Free Archiving Software

I have enough librarians on my flist that this seems worth forwarding on: thanks to Roland Piquepaille for this article describing The Archon Project, a free and open-source system for managing and publishing archival data. It's specifically intended for anyone with an extensive collection of Stuff, who wants to publish inventories of holdings on the Web. Looks quite decent -- check out the "Sandbox" link to play around with a copy of the live data for UIUC...

Free Archiving Software

I have enough librarians on my flist that this seems worth forwarding on: thanks to Roland Piquepaille for this article describing The Archon Project, a free and open-source system for managing and publishing archival data. It's specifically intended for anyone with an extensive collection of Stuff, who wants to publish inventories of holdings on the Web. Looks quite decent -- check out the "Sandbox" link to play around with a copy of the live data for UIUC...

Thanks for the music

BTW, been meaning to mention: thanks for all the musical recommendations folks chimed in with a couple of weeks ago. I seem to have settled on a mix of Live365 and Pandora as my main listening options.

Live365 is better for moods when I want to explore -- with its hundreds of channels, there are a remarkable number of options. Both the Celtic-Rock station and Ethno-Techno have round up on my presets, and I come back to them frequently, although I'm finding some other very worthwhile stations. (Such as David Byrne's highly African-oriented playlist, or the Lebanese dance music station Mazaj. And I just found the all-Putumayo station, which I'm listening to now.)

Pandora is better for "comfort food" listening: I've built a single, *very* eclectic seed list, and the system has proven to be extremely good at sussing other things I will like based on that. (Indeed, many of the seeds come from Pandora throwing in a song, and my going, "Oh, right -- that group should be in the seed list.") It's getting better than 90% thumbs-up tracks. That said, its algorithms can be disconcerting. It's clearly not 100% random: it tends to run in "tracks" of a single style for half-a-dozen songs or so before switching over to something different, so I'll just have settled into a comfortable run of Stan Rogers-style maritime tunes when it suddenly switches over to AC/DC.

Anyway, I've sent real money over to Live365 (to get rid of the incredibly irritating commercials, and get the better sound quality), and will probably do so to Pandora soon (simply as a matter of supporting a good service). Both well-recommended options, if you have the bandwidth to listen online...

Thanks for the music

BTW, been meaning to mention: thanks for all the musical recommendations folks chimed in with a couple of weeks ago. I seem to have settled on a mix of Live365 and Pandora as my main listening options.

Live365 is better for moods when I want to explore -- with its hundreds of channels, there are a remarkable number of options. Both the Celtic-Rock station and Ethno-Techno have round up on my presets, and I come back to them frequently, although I'm finding some other very worthwhile stations. (Such as David Byrne's highly African-oriented playlist, or the Lebanese dance music station Mazaj. And I just found the all-Putumayo station, which I'm listening to now.)

Pandora is better for "comfort food" listening: I've built a single, *very* eclectic seed list, and the system has proven to be extremely good at sussing other things I will like based on that. (Indeed, many of the seeds come from Pandora throwing in a song, and my going, "Oh, right -- that group should be in the seed list.") It's getting better than 90% thumbs-up tracks. That said, its algorithms can be disconcerting. It's clearly not 100% random: it tends to run in "tracks" of a single style for half-a-dozen songs or so before switching over to something different, so I'll just have settled into a comfortable run of Stan Rogers-style maritime tunes when it suddenly switches over to AC/DC.

Anyway, I've sent real money over to Live365 (to get rid of the incredibly irritating commercials, and get the better sound quality), and will probably do so to Pandora soon (simply as a matter of supporting a good service). Both well-recommended options, if you have the bandwidth to listen online...