Studying with music? Try out these services for free music streaming

Do you ever study or do homework while listening to music?  I know music helps me focus and keeps me going when I'm studying or doing homework.  You may also love saving money, so I'm going to give brief overviews of the best ways to listen to music for free and legally.

Spotify

• Website: http://www.spotify.com
•  Features: 
• Using the free desktop application, you can listen to any of 13 million available songs.
• The free account gives you unlimited streaming of songs and the ability to make playlists.
• Using the mobile app, you can get free access to the Spotify radio, which acts just like Pandora or Slacker.  The $10 a month plan gives you access to play any songs you want on the mobile app and doesn't limit you to radio only.
• Cons: 
• No access to stream music via a web browser.  You have to use the desktop application.
• Thoughts: 
• I've deleted iTunes and stopped buying music since I started using Spotify.  Any time I have an internet connection, I can listen to almost any song I want to on demand.

Pandora

• Website: http://www.pandora.com/ 
•  Features: 
• You give it a song or an artist and you get to listen to artists and songs that are similar to the one you started with. 
• The songs played for you are based on the research from the Music Genome Project.
• Unlimited listening with ads.  For a while, free accounts were limited to 40 hours per month, but that limit was lifted earlier this year.
• They recently added stations for stand up comedy.
• Has a free mobile app for iOS and Android.
• Cons: 
• Limited to 5 skips per hour with the free account.
• Thoughts: 
• After thousands of hours of listening to Pandora stations, I feel like they have been "played out" and I'm not getting any more new music.

Slacker

• Website: http://www.slacker.com/
•  Features: 
• Similar to Pandora, you give Slacker a song or artist and are delivered a radio of similar songs.
• Has a free mobile app for iOS and Android.
• Cons: 
• Can't play songs on demand. 
• Thoughts: 
• Slacker isn't as polished as Pandora and doesn't play as many lesser played songs from popular artists like Last.fm does, but it does its job well and is a nice alternative to other free streaming music services.

Last FM

• Website: http://www.last.fm/
•  Features: 
• Streaming radio based on artists, songs, or imported music that you give it.
• Using the Last.fm scrobbler, you can import your current music library from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or Winamp and get recommendations for music to listen to based on your current collection.
• Great for discovering new music.
• Cons: 
• Can't play songs on demand. 
• Thoughts: 
• Last.fm has been a great place for me to discover new artists and listen to the lesser played songs from artists.  Pandora and Slacker are similar, but only play the most popular songs, so it is nice to get a little more song variety here.

Google Music

• Website: http://music.google.com 
•  Features: 
• You can upload all of the songs you have on your computer to Google Music and stream that music from your web browser or the mobile app.  
• Has a mobile app for Android and you can use any of these apps for iOS to stream your Google Music.
• Cons: 
• You can't stream music that you don't already own and have already available on your computer.
• Thoughts: 
• It's a great, free way to store all of your music in the cloud and have it available to you anytime you are connected to the internet.

The Operating System is (Almost) Dead - Cloud applications to replace your computer applications

There are so many tools that are available via the cloud, I would claim that the operating system doesn't matter anymore.  You can be on Windows 7, Windows 8, Mac OSX, Ubuntu, or anything as long as you have a web browser and an internet connection. You can do nearly everything you need to do as a student via any web browser.

Here's a list of free applications that you can use in your web browser instead of on your computer:

• Cloud file storage
• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• SkyDrive
• Box
• Picture editing
• Aviary
• Presentations
• Google Docs Presentations
• Prezi
• Microsoft Office alternative
• Office Web - works with SkyDrive
• Google Docs - works with Google Drive
• Note taking applications
• Evernote
• Google Docs
• Springpad

Every one of these applications also had an iPhone and Android phone app.  You're not always going to be on a computer and being able to access these things via mobile applications is very important.  What cloud based applications do you use?  Please make a comment with the application(s) and how you use it for your classes.

Canvas with Crocodoc

Canvas has integrated a new tool in their system that you may find very useful, especially if your instructor puts you in peer review groups.  This new tool is called Crocodoc (https://crocodoc.com).  Crocodoc is the default tool for embedding Word documents, PowerPoints, Excel files and PDFs in Canvas (it is important to note that only these document types are currently supported).  Once one of these documents has been uploaded, and it is a part of a peer review assignment for you, then you can open the file in Canvas and annotate directly in the browser.  No longer will you have to download the file, add comments and the re-upload.  You can do all of that work directly in Canvas.  To learn more about how this works check out the video below:


Canvas Product Release Screencast - Sept 29, 2012 from Instructure on Vimeo.

Question Corner

Question Corner:

This week I worked out at the front desk longer than usual so I got to hear some of the questions that we are getting asked on a daily basis.  This week 2 of them really stuck out so I thought I would highlight them here.

1.  How do I forward my student email to my cell phone?

Every cell phone is a little different, but all of them have Settings and then your Account Information.  You are going to want to:

·         Add Account:  Pick Microsoft Exchange or ActiveSync

·         Email address or User name: Your full TCC email address, for example; JDoe65405@student.tacomacc.edu

·         Your password: The same password you use for the portal

·         Server name:  outlook.com

IF your phone does not have Microsoft Exchange you can use IMAP e-mail server settings.

IMAP4 Server:

Server name: pod51004.outlook.com

Port: 993

SSL turned on

Your SMPT/Outgoing server name will be:

Name: Pod51004.outlook.com

Port: 587

SSL turned on

2. In the portal my tabs are blank, I think the Portal is down.

 

No, the Portal is not down.  More than likely you are using Internet Explorer and the image is not refreshing when you click on a link or tab.  It only seems to be an issue with Internet Explorer.  All you have to do is press F5 on the keyboard to refresh the screen or in the address bar click the refresh icon and you will then see tabs again.

The solution that we suggest is that you use Mozilla Firefox for all of your browsing needs here on campus and at home.  This is free software you can download and we feel that it works faster and is much more compatible with Angel and Canvas.  Another Browser that we really like is Google Chrome. 

With both Chrome and Firefox, we are not seeing the refresh issue. 

If you have any questions regarding these browsers or how to set up your email, you can call the Help Desk at 253)566-5176 or send us an email at eLearning@tacomacc.edu. 

Shannon