Spotify & Instagram

When the Wall Street Journal becomes your source for technology news, face it -- you're behind the power curve. Alas, that is the case with me and two of the biggest new things: Spotify and Instagram.

Spotify is neat -- it's bascially an online music library tied in with social media. To explain why it's so cool, let's go through the past couple decades worth of technology in a paragraph or two.

First, there was *the radio*. It was free, but you didn't have control over what you listened to. In the 80s, if you wanted to have a playlist of your favorite songs, you'd buy (or borrow) the copyrighted stuff, and record each song one by one onto a cassette.

In the 90s we got the Internet and Napster. Napster gave us access to a huge range of MP3s converted from CDs, and with our computers we could burn our own CDs. Alas, downloading copyrighted content was illegal.

Early in the millenium we got the iPod, which brought portability for all our MP3s, but there were still some nagging limitations.

1. How could you legally share stuff with other people?
2. Making playlists was fine, but how could you share them with other people?
3. Is there a way to integrate music favorites with social media?

Enter Spotify. As a computer application, it's free -- never a bad thing -- and it can be used on a smartphone. You stream your music, so there's nothing illegal about it. (If you're concerned about bandwidth, there's an offline option with the subscription.)

As for selection, it's amazing. I searched for Foo Fighters' "My Hero," and got umpteen zillion versions, including the country music spoof, the Vitamin String Quartet's instrumental, and the karaoke version. Amazing.

Finally, there's the social aspect of it. It ties in with Facebook, so you can share what you're listening to with other people. And if you liked "A," someone might refer you to "B."

Instagram has garnered a lot of attention recently because of the $1 billion Facebook spent to acquire it. It's a smartphone camera application that ties in with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Foursquare. For the person who can't wait to put that perfect picture up on every social media site they're a part of, this is the tool to get.

For me, who's just a Facebook user, and a tepid one at that, well... it's good to at least say I know what it's about.