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Archive for December, 2007

HOWTO: Connect AOL DSL to a Linksys Router

December 27th, 2007
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To connect your AOL high speed internet service to a router is fairly simple if you have good information. AOL tech support gave me some bad advice in the beginning which caused me about an hour of headache before I called them back. To connect takes a couple of AOL specific setup instructions which I’ll show you here:

  1. Log into your Linksys router. To do this, open a web browserand type: http://192.168.1.1 an authentication box will open and you willneed to type in admin for the username and admin for the password.
  2. Once logged in, you will need to change the Internet Connection Type to PPPoE. This is only if you are using a DSL connection. 
  3. You will need to set a User name and Password. Both are the phone number you use to dial your DSL connection (probably your home number). The user name is your phone number @ aol-hs while the password is just your phone number. An example user name and password would be: u:5035552424@aol-hs p: 5035552424 . The other settings are pre-set and work fine. You can click on the picture above for more detail.
  4. The next step is to actually initiate the connection. Click on the Status tab at the top of the screen. In the middle of the page, you will need to click the connect button. The router will attempt to connect to your DSL service. This may take a couple of minutes. If you entered the user name and password correctly, the router should connect and everything should be useable. After the login succeeds, the Login Status will show “Connected” and you should be connected to the Internet.
Please feel free to post questions in the comments if you run into any trouble.

HowTo, technology ,

Music and Genomes: Pandora Nails It!

December 14th, 2007
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Many artists don’t get math. Conversely, a lot of mathematicians can’t do art. It’s rare to find a person who appreciates both and even more inimitable to replicate the synthesis of art and science Pandora has created. 

Pandora is not just an online music station, it’s also a music genome project combing through the irreducible aspects of millions of songs and discovering the nuances of why we listeners like a particular song. Log on to Pandora and type in an artist you like. A song starts playing and you rate if they chose well for you. If not, you get a new song. If so, the song plays through and then Pandora creates a playlist for you on the fly according to your musical tastes. As more songs play, you continue to rate the songs you hear. Pandora evolves a customized playlist that you are sure to like.
Staffers of Pandora are combing through millions of songs and tagging each song with a series of more than 400 attributes. As you, the user, indicate which songs you like, a personalized list of attributes are created and the service is able to recommend songs to you based on your previous judgements. It’s a customized radio station just for you without ads!
The Music Genome Project is a clever name for such an innovative service. Members of Pandora are helping the program to learn the science of why we like music. It’s the science and personalization of art. Give it a try at www.pandora.com ; user registration is free well worth the music experience.

technology