I’ve recently started learning foreign languages through podcasts on my drive to work.

Coffee Break Spanish is run by a Spanish teacher from Scotland who does a great job building up useful vocabulary. This is a great resource if you are planning to visit Spain or Latin America.

The (mostly) weekly podcasts are generally 15 to 20 minutes in length and each one has enough to keep you involved but not overwhelmed. Repeating the vocabulary and phrases is the key to remembering it so you may need to listen to some multiple times, especially if you are not used to some Spanish pronunciations.

They have also set up My Daily Phrase Italian and My Daily Phrase German if you want to branch out into other languages as well.

Gracias y hasta pronto!

I’ve tried a bunch of to do list sites as well as calendar web sites and applications. I finally found what I’m looking for for recurring goals.

Joe’s Goals is great site to keep track of things you do on a daily or semi-regular basis. You can even put in negative goals to mark down things you are trying to curb. Say you put in a goal to exercise. You just click on the days you have done the activity. If you wanted to diet, you could also then put in a negative goal for eating dessert. Each time you each dessert you click to put in a red X so you can keep track of how many nights you having those extra calories.

It is a nicely done site and a great way to achieve your goals.

Another neat, innovative way to listen to music via the internet, Musicovery allows you to choose your music based on your mood. Do you want energetic or calm music? Do you want positive or dark music? You can also choose the beat based on a dance matrix. Once you click on a spot in music matrix, it will bring up a a tree of music with all the songs that fit the genres you have selected.
You can also narrow down your field by removing genres or choosing a decade. Only want to hear music from the 60s? Only want to hear hit songs? The choices are great and if you see a related song you like you can just click on it to play. You don’t have to hope the random function finds it.

I still like Pandora but Musicovery may be taking the lead for new music discovery in my browser.

Check out Musicovery : interactive webRadio

Pandora is a streaming web radio station which is powered by the Music Genome Project.

This is not your ordinary music station though. First, you type in an artist or song of which you would like to hear similar music. Pandora then comes up with similar songs based on melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics and more.

It dives deep into the core of the song, unlike other services which just base your likes and dislikes on how other people rated a song.

It is a great service if you are looking to find similar music to what you enjoy and you’re sick of what’s on the radio. It’s not always perfect, but you can also guide it to never play a song again or play similar songs to what it suggests.

From one of Pandora’s emails:
“We’ve found that telling Pandora ‘I like it’ to no more than 3-5 songs, then listening for a while is a great start. When Pandora plays a song you don’t like, give it a ‘thumbs down’. We’ll never play that song again, and we’ll steer the station toward the sound you told us you like.”

Enjoy Pandora.