Merry Christmas!

Okay, this is my last post before the Christmas break, but I wanted to pass this along as a little Christmas gift to you. Actually I guess you could say I'm "regifting" this since Bill McCloskey at Media Post sent this out in an email labeled "Stocking Stuffers." In any case, check out the great streaming music site below. According to McCloskey,

This fabulous Web site that just might change the way we think about Internet radio: www.pandora.com. Pandora grew out of a concept called the Music Genome Project. Like the Human Genome Project, the Music Genome Project tries to break down any song into unique and discrete units--song type, instrumentation, melody, etc.

Pandora lets you generate up to 100 unique radio stations by picking a favorite artist or song. The software uses the genome of the artist or song to generate a streaming playlist of related songs. Adding new songs or artists to a particular radio, or by giving a thumbs-up or down for individual song choices, immediately changes the stream.

Once you have "programmed" your radio station, songs from up to 10,000 artists begin streaming in, and the whole thing can be shared and e-mailed to friends. Give it a try this holiday, but expect to spend a few hours playing around with it.

Behind the scenes the social software and recommendation algorithm generates a playlist based on your music selection and specific track preferences. Up front the site has a very cool interface and is a lot of fun to program.

Merry Christmas!