Pandora's Speaker Boxx and High School Musical on Ice

Warning: numorous posts ahead.

I've moved on in this Learning 2.0 business to exploring other winning 2.0 websites declared by SEOmoz. This process has taken me much longer than expected, but now I feel somewhat prepared to start telling you about some great sites I found and why I like them. However, I liked a lot of these sites, and I don't feel it would be prudent to write one long post about all of them. Therefore, I'm splitting them up into several (many?) posts, determined by which ones I care to discuss at any given moment. So really, there's no rhyme or reason why upcoming events in Fort Wayne and online radio are grouped together in one post; I simply decided that's what I felt like learning about today. Enjoy!

In the category of "Events" Yahoo's Upcoming feature took first place on the site, and in my own personal opinion. I really like this site because if I just type in "Fort Wayne" I can see what's going on here and surrounding areas for the next few months. Obviously, not everything can be listed here, but this is an easy way to see what's planned at the Coliseum and the Embassy. Did you know High School Musical on Ice is coming to the Coliseum in April? Yeah, I'm pretty stoked (please tell me you can sense my sarcasm).

Next, I battled the "Music" section of 2.0 winners, and it was really only a competition between Pandora and Last.fm. I don't know if I actually picked a winner. Maybe I did subconsciously because I actually created an account for Pandora, but that was because I could listen to last.fm without an account. So they both have pros and cons. Let's start with last.fm.

Last.fm is great if you don't want to create yet another account that you have to remember. You can type in the artist or song name and then listen to it on your computer. Last.fm then tries to play other songs that are similar to the one you picked, and it gives you suggestions of other artists you might like. Like I said, I didn't create an account for this, so the features might get better if you do.

Pandora is only available if you sign up for a free account. Then you can type in the artist or song and it plays it, followed by others of the same genre. Each time you type something in, it becomes a "station" that you can go back to (so I tried to separate my choices by genre so there wouldn't be much overlap). Then, you can tell Pandora if you like the song or not - if you don't, it won't play it for you on that station ever again. You also have the option to just say you're sick of a song, in which case it keeps it off your playlist for a month. I really like Pandora, and I think I'll be using it often as a way to find new music and listen to things when a radio isn't available (or I don't want to listen to the radio because there's nothing good on).

So there you have it. Free online radio and upcoming events that I learned about thanks to SEOmoz's learning 2.0 winners! More next time!