The Second-Coolest Thing

The second-coolest thing I’ve encountered lately is pandora.com.

Type in a favorite song, or a favorite performer, and a little invisible machine will start chugging out music of a similar stripe. The engine is not perfect— it judges a song based on its instrumentation and style rather than its content, which means you can end up with Garbage and Shaun Cassidy on the same playlist.

Also, the engine didn’t know about Sam Mangwana and Maria Kalaniemi, though I imagine they will appear in time as new artists are added.

You won’t need that radio anymore.