2) Would like yourself and/or your loved ones to look like pirates and 3) Haven't been offended by my shameless shilling, you can go here to learn more about piratizer and to drop a dollar in exchange for untold hours of amusement.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
