{ 2003.09.26 } Five (well, six) applications that bleed together radio/audio/new media (in alphabetical order):

• iRate radio "is a collaborative filtering client/server mp3 player/downloader. The iRATE server has a large database of music. You rate the tracks and it uses your ratings and other people's to guess what you'll like. The tracks are downloaded from websites which allow free and legal downloads of their music". See also City of Sound on iRate, and an interview with the creator.
• The Radio Program Recorder (RPR) is a portable AM/FM radio with a timer to record shows, and an FM transmitter to rebroadcast shows to your local radio. It also has a USB interface to transfer audio to your computer.
• RadioSHARK is a Mac OS X-only FM/AM radio in hardware, that connects by USB. It includes software to record shows and pause live broadcasts.
• Replay Radio [via Scripting News] records internet streams of radio to MP3. Includes scheduling and burning audio CDs. Like Audio Hijack Pro (for Mac OS X) but more focussed on radio.
• Shazam is a mobile phone app: dial 2580 and point your phone at loud music, receive the track name by text seconds later.

So what are the consequences when this kind of functionality is commonplace? (Oh, and see Dan Hill and Chris Heathcote on wireless, pervasive music sharing. The walkman supersense.)

{ } Three cases of uncertain identity online, on an axis of the declared identity being probably true to probably untrue:

• Frank Black (of Pixies fame) appears on fan messageboard [via Kottke], and it turns out it actually is him.
• God posts in Real Live Preacher weblog comments [via Oblomovka] (commenting on this post, which is a follow-on to this post, also commented on by Yahweh), and everyone responds beautifully.
• John Titor [via blackbeltjones]: "Although there is debate over the exact date it started, on November 02, 2000, a person calling themselves Timetravel_0, and later John Titor, started posting on a public forum that he was a time traveler from the year 2036" -- and now people are trying to understand his posts (he disappeared four months later) to get clues to the future.

Sometimes I'm reminded how little we know about other lives and perspectives, that all we have is hearsay, that we'll never really know why a revolution happened in Prague in 1989. Sometimes you go past a fork in history, and you know the route you never travelled would have been magical.