For a while I’ve joked that at the rate storage rates are increasing for hard drives, it will soon be possible that instead of having an MP3 player with all you favorite songs on it, you will simply have a device with “music.” All of music.
Now I learn, via Michael Nielsen’s blog, that Joanna Karczmarek is starting a project to put the entire arXiv.org into bittorrent files. Currently she is offering the hep-th section from all of 2004 via a bit torrent. So, I guess, coming soon to a laptop near you: “physics.” I wonder if this will be the impetus for me to get a new laptop with a monsterous hard drive.
I’m amazed that none of the current music moguls have put together a good suggestion service that can learn about your likes/dislikes. Something like what Netflix has. Amazon has a bit of one, but it doesn’t learn well and usually just suggests more albums from artists you’ve bought from in the past. I can’t believe that they haven’t done more with this. I’d probably spend $10-$20/month if I felt I would get things I actually liked, and I don’t have the time to do the research on my own. Itunes could get a lot more than the ~10$/year they’re getting from me now.
ro: Sort of like http://last.fm then?