Greetings friends:
After waiting a long time for the flash to load over a T1 connection, I
felt like I had no control over what I was listening to. I searched for
jazz bassist Ron Carter-- who's on over 2000 recordings-- and got two
results with him on it. Subsequent results not being related to to R.C.
at all-- other than they were jazz recordings. I would sooner have a
list of his works which could be sorted by recording date or main author
(session leader). I suppose something like this will suffice for folks
who don't mind the quality of the results as long as they get results.
It is a cool concept and just think how accurate the output would have
been had they used MARC records...
Later,
Charles Ledvina
Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
> To see how another way the description of content coupled with a easy-
> to-use interface can be implemented on the Web, give a go at a music
> site called Pandora*:
>
> http://www.pandora.com/
>
> Apparently a number of a years ago a few music buffs got together and
> started describing recorded music this way, that way, and every which
> way but loose using about 400 distinct characteristics (blues,
> guitar, acoustic, solo, rhythmically challenging, etc.). They didn't
> do it all by hand. They had some help from computing techniques.
>
> They then created an Flash interface to the collection. It lets you
> enter a song or artist you like. It finds the songs and addresses the
> issue, "Find me more like this one" to create "radio stations". It is
> amazingly accurate. Users can then give thumbs up or down votes for
> the music it recommends. You can write reviews, blogs, and see what
> your friends have played.
>
> Naturally I looked at the thing through my Librarian Glasses. We
> describe things this way, that way, and the other way too. We have
> many more than 400 distinct characteristics. What we haven't done is:
>
> 1) exploited computing techniques to "catalog" bunches o' stuff
> 2) integrated social networking functionality into our system
> 3) presented our tools complete with "bling"
>
> Increasingly these sorts of features make for useful and widely used
> systems. I believe we have something to learn here.
>
> * Thanks to Ralph LeVan who invited me to use Pandora via Facebook.
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> University Libraries of Notre Dame
Received on Fri Jan 25 2008 - 13:14:55 EST