05 March 2012

You'll need a zip for that box, by the way...

30 minutes after typing that last post the music stopped and I was faced by a 'Register' screen which wouldn't go away. For a moment I thought I would have to start apologising to all you people for not properly trying something out before screaming from the Google Plustops about it.


However, all you need is to make a quick trip to somewhere like this... The rest you can manage, I'm sure.

All's well now, The Monkees, Roy Orbison ... who needs a radio. and the TV's lousy tonight.


Open Pandora's box in the UK

Pandora is a great on-line music station. You type in a favourite artist and along comes a stream of tracks that are either by that artist or of a simlar genre. Yes, there are lots of on-line streams like Grooveshark and Spotify which are good too but what I like about Pandora is the variety and they do seem to have got things right.



The problem has been that if you go to Pandora.com outside the US then you get some boring apology stuff and that's not exactly what you need to cheer a rainy day. So I followed the advice of someone who really knows what he's talking about and comes up with a whole load of tips like this. Amit Argawal hasn't got the simplest of names to pronounce but his Digital Inspiration blog is cram full of things that I wish I knew. Well, I do now but he's the sort that thinks of them first. The best I can do is tell you all about them.

Rather than trying to get through using some awkward proxy server there's a really simple solution thanks to Google Chrome and Firefox. Now you really should be using one of these anyway but if you are still in the steam age and using Internet Explorer and don't want to change this post won't help you. In Chrome install the HTTP Enforcer Extension which sounds cool as well. In Firefox it's called HTTPS Everywhere which isn't so cool but does the job as well, if not slightly better.

Enable the extension or add-on. Go to pandora.com and, with a bit of luck, you'll get redirected to a working site.

I typed in Beach Boys and have been listening ever since. Brilliant! I even get The Beatles. You try finding them elsewhere.

Big thanks to Amit and whoever else is busy checking things out at Digital Inspiration.