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Digit Head
A local column on all things digital.

The Music Genome Project

Friday, 16 May 2008

Back in January of 2000, a group of techies and musicians decided to analyze music, studying and documenting the "...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", according to Tim Westergren, founder of the Music Genome Project. The results of their work can be found online, at www.pandora.com, where you can tap into their vast database of analyzed songs, and play them on your computer, creating your own online radio "stations".

(Click to read more)

Your Own Little Acre of the Web

Friday, 09 May 2008

It seems like everybody has a web page. From a real website with your own domain name, to a MySpace or Facebook page, everyone's staking out their own acreage on the web. If you're not among the millions with a business or personal space on the web, are you doomed to loneliness and obscurity? Well, like many questions, the answer is: "It depends." It depends on your needs, your desires, your goals. What do you want from the web?

To make answering that easier, let's look at the options.

A real site with your own domain name is virtually required for businesses and non-profit organizations. Even if the site simply tells people who, what, and where you are - a "brochure" site that can be as basic as a single page - it really will help you. Having a website tells people you're serious, want to reach them, and that you realize that most people haven't cracked open a Yellow Pages in at least five years.

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Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

Friday, 02 May 2008

Even if you never saw the famous Monty Python "Spam" sketch from which today's headline derives, Spam, which is amusing as food and annoying as email, is a term with which we are all familiar.

We've all been "spammed," receiving countless unwanted emails promising better mortgage rates, cheaper prescription medications, and even the chance to come to the financial rescue of a Nigerian widow. All we have to do is provide bank routing and account numbers.

As delightful as these offers are, what, if anything, can we do about spam? Sadly, not much. Most of the spam we get is sent randomly, by programs that compose emails to thousands of addresses at a time, using common names and text/number combinations, coupled with known domain names like aol, gmail, hotmail, yahoo, and even business and personal domains. That's how "mary123@gmail.com" gets emails she didn't ask for, and anything we might impose - legislation, regulation - to stop it would also have a chilling and intrusive effect on the email we want to send and receive, so that's a path DigitHeads recommend avoiding.

(Click to read more)

Google This!

Friday, April 25 2008

Have you noticed? "Google" has become a verb.

As in "to Google." As in "I'll have to Google that when I get home." Any question that eludes our memory or education, any piece of trivia, any fact we must have, it's all there. Doctor just prescribe something new? Google it. Wondering which movie won Best Picture in 1945? Google it. It's all there, just a few clicks away. Speaking of which, there are some tricks for making those "few clicks" more effective. Different ways to phrase your questions posed to the great oracle, Google. Here are a few to get you started:

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"Where's my @$&!?# document????"

Friday, April 18 2008

"Oh, no! My whole report is GONE!" "Honey, I can't find that you said you sent me. Can you send it again?" Any of those lines sound familiar? If you're like most people, you've fallen victim to what may be an attack by the same gremlin who steals one sock out of every load of wash, or, as is more likely the case, you're not embracing good file management techniques. As instructors at colleges throughout the area, one of our biggest challenges is students not knowing where their files are and having trouble organizing them. File management on your computer is a lot like filing papers in your office. If you dumped every slip of paper into a single drawer, it might keep the desk from looking messy, but it'd be quite difficult to find something when you need it. You'd have to rifle through every scrap to find the one item you want. Your computer is no different, and considering the importance of some of the documents, spreadsheets, images, and so forth that you generate and store on your computer, it's even more disastrous when you can't find the file you need.

(Click to read more)






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