Having some time while on vacation I decided to review my blog and noticed that the general tone of my blog had gotten a little negative. It's not that the things I was covering weren't important, nor had I turned into a rant type blogger. It is just the focus seemed to be a bit more on the negative then the positive. I plan to pay close attention to this trend in the from now on and try to keep the tone a positive one.

This may be a difficult prospect when covering things such as privacy or security issues as so much is going wrong in both of these fields. However, I think if I focus on the solutions and not the problems I should be able to maintain a more positive bent.

With that said I'd like my first "positive bent" blog entry to highlight some under exposed and wonderful services.

Free Social Music Listening

[Libre.fm] is a wonderful "Social Music" service. It lets you listen to, recommend and rate freely licensed music. As Libre.fm learns about your likes and dislikes it will start making recommendations and also showing you other Libre.fm music listeners that share your tastes. It is a great way to discover new artists and new music. You can download the tracks you like for free or make a donation to the artist to help support then directly. Libre.fm also is compatible with many Last.fm clients. Some Last.fm clients require a bit of fiddling to get them to work others know about Libre.fm out of the box. There is a good list of which clients work and how [here]. Of course if you don't want to mess with setting up a client you can always just listen/rate/tag/etc right from your browser.

More Private Searching

[Duck Duck Go] - is a search engine that does not track or store your IP address. They also take steps to ensure that the search results you click on can not see what you searched for. There is a nice explanation of how they protect your privacy [here] and you right to see an unbiased results list [here]. They offer a [lite] version for older computers and mobile devices. They have a site rating system and will put a warning icon beside sites that are potentially dangerous (spy-ware/malware/spam) to your computers health. All is all an excellent service and you people should definitely consider switching to.

A great Podcast / Vodcast Network

[TWiT] - is simply one of the best places for keeping up with current trends in tech and the net. They have many shows both audio and video and even a [live video stream]. Most of their host have been around technology and the Internet for a long time and are well respected in their fields. The shows are quite diverse and so there is pretty much something for everyone there. Go, check it out and have fun

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