Stuff to Listen To

Just below the links of blogs I like to read and other sites of stuff I like to look at, I've added another section dedicated to stuff I like to listen to. Let me tell you a bit about the stuff I put in there.

First of all, there's this great music service called Pandora. It's a completely free internet music service that tailors itself to your musical preferences. You start off searching a song/artist you like. The program then plays similar music to that. You can tell it if you like/dislike each song and it'll learn your exact preferences. You can create multiple station and it even has information about the artist on there and behind the scenes stuff. For each song it plays, it'll display the CD title and artist name along with album art (if available) so you can go out and pick up stuff from new artists that you hear. It's awesome! My sister found it, and the first person she thought to share with was me and Lance. I wasn't quite so thoughtful when I found a few months before her though. So, sharing time is now.

The other thing you'll notice is that I've listed several podcasts. For those who don't know, podcasts are audio files that are created by a wide variety of people. Some do it professionally, but many are just amateur people sharing something they are passionate about. I think wikipedia probably gives a slightly better definition than I do. You can subscribe to podcasts that you enjoy and have them downloaded automatically as they are posted. I think podcasts are awesome because the listener can control what content they get. So, instead of listening to whoever in the morning on whatever radio station, you could download a couple podcasts, and listen to them on your MP3 player instead. Or, play them directly from your computer's media player.

Here are the ones that I've found so far . . .

Lipgloss and Laptops - this one is made by a couple of women who live in the Greater Vancouver area. The shows topics are pretty evident from the title. It's mainly about cosmetics, but these are also professional women who juggle career and family and have some interesting opinions on a variety of topics dealing with beauty and the cosmetics industry. I enjoy their reality checks and I like listening to them and supporting something that is local. Oh yeah, they sometimes give away free stuff too. I haven't won anything yet, but I'll keep trying!

Geek News Central - I love this guy! His name is Todd and he podcasts all the way from Hawaii. He sounds like an awesome guy, just like some of the friends I already have. He gives a run down of tech/geek/science/computer news that come up each week. He always includes a list of links to the original article and I love his perspective on things. His laugh is great too. I don't understand everything he talks about, but it's a much easier way for me to keep on top of geeky news than it would be for me to read all those articles myself.

Grammar Girl - This podcast is always short and sweet. The host will basically explain different grammar points on different topics based on questions she receives. She's very knowledgeable and good at explaining the different rules according to different style guides. I really like it because it acknowledges that grammar rules change depending on your audience and she does a good job of explaining the different points.

Those are the main ones I listen to and it'll probably stay that way until I save up for my Treo and can download them on there and commute with them.

Man, am I a big geek or what!