Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

This is the funniest, sweetest 42 minute Internet musical you will ever want to see. Dr. Horrible (Neal Patrick Harris) wants to join the Evil League of Evil. As an aspiring super-villain, be battles his nemesis Captain Hammer (who is a little too awesome for words) to win the heart of Penny, the girl of his dreams. One of his buddies (who, alas, will probably never get further than henchman status) is known as Moist. His power is to dampen things slightly. You can't help but root for Dr. Horrible. My daughter sent me the YouTube link via Facebook, where you can see the whole thing in little installments. I also found it on both Vimeo and Hulu, where I can watch it without interruptions. There is a short commercial break in Hulu, but I can live with this as small cost for free access. So, why blog about this oddly appealing video musical? Because I can access it quickly, for free, pass it along, and add it the list of tools for teachers and students to find and share media content. It is also a great little musical! Visit the fan site!

Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music

Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music

I really love music, and feel starved for fresh artists and new songs. I'm just starting to figure out Pandora, but this looks like an amazing interface for personal music mixes. Like many, I rely on radio during my (blessedly short) commute each day, and am feeling like my exposure to new stuff is getting increasingly narrow and shallow. I want more than the latest top 10, as chosen by media conglomerates and anonymous buying patterns. The Music Genome Project (creators of Pandora) seems to understand my needs. Best of all, it is free!

"Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like."
Tim Westergren, Founder, The Music Genome Project