Best Way to Enjoy Pandora

I’m a Pandora fan. If you’re not than that probably just means you haven’t discovered it yet. It’s a “made for you” online radio site/app that does an incredible job of matching music up with your apps. My suspicions are that Apple is even taking an eye to the technology behind the site with the introduction of its new Genius tool within iTunes.

So, before going any further, if you’re not on Pandora yet head over to pandora.com and sign-up now [be sure and come back, though]. Really. I mean it.

Now that you’re a fan, too, let me let you in on a little secret on the best way to enjoy Pandora.

Listening in a web page is okay, except when your browser gets overloaded with too many windows open, it crashes, or you accidentally close it (music and all). You could download the Adobe AIR desktop app they provide, but, honestly, it sucks royally (it’s just a container for the actual site).

Enter ‘site specific browsers’ like Fluid. SSBs allow you to treat a web site like an application on your computer. You can create a shortcut on your Desktop, have it listed in your programs/applications list, and even give it a permanent place on your OS X Dock. SSBs also allow you to plug in some scripts/functionalities that are site-specific in a way that you couldn’t do in a normal browser setting. For example, I am also a Twitter fan and have it running via an SSB in its own space with some special scripts that reformat the page to make it quicker and easier to follow, and with auto-refresh that enables the page to load on its own throughout the day.

Enter Pandora via SSB and you’ve got a great match! By utilizing an SSB like Fluid (Mac) or Bubbles (PC), you can have a virtual radio that knows the kind of music you enjoy running in its own separate space! Just fire up Fluid, for example, enter the site URL (use http://www.pandora.com/?cmd=mini, you’ll thank me), name your new app (“My Pandora,” if you will) and optionally select an image to use for the app image (here’s a good Pandora one via Flickr) - and you’re all set! Enjoy!

Posted 09.10.2008

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