Many people have free blogs on sites like Blogger or Wordpress.com. These free services have simple, effective functionality, but they don’t have the flexibility and functionality that you may need. You can’t have your own domain name on these services On top of that, you don’t own your data.

If you want to have a blog that you own, has your own domain name, and allows you to make any custumizations, you need to host your own blog. This tutorial and the others in the series will show you how to install, configure, customize, and publish your own blog using free software and inexpensive web hosting.

Getting Started

Before you get started with software and servers, you need to get organized. Let’s look at a few things that you need before you can write your first brilliant article. You need to know what you are going to be doing. Start by asking a few very basic questions:

What is your blog about? This is the very first thing that you should be thinking about.

What ideas and concepts are you going to write about?

What categories will you use to group your articles?

What interesting features do you want to have on your blog?

Once you’ve hammered all of that out, this should start to generate a few ideas for names.

Getting your Domain Name and Hosting

Getting a Domain Name: After you have your concept and topics down, start to brainstorm good domain names. Yes, the first few good ones that you come up with are already taken. You should make every effort to get a domain name that is ends in .COM (.NET is worse, but acceptable) Try to make the name short, with keywords that relate to your topic. By all means, DO NOT get a domain name with a HYPHEN in it!

You can buy your domain name from lots of places. GoDaddy.com is very easy. It will be less than $10 for the year.

If you want to think long term, you may want to spend a few extra dollars to grab the .NET and .TV versions of your name too. This will allow you to extend your offerings down the road.

Materials:

Web Hosting: You will need to pay a web host to store your site’s pages and files on a server. There are thousands of web hosting companies available from $5/month on up. Find one that has the following options:

• PHP hosting – (this is the server software that processes the commands that make your blog work.)
• MySQL database hosting – This is the free, open source database that runs just about every blog on the internet
• FTP services – This is the service that will allow you to move files from your local computer to the web server.
• Scalability – If your website takes off, you will need to move to a bigger server. Make sure that your host has several packages so that you can gradually move up the ladder as needed.
• You can also buy cheap, reliable web hosting from GoDaddy.com.

Desktop Software:

FTP Software: Your web host will have an FTP service that will allow you load your files to their server. You need an FTP Client (software on your computer) to connect to the server and move the files. There are several FTP clients available. Some are free and others are not. Every one has a camp of supporters and detractors, so I’ll just recommend the one I use. I like Filezilla, because it is Free, Open Source and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Get Filezilla here.) If you don’t like it, just Google for one that meets your specific needs.

Once you buy your domain and web hosting, you will need to set up your FTP software. Just about every web hosting provider has a Help or FAQs section that will show you how to set up your FTP client. Follow their instructions so that you will be ready to start working.

Zip Software: Most of the files that you need to set up a Wordpress blog are contained in Zip archives. You need an application to open and extract files in Zip archives. Mac and Linux have them built in. If you are on Windows, download 7-Zip. It’s free and works very well.

Installing Wordpress

Go to the Documents tab and print the “Famous 5 Minute Installation Guide”. These simple instructions are a lifesaver. I will be using the summarized version below as the basis for this tutorial.

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package from the home page at WordPress.org.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server. Then, create a MySQL user who has admin privileges
3. Rename the “wp-config-sample.php “ file to “wp-config.php”
4. Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details
5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server
6. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser.

Step 1 Download and Unzip the WordPress Software

You have to get the software files that run your blog from the WordPress site. Download the latest Wordpress Zip File from the WordPress.org site.

Create a folder on your hard drive where you will place all of your Wordpress files. (i .e. My Documents/Blog)

Unzip the Wordpress files into your "Blog" folder

Right click on the Wordpress .zip file

Select Open With (your Zip software of choice)

Extract the contents of the Zip archive into your "Blog" folder

Close your Zip application.

The video below shows all of the steps in the process.

Step 2 Create the MySQL Database on your Web Server

WordPress uses a database to store your blog’s content. You need to create a database on your web server and create a user that can access the database.

Log in to your Web Host’s Control Panel

Go to the Databases page. (Each web host’s control panel works differently. See their Help or FAQs section for specific instructions.)

Click Create New Database

Give your database a name. Make it short with no spaces.

Set the User and Password that can access the database. Do not make it the same as your User ID or Password.

Write the Database Name, User Name, and Password down on a piece of paper and log out of the Control Panel.

The video below shows all of the steps in the process.

Create a MySQL Database for a WordPress Blog – Funny video clips are a click away

Step 3 Modify the wp-config.php File on your Computer

WordPress uses a “config” file to store some key configuration information that will allow the application to access the MySQL database that you just created. This file is located in the root of the WordPress directory.

Go into the Wordpress folder in your Blog folder and look for the following file:

“php-cofig-sample.php”

This file contains the settings that tell Wordpress how to connect to the database. You will need to modify a few of these settings now.

Start by changing the name of the file to "wp-config.php”. (Just delete the word “sample” from the file name.)

Next, you need to modify a few lines of code in the file.

Open the wp-config.php in your favorite text editor.

Scroll down to the line line that contains the following text:

define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’);

Change “putyourdbnamehere” to the name of the database that you just created. (That’s why I said to write it down.)

Change “usernamehere” to the name of the Database User that you just created.

Change “yourpasswordhere” to the name of the Database User Password that you just created.

* Leave “localhost” alone. Note: Some hosting providers will require you to add the address of the database server here. See your hosting provider’s help section for this information.

Save and close the wp-config.php file.

The video below shows all of the steps in the process.

Step 4 Upload the Wordpress files to your Server

You will need to use FTP software to load the WordPress files from your computer to your web server. There are numerous FTP applications available use whichever one you prefer. I use Filezilla because it’s free and works the same on my Mac, PC, and Linux machines.

Launch your FTP software and connect to your web server. (You can find instructions and settings on your web hosting provider’s site.)

There will be two file panes visible. Left is your Local Computer and Right

is your Server.

Local Pane: Browse down to the folder where your WordPress files are located: (My Documents/Blog/Wordpress)

Server Pane: Browse to the "root" folder where your files belong. This may be the highest folder in the FTP pane or there may be a sub-folder that has your domain name.

There will be an "Index" file in that directory that is named either "index.htm" or "index.html". This is the page that your domain name will default to.

Delete this file. (Yes, this is a little scary, just man up and do it!)

Local Pane: click in the grouping of files inside the "WordPress" folder and select them all. (Edit> Select All)

Drag the selected files and folders across to the Server Pane and drop them. This will start copying all of the Wordpress files from your computer to the server. It will probably take a few minutes.

Close your FTP application when the files are finished copying.

The video below shows all of the steps in the process.

Step 5 Run the WordPress Installation Script

Now that all of the WordPress files are on your server you are ready to run the installation script that builds the application on your server.

Open your browser and type the following into the Address bar: "http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN-NAME.com/wp-admin/install.php" (Substitute your actual domain name for YOUR-DOMAIN-NAME.)

Enter the name of your blog and your email address in the fields provided and click the continue button.

The Install WordPress button will appear.

Click the Install WordPress button.

Your blog is now created and you will be given your ID and Password. We’ll cover the next steps in the next article.

The video below shows all of the steps in the process.

Stay Tuned for the Next Article

In the next article I’ll cover some of the configuration steps to get started with your WordPress blog.

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This is the fifth article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

Even though you can do a lot from the home page of most internet music services, you need to be able to take the show on the road. When you can integrate your favorite music service into other third party sites and devices they become more powerful and useful.

I have a few standard ways that I will judge each service’s third party integration:

• Plug-ins for your desktop music player (iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc.)
• Integration with popular Social Networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.)
• Standalone Application for your phone (iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, etc.)
• Embeddable player for your web page

A service will need at least one check for each category for a “perfect” score.

Third Party Integration Comparison

iLike.com – Integrates at an acceptable level, but nothing special. (3 Stars)

Desktop music player support – iTunes only

Social Networks – Facebook, Bebo, hi5

Mobile Phone Application(s) – iPhone only

Embeddable player for your web page – yes

Rating:

Jango.com – You can embed their player on a web page and that’s about it. It’s sit down in front of your browser or nothing. (1 Stars)

Desktop music player support – none

Social Networks – none

Mobile Phone Application(s) – none

Embeddable player for your web page – yes

Rating:

Last.FM – The undisputed king of third party integration. Last.FM connects to everyone and everything you can imagine. If there is no connection available, you can use their open API to build your own connection. (5 Stars)

Desktop music player support – iTunes, Windows Media Player, WinAmp, Songbird, and more.

Social Networks – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and every other network know to man.

Mobile Phone Application(s) – iPhone, Google Android, Sonos Player, and more.

Embeddable player for your web page – Yes (plus blog widgets for every popular blogging tool.)

Rating:

MusicStrands.com – They do a decent job of connecting with the outside world. Too bad that they don’t have much of a good service to offer the outside world in the first place. (4 Stars)

Desktop music player support – iTunes, Windows Media Player, Amorak, Linux Support too.

Social Networks – MySpace, Blogger, Live Journal, (No Facebook)

Mobile Phone Application(s) – Windows Mobile and Symbian

Embeddable player for your web page – Yes

Rating:

Pandora.com – They have gotten much better recently. The do integrate fairly well, but that’s still not why most people use them. (4 Stars)

Desktop music player support – No

Social Networks – Facebook, MySpace, Blog Widgets

Mobile Phone Application(s) – iPhone (My favorite iPhone App.), Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre

Embeddable player for your web page -

Rating:

Shoutcast.com – Shoutcast does a very good job of integrating with third party services. If they would add integration with iTunes and the like they would score a perfect 5. (4 Stars)

Desktop music player support – WinAmp (they own Slacker.com),

Social Networks – Facebook, MySpace, etc.

Mobile Phone Application(s) – iPhone, Windows Mobile, PSP, and more

Embeddable player for your web page – Yes

Rating:

Slacker.com – They have a GREAT iPhone application and they do integrate with some social networks, but they still have some work to do. (3 Stars)

Desktop music player support – They have their own standalone player (not my favorite)

Social Networks – Facebook, MySpace, and more

Mobile Phone Application(s) – iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android, and more

Embeddable player for your web page – No

Rating:

Have Your Say

Well, you know what I think, let’s hear what you think. You can select more than one choice below if you have a tie for most Tightly Integrated Music Service.

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1. 7 Best Community Driven Online Music Services The Best Music
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality Give the People
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One of the things that makes online music services more interesting and useful than your iTunes library is the aspect of a Music Community. Not only can you hear good music, but you can connect with friends and others who share your tastes. This allows you to socialize about your favorite artists and see what others think and listen to. I get a lot of suggestions for new music from the people in my online music communities.

This is the 4th article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

Let’s take a look at the types of community and social networking that each of these services offeres. (P.S. If you are interested in sharing musical selections with me, there are links at the bottom of the post.)

Community Features Comparison

iLike.com – iLike is allows you to share your music tastes on Facebook, Orkut, Bebo and hi5. Using the iLike application, you can add music to your profiles, be alerted to concerts and new releases by the artists you enjoy, see what music and concerts your friends like, and communicate directly with your favorite artists.

Community Quality  Despite my many disappointments with iLike, the Community features are actually very solid. In fact, they’re probably the only reason to use this service. (4 Stars)

Rating: At least they got something right.

Jango.com – Allows you to share music with friends and tune in to their selections.

Community Quality : The sharing features are decent, but pretty basic. (3 Stars)

Rating: Ok, but nothing special.

Last.FM – This is another area where Last.FM shines. There are numerous ways to connect with other people the site and many popular social networks. They also include forums and groups that you can join. You can pump your listening activity out to places like Facebook, Twitter, or your blog in real-time.

Community Quality : You can connect with anyone, anywhere, on any network from Last.FM. (5 Stars)

Rating: If you’re a social networking addict, this is the service for you.

MyStrands.com – They have a bunch of ordinary stuff here, but nothing special. This is probably the only feature that doesn’t suck on this site.

Community Quality : OK, but still not enough to make me use this craptacular mess. (3 Stars)

Rating:

Pandora.com – You can share playlists with your friends, but that’s about it.

Community Quality : This is the only disappointing feature of an otherwise amazing music experience. Maybe that’s why I like it, it’s simple. (2 Stars)

Rating: If you don’t care about community, this is definitely the best service out there.

Shoutcast.com – Nothing here that I can find.

Community Quality : It’s just radio as far as I can tell. (1 Star)

Rating: Man I have to make the Zero Stars image already.

Slacker.com – Nothing here either. (aside from great music)

Community Quality : Not for the Web2.0 crowd. (1 Star)

Rating: If your boss says that you’re not a team player, give this service a shot.

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This is the 3rd article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

If I want to hear all of my favorite songs, I can just listen to the “My Top Rated” playlist in iTunes. One of the real values of a good online music service is the ability to turn you on to good new music that you DID NOT know about.

These days I find just about all of my bands from suggestions on my favorite services. Let’s take a look at how our players stack up on the issue of Music Discovery.

Music Discovery Comparison

iLike.com – They give you the option of seeing “New Music from Your Friends”, “New Music from Your Favorite Artists”, or “New Music from People with Similar Taste”.  These are some good ways to find good new music.

Music Discovery While there are many less-than-great things about this service, iLike does a decent job of showing me good music that I have not heard before. (4 Stars)

Rating:

Jango.com – When you build a playlist, they start to suggest other artists that are similar to the ones you have selected. You can leave them alone to hear them occasionally,  add these artists to the mix to hear them often, or delete them so you never hear them. Usually I’ll add artists that I don’t know to give them a listen. If I don’t like the, I just delete them later on.

Music Discovery  Again, I always seem to .

Rating:

Last.FM – I’m not exactly sure how Last.FM determines which new artists to play for me. I’m also not sure that they’re any good at it either. Whenever I select the “My Recommendations” option I never really like what I hear. However, when I select the “My Neighborhood” option, which plays favorites of people with similar taste to me, I usually do like what I hear. Does that mean that the masses are smarter than them? Probably.

Music Discovery  Their suggestions are actually not that good, but the “Neighborhood” ones help me find some decent new music occasionally. (3 Stars)

Rating:

MusicStrands.com – Yet another thing that they suck at. I’m starting to wish I had just left them out of this series all together.

Music Discovery  Pure crap. (1 Star)

Rating: Only because I don’t have a zero stars image.

Pandora.com – Pandora uses some scientific mumbo-jumbo to find music that you’ll like. They constantly mix in “new” music with the songs that you already like using this algorithm. I’m not quite sure how it works, but boy does it ever!

Music Discovery  This is where Pandora leaves everyone else in the dust. They never fail to amaze me with the mix of great songs that I have heard and great songs from artists that I usually like. At least half of the cool new music that I’ve found in the last two years has come directly from Pandora recommendations. (5 Stars)

Rating: I wish I could give them more than 5.

Shoutcast.com – Shoutcast is just a collection of online radio stations. Your odds of finding good new music are only as good as the station that you pick.

Music Discovery  I’m not really that into how Shoutcast works, but I guess you could hunt around and find something worthwhile. (3 Stars)

Rating: Decent, but not for me.

Slacker.com – Slacker gives you plenty of options to adjust your stations music selections. You can stick with more “familiar” music or go for a mix of “newer” artists. This generally helps you find lots of good stuff that I did not know about.

Music Discovery  If I’m in the mood to find a lot of good new music I can make Slacker send me a mix of mostly new music that I tend to like. (4 Stars)

Rating: Nice job!

Have Your Say

Well, you know what I think, let’s hear what you think. You can select more than one choice below if you have a tie for your most reliable service.

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1. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality Give the People
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This is the 2nd article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

The best reason to use any of these music services is to have them send you great music. There are many different ways of determining what “you” will like. They all seem to straddle the line between art and science with a touch of voodoo thrown in. I have spent a lot of time trying to get a stream of good music out of all of these services. Let’s take a look at my mixed results. (Don’t forget to give your feedback in the pole and comments below.)

Suggestion Quality Comparison

iLike.com – They base their selections on your iTunes history and favorites of other members with “similar” tastes.

Suggestion Quality  They do a decent job of sending you songs. (3 Stars)

Rating: Good, not great.

Jango.com – Jango stations play the artists you add, along with similar artists favored by other Jango users who share your taste.

Suggestion Quality : I generally like the selections along with the ways that I can modify what it sends me. (4 Stars)

Rating: Very good.

Last.FM – Last.FM allows you to rate songs up or down and favorite songs that you love. You can also tag songs that you listen to. It also pulls your iTunes data to determine what you like.

Suggestion Quality : It does a very good job of selecting music that I like. (4 Stars)

Rating: Very, very good.

MyStrands.com – When you go to the My Recommendations page it shows you a bunch of songs based on your play history in iTunes. The recommendations are not really that great.

Suggestion Quality : This is just another disappointing feature of MyStrands. (2 Stars)

Rating: Not good!

Pandora.com – Pandora lets you rate songs up and down and bookmark (favorite) songs and artists. It is very quick to put together a batch of songs that I just end up liking. They base their picks on the Music Genome project, which uses data entered by music “experts” to indentify what makes music similar.

Suggestion Quality : This is where Pandora really shines. It just keeps picking one great choice after another. (5 Stars)

Rating: It’s not perfect, but it’s the best.

Shoutcast.com – Shoutcast is really just a collection of radio stations. It’s a straight one-way push. They do have a ton of stations to choose from, so you can usually find something you like, but it does not adapt to you in any way that I can see.

Suggestion Quality : There are no suggestions. You just hunt around and hope you like what you find. (1 Star)

Rating: Hit or Miss.

Slacker.com – The web player and iPhone players both allow you to rate and bookmark songs that you like and dislike. After doing this for a while, you get a pretty good flow of songs that you like.

Suggestion Quality : It takes a little while to fine tune, but it does send you a nice mix of songs based on your feedback. (4 Stars)

Rating: Very, very good.

Have Your Say

Well, you know what I think, let’s hear what you think. You can select more than one choice below if you have a tie for your most reliable service.

Related posts:

1. 7 Best Community Driven Online Music Services The Best Music
2. The Most Reliable Online Music Services Who Can You Cou
3. The Best Music Discovery Service Tell Me Somet

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This is the 1st article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

One of the most important features of a streaming music service is reliability. All of the other stuff doesn’t matter much if the music keeps stuttering and dropping out or the site’s navigation flakes out all the time.

How Am I Rating this Category?

Interface and Navigation – How clean and usable is the interface? Can I quickly get into my playlists and stations? Does everything work; quickly and without hiccups?

Streaming Quality – When I click Play, what happens? 1 or 2 seconds, then music or do I get hypnotized watching a loading graphic? Does one song flow smoothly into the next or am I stuck in the waiting room?

How Did I Test?

I already use some of these services a lot, but I gave each one at least a half hour on my Desktop (Ethernet cable), Laptop (Wi-Fi) and my iPhone (over AT&T’s lousy 3G network). Let the games begin…

Reliability Comparison

iLike.com – I used to use this service a while ago, but I needed to go back and reacquaint myself before I could render judgment. 

Interface and Navigation In a word, iDon’tLike. The interface is just a mess. It takes too much work to figure out how to get a simple song to play. Then, when you click the wrong thing, you get this shuffle mode that only lets you listen to 30 seconds of a song before skipping to the next one. Huh?  (2 Stars)

Streaming Quality: Once you figure out how to work iLike, the music streaming is great and the audio quality is also. Not much to say here other than good job. (5 Stars)

Rating: Could have been better if not for the crappy interface.

Jango.com – I dabbled with Jango a while back and generally liked it. Let’s see how it fares against the rest.

Interface and Navigation : Jango has a decent interface that allows you to figure out things pretty quickly. It does not have all of the features of a Last.Fm, which is exactly how they help keep the interface under control. Very nice! (4 Stars)

Streaming Quality: Songs play quickly and jump from one track to the next very quickly (aside from the occasional commercial). The audio quality is also crisp. (5 Stars)

Rating: Jango has a nice mix of straight forward interface and solid streaming performance.

Last.FM – I use Last.FM just about every day and really enjoy it a lot.

Interface and Navigation : Interface is not Last.FM’s strong suit. They have so many powerful playlist, social networking, and music discovery features that it gets a little overwhelming. Still, it’s not as bad as iLike or Slacker. (3 Stars)

Streaming Quality: When you finally figure out how to get a song playing, it sounds and works well. At times, I do catch the occasional slow down, probably due to the huge amount of members that could be tuned in at a given time. (4 Stars)

Rating: If they did an interface design they could easily break into the 4 Star group. Still, I really like this service.

MusicStrands.com – About 2 years ago, I loved MyStrands (MusicStrands?). Since then, they seem to be making serious efforts to destroy the service. I think that they are trying to replace it with Strands or something. Whatever!

Interface and Navigation : The site is a mess. Everything is disorganized and a mystery. (1 Star)

Streaming Quality When it works, which is rare the streaming is OK. (3 Stars)

Rating: This service needs to take a long swim in the dead pool.

Pandora.com – I listen to Pandora every single day. On my Desktop, Laptop, and iPhone. I love it!

Interface and Navigation : This is absolutely the service with the fewest features of the group. Somehow, they make that work for them though. This has the cleanest, simplest, slickest interface of the entire gang. (5 Stars) If you’re listening Last.FM, please rip off their design approach.

Streaming Quality The streaming quality is excellent. Every now and then there is a pause between songs, but it never seems that bad. (4 Stars)

Rating: Bravo!

Shoutcast.com – This actually stream other online radio stations through it’s player or your favorite desktop player. It is owned by WinAmp (AOL), so it integrates best with that player.

Interface and Navigation : The interface is easy enough to get used to. Pick a Genre, then Sub Genre, then a Station. (4 Stars)

Streaming Quality: Fast and Clear, not a whole lot to say there. (4 Stars)

Rating: Pretty good with tons of choices.

Slacker.com – Slacker is also a collection of online stations that you can customize. They sell their own player that you can download your favorite songs to.

Interface and Navigation : Slacker has a simple player that lets you select from a bunch of online stations. Even simpler than Shoutcast; Select a Genre, then a Station and it starts playing right away. (4 Stars)

Streaming Quality: Songs play right away and come in loud and clear on my computer or iPhone. (5 Stars)

Rating: I really like Slacker.com, especially on my iPhone.

Have Your Say

Well, you know what I think, let’s hear what you think. You can select more than one choice below if you have a tie for your most reliable service.

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1. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality Give the People
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There are a bazillion services out there that will stream music to you over the interwebs.  A few are amazing an then there are well…”the rest”.

Loading up a few hundred thousand songs and streaming them is not really that big of a deal. The “special sauce” is what adds real value to these services.

Let’s to take a look a some of the major players in this space to see how they all stack up.

The Contenders

I will be evaluating the following seven music streaming services.

iLike.com -enables fans to discover and share playlists, new music that matches their personal tastes, and concerts by their favorite artists. iLike offers retail links to iTunes and Amazon to purchase music, Ticketmaster to purchase concert tickets and Thumbplay for ringtones.

Jango.com  – Jango is a social music service that lets you create and share custom radio stations. It’s the easy way to play the music you want online, legally and free.

Last.FM – Last.fm is a music service that learns what you love.
Every track you play will tell your Last.fm profile something about what you like. It can connect you to other people who like what you like – and recommend songs from their music collections and yours too.

MusicStrands.com – MyStrands’ Social Recommender is capable of automatically learning people’s tastes and how their preferences evolve over time. It can be used to generate real-time music recommendations.

Pandora.com – Together, ateam of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound – melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics … and more – close to 400 attributes! They continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.

Shoutcast.com – SHOUTcast Radio offers thousands of free Internet radio stations from DJs and broadcasters around the world.

Slacker.com – Slacker is what radio was meant to be: personal, portable and free. Slacker attempts to deliver free personalized radio that is customized for everyone. Slacker combines the knowledge of the nation’s leading music experts from every genre and your own personal tastes to create the perfect radio stations for each and every listener.

If there are any that are missing, add them in the comments and I’ll try to cover them in a subsequent article.

How We’ll Pick a Winner

I want to base my analysis on a combination of science and art. I have broken out five categories on which all of the services will be judged:

1. Reliability – How robust is a service? Does everything work solidly and smoothly or do the songs pause and jerk like a spastic drunken sailor?
2. Suggestion Quality – How good is a service at playing music that you like? Does it send you a non-stop stream of awesome tunes or leave you scratching your head?
3. Music Discovery – How good is a service at finding new music that you like? Is it more of the same old stuff or are you constantly saying, “I have to get more stuff by these guys?”
4. Community – How good is the community around a service. Are your friends all there? Do you find and interact with other people who have a similar interest? Or, is it just a radio station on your computer?
5. Integration – How well does a service play with the outside world? Does a service allow you to: import data from your desktop and MP3 player, send data out to other services like Facebook and Twitter, provide a client for your phone?

Each category will be broken down in a separate article where you will be able to vote. The votes for each category will be displayed in a sortable table so that you can decide which player is best suited to your priorities.

This is the Introductory article in a 5 part series on the Best Music Services on the Internet. See the rest of the series:

1. The Most Reliable Online Music Services
2. Online Music Services with the Best Suggestion Quality
3. The Best Music Discovery Service
4. Best Community Driven Online Music Services
5. BBest Third Party Integration among Online Music Services

Don’t Miss Your Chance to Help Select a Winner – Subscribe Below.

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If any of you are Twitter users, you’re probably aware of the #followfriday phenomena. The original theory to tell the people that you follow about other Twitter users who regularly post interesting, useful tweets. This is a great concept that helped me find a bunch of good people to follow.

Recently #followfriday seems a lot more like an artificial, obligatory way for everyone to pump up each others follower counts.

I still do post the occasional #followfriday tweet using the following guidelines:

1. They are someone whose tweets regularly add value to my experience.
2. I can provide a reason for why I’m recommending them. (for example, #followfriday @abc123 They have the best information on #letters and #numbers anywhere on the web)

This serves two important purposes: It lets you know why you might care and the #tags give a little “twitter-wide” credit to the person being recommended. (Help the follower and followee; good idea, right?)

My Variation on the #FollowFriday Theme

VitaminCM.com is all about helping you learn how to do things. So I came up with the a twist to the original idea that will hopefully help pass on useful information. I’m calling it #TuesTorial.

During the week, I’m going to bookmark any good tutorials that I come across. Each Tuesday I’ll tweet the ones that I think are particularly helpful. If you would like to see my suggestions, just follow me on Twitter.

They will also be posted here in the sidebar widget.

Here is the format that I will be observing:

#Tuestorial – Great video showing how to do #XYZ – link.url/12345

I promise not to shamelessly promote any of my own articles, just other people’s work that I think is excellent.

If you want to see my suggestions follow me on Twitter. (They will also appear in the Twitter widget to the right.)

Your Call to Action – Please Join In the Fun

If you really like the idea of sharing helpful tips, please join in. I really want to see the tutorials that you recommend, so put your @Twitter name in the comments below so that I can follow you.

Who knows, if your tweets are any good, I might just #FollowFriday you. ; )

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Email is still a very important communication tool. However, it’s not quite as simple as it once was. There are so many options for sending and receiving email. I was a big Outlook guy (and briefly Thunderbird) for years, but I have recently switched completely to Gmail.

Since I got my iPhone I do about half of my emailing on-the-go. I also text a lot more now due to the really nice threaded text messaging application. I can’t wait for MMS with the 3.0 operating system this summer.

I also use Twitter a lot from my computer and phone.

This all makes me wonder how everyone else is managing “email type” communication with all of the options available these days.

Don’t forget to add your Twitter name to your comment.

Don’t Forget to Leave a Comment

I’d love to hear what kind of interesting ways all of these technologies have changed the ways you communicate.

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This weekend my wife needed a new cell phone.  I’m on AT&T and using an iPhone. She’s on Verizon and will not consider changing. Since she likes my phone , but wants to stay on Verizon, the obvious answer is a BlackBerry Storm .

I was kind of excited because it would be cool to compare and contrast the iPhone and Storm.

Off to the Verizon store…

They actually had 3 working Storms to demo (nice!). She picked on up and started uncomfortably fiddling for a few minutes. All the while I’m hanging over her shoulder trying to help her find/do things. She was having such a terrible time of it and not mincing words. I just figured that it was all her.

Is it all Blackberries or just this one?

Since she wanted a Smartphone I recommended I suggested a traditional BlackBerry with a keyboard. We both tried a BlackBerry Curve 8330 . What a difference! It was smooth, stable, and easy to figure out. It just worked. This is what the old Palm Operating System should have become.

While she spends 20+ minutes with the sales representative I decided to give the Storm a shot (and see if it was just my wife’s fault).

What a craptacular user experience. Nothing is easy to find or do. Nothing behaves intuitively or smoothly. Menus jump around and wiggle away from your fingers. It’s super slow and clunky too.

I thought that the one I was using might be defective so I tried another one. Nope, still garbage. The BlackBerry Storm has the worst interface and most frustrating user experience I have seen on any consumer electronics device not manufactured by Sony.

The other BlackBerries have really nice interfaces that are so easy to use. RIM obviously knows how to make a good interface, so what happened here? Did they outsource the design to an out of worm American car designer? This thing is pure doo-doo. I would rank it far behind ant Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian, and LG phones that my wife and I have had. Don’t even bring up my iPhone or the BlackBerry Bold.

Before you say “typical iPhone fanboy”, I would can tell you 20 things that suck about my iPhone. The problem is that I found about a hundred of them in 20 minutes on the BlackBerry storm.

What do you think?

Are there any BlackBerry Storm users who can point out what I’m missing? Maybe I missed something. Please let me know in the comments.

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