Red Queen Hypothesis 2.0: Social Networking (and the Internet) as a response to disease

After hearing someone in the next cubicle start hacking away, I got thinking about how the probability of me staying healthy is so greatly decreased by working in this common environment. That made me start dreading the arrival of new undergraduate and graduate students who might further pollute the air with their... um... filth.

The recent bedbug scare spreading across the nation (where Ohio is one hotspot) fits into this line of thinking too. One unlucky or unsanitary person turns into a possibly unaware transmission vector. Even those who are aware of the problem may be unwilling or unable to stop the problem. Of course, this goes for other pests like fleas as well. Moreover, as more people come back to the workplace, there is more chance of these pests moving from person to person, perhaps with a chair or a floor or a cubicle wall in between. It is the dual to herd immunity; it's herd vulnerability – a large group of healthy people are only as strong as their sickest link.

Driving to work today, I heard someone on NPR talk about how about the Internet is making offices unnecessary or deprecated. People are able to do work at home while still staying in contact with their customers and the rest of the work force. That is, they are still able to leverage the power of humans to form productive groups without having to actually be in the same space of those humans. With this still ringing in my ears coupled with the new sound of the guy in the next cubicle hacking away, it made me think that maybe the Internet and social networking are just another product of the Red Queen running to stay in one place. That is, although the ostensible purpose of physical isolation alongside virtual collaboration has nothing to do with disease, a collateral effect is that many communicable diseases have a hard time commuting across wires and fibers. So that's a happy thought, right?

On the other hand, there's that Bruce Willis movie that seems to be show the dystopia of my fantasy disesae-free future...

As if on cue, that thought is interrupted by a sneeze from the next cubicle over.

Scrobbling Pandora Songs to Last.fm!

UPDATE: I just found OpenPandora, which is like a PandoraJam for Windows (i.e., it is a desktop Pandora application that scrobbles to Last.fm). So, our list of cool Pandora+Last.fm apps and mashups is now...

• PandoraJam - OS X Desktop application that plays Pandora and scrobbles to Last.fm. It also includes lots of other cool features, like recording Pandora streams to a format that can be used by iTunes and the iPod.


• OpenPandora - Windows Desktop application that plays Pandora and scrobbles to Last.fm. It also includes other cool features, like integration with the Wiimote and some software applications.


• PandoraFM - Web mashup that combines Pandora and Last.fm. This mashup does more than just scrobble to Last.fm; it really combines nearly everything of Pandora with nearly everything of Last.fm. For example, you can access tags and music information from Last.fm.

I'm not sure which is my "favorite." I'm just happy that these are available. I have a feeling there are more too.

I love Pandora. I also love Last.fm. I feel bad when I listen to Pandora because my songs don't get scrobbled to Last.fm. It's like all of that good listening time is just being wasted. However, I feel like I get exposed to more NEW music through Pandora because I primarily use Last.fm to listen to my own station.

Today, I accidentally found PandoraJam, which solves this problem! It is a desktop application (like PandoraBoy) that streams from Pandora and, at the end of each Pandora song, scrobbles to Last.fm! This gives me the best of both worlds! It has other features too. For example, you can record Pandora audio so you can take it with you later on your iPod. However, the scrobbling feature (which is the only entirely free feature) is the one that really impresses me.

However, this isn't a perfect solution. For one, it doesn't help me when I'm on a Windows machine. Second, it doesn't let me do cool Last.fm things like "Love" tracks. So, I went searching, and I found PandoraFM. This is a WEB mashup that combines Last.fm and Pandora. In fact, it even scrobbles at half the length of the song after a configurable number of seconds (default is 90), which is more like what you'd expect. So it's great! Solves all my problems.

So, if you use both Last.fm and Pandora, you need to check out PandoraFM.

How iMet my Neighbor on iTunes

The audio for this story is hilarious. Discovering "Anna's music" pop up in iTunes leads to strange stalker-like behavior (that probably isn't proper for a married man) that eventually leads to an awkward meeting that goes as poorly as you might imagine. Hilarious.

"How iMet my Neighbor on iTunes" by David Kestenbaum

The on-line version includes a web extra introducing Last.fm and Pandora, two services about which everyone should know (and love).