Discovering Web 2.0 tools

Topic: "Select any site/tool from the list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees... Explore the site you selected."

I selected the three top "music" sites, Last, Pandora, and Mog. Prior to this exercise, I had not used any of these.

I had different experiences with each of these.

I spent the least time with Mog, because I did not find a way to do much without creating a Mog account, and I didn't want to do that. Also, I did not find a Bugmenot account to use for Mog (as I did for Pandora). Mog failed to display much content for Lawrence Welk - my test for versatility & usefulness to the non-rock audience.

I spent an hour or more exploring Last, the Web 2.0 Award winner. I didn't need to register for anything I wanted to do. I found it pretty well organized. However, the content that appeared for my first test, singer Laura Love (a modern folk singer) puzzled and disappointed me. It contained under "videos" 7 videos, only one of which featured Laura Love. Some of them seemed to be random misses.

I spent the most time with Pandora, the Web 2.0 runner-up. It allowed me to "create a radio station" and explore this option for a while, though at some point it required me to register to do much more. Perhaps I had crossed a threshold of free clicks and searches. I found a login for Pandora at bugmenot.com that worked, so I used it to continue exploring.

In Pandora, I had trouble finding the list of songs played, which figures high among my requirements for a music site. I later hypothesized that my trouble was having multiple pandora widows open simultaneously and losing track.

I have mixed feelings about the basic premise of main features of both Pandora and Last (possibly mog also), playing a stream of music similar to a given seed artist or song. Like browsing a specialized genre collection in a library instead of a fully interfiled collection of mixed genres, using these tools prevents the listener from discovering anything outside the restrictions. I generally do not like this. I have voiced my support for fully interfiled adult fiction collections, for example. However, I understand the usefulness of screening out some styles of music in some situations.

I would consider later registering for these sites to fully exploit them.

The library setting applications I see are office background music and music in a listening station in a part of the library that would not interfere with quiet reading. However, I suspect that these sites uses target leisure time more than work applications.