Pandora online radio tool: One of the coolest things in years.

I'm not exactly a big fan of certain music players like Real Player, Windows Media Player, or even Quicktime.The reason is because they are either too polluted with ads, proprietary, or unreliable. That and they want you to do one thing: pay pay pay!
But the Pandora player is something else all on it's own. Simply put, it is perhaps the coolest thing out there for people that simply want to listen to their music- any kind of music- free of charge, and at their own discretion.


I'll admit that at first I was skeptical of the tool, but after using it for a solid day, I'm hooked. The way it works is simple: Just enter an artist or musical genre you like. The player will pull up a song on an album from that artist. If you like the song or album, you can vote via a simple thumbs up, thumbs down, or by skipping it. You can also tell the player that you'd like to hear more music that is of this "quality". So over time, the player can tailor itself to your preferences.
Of coure there are strings, mainly in that you cannot skip more than a certain number of songs per hour. It is in essence a radio, but one that you have infinite control over.

lastly, the entire application is made in Flash. For some of you action script guys, this is an astounding piece of Action Scripting. It just comes to show how amazing Flash really is and all of the diverse purposes it is capable of performing.

if you haven't tried it out, see for yourself here: www.pandora.com