The internet has a TON of places to listen to music online for free – some are legal, some are not.  I wanted to find a place online where I can stream audio from the internet and discover new music.  I was browsing the internet for that very thing, and that’s when I ran into Pandora Radio (www.pandora.com)

With Pandora, you can type an artist’s name or song title, and it will start playing music based on your search.  I like bands like Coldplay and Mute Math a lot, so I did a search for only “Mute Math.”  Pandora automatically searched its database, created a “Radio Station” based on my search, and begand to play a song by Mute Math, then, believe it or not, once the song ended it started playing Coldplay!  After that, it began to play more music by artists I did not know, and I begand to discover new music that I enjoy.

Pandora is free.  You don’t need an account to use it, but you do need an account for it to remember your taste.  You may sign up to Pandora for free.  The way it works is you give your name, e-mail, age, etc., do a search, and listen.  When listening to a song, you can choose whether you like the song or not by clicking a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ icon.  You can also get more information on the music you are hearing with one click; it is really that simple.

There are other places like Last.FM, AccuRadio, and Clear Channel Music, and even MySpace where you can find music as well, but I really like Pandora Radio because of it’s simplicity of use and effectiveness in finding new music that’s similar to my taste.

What website do you use to listen to music or find new music and why?  How do you discover new music?  I want to know your favorite websites to discover and listen to music!  Post your thoughts below or send me an e-mail at david@funkytower.com!  I would love to hear from you!

Take it easy,
David

Google Calendar is amazing. I’ve always seen it and have heard about it, but I never took the time to try it out. When I tried it out, I was really surprised to see what all it had to offer.

You have to have an account with Google to use it, but don’t worry, it’s easy to set up and it’s free as well.

Once you set up your account and logon to the Google Calendar page, it has a calendar waiting for you to use.  You can set up multiple calendars for multiple uses, like a private calendar and a public calendar, or a calendar for each member of the family.

You can set it up to receive notifications by e-mail, or text/SMS on your cell phone, when an event is added to the calendar, when changes/cancellations/responses to invitations are made, and daily notifications to update you on your schedule.  You can also get reminders by text/SMS or e-mail a certain ammount of time before the event is supposed to happen.  This is great, not only can you have your whole schedule on your cell phone, but you can be notified event by event right on your cell!

If you have GoogleDesktop with the Google Sidebar, you can add the Calendar Gadget that will retrieve information from your calendar straight to your desktop.  I tried this out, and the only downside to it is, in expanded view, the calendar is still too small to see all days of the week.  Every time you use the calendar you have to manually expand it to show all the dates.  To avoid this hassle however, you can make it show a list of the events/appointments you have scheduled on your calendar – rather than the actual calendar itself.

Another cool feature is the embed option.  You can embed your calendar into your own website or blog easily.  You can adjust the size, features, some colors, etc., and it will automatically generate a code that you can copy and paste into your web page/blog.

There are other ways to share your calendar if you choose to make it public, like RSS, iCAL, and a public accessable HTML code so people can embed YOUR calendar into THEIR webpage/blog.

There are more features to this neat calendar.  So if you want a calendar that notifies you by text/SMS and/or e-mail of your upcoming events, that you can embed into your web page/blog, that does so many things I can’t even list it, then you should head on over to the Google Calendar webpage and create your calendar.

What Do You Think?
Do you like Google Calendar?  Do you know of any cool, free calendar apps, or just cool, free apps in general?  Got a question on how to use the Google Calendar?  Let me know!!!  Send your thoughts to david@funkytower.com

Take it easy,
David Crandall

That’s right, now there are websites where you can edit and save your photos without having to download any software at all, and best of all, it’s free.  Ah, yes, our favorite word – “Free.”

It’s called FotoFlexer.  With FotoFlexer, all you do is upload a picture, and get started.  It’s really easy to use and there are alot of things you can do with your photos.

You can crop them, rotate them, adjust the color, add a plethora of effects, add text, layer photos on top of photos, blur and sharpen them, distort them in various ways, and more! 

Don’t worry if you make any mitakes, because you can undo anything as you go along.  If you undo too much, you can redo anything you’ve undone.

Once finished editing your photo, click save.  When you do this, it will ask you to log in or create an account, so if you don’t already have one, create one.  Don’t worry, all it asks for is your name and e-mail, so it’s really short and simple.  After that, it will ask you where you want to save it.  On the left hand side, you can select “My Computer” to save it to your computer, “FotoFlexer” to save your photo and work on it later, or the various other options to add it to a webpage like Myspace.

That’s it!  It’s a really handy tool and very well made.  Best of all, it’s free and easy to use.
So if you can’t afford high end photo editing software and don’t want to go through all the hussle and bussle of figuring out where find free software and installing it, do yourself a favor and visit www.fotoflexer.com

What do you think?

Do you think FotoFlexer is a great tool for editing photos online?  Do you know of any other cool, free online apps that could come in handy?  Whatever you have to say, I want to hear it.  Let me know by writing me at david@funkytower.com

Take it easy,
David