Thought Particles: Pandora.com is a streaming music service. Tell Pandora what songs you like and she’ll figure out what all those songs have in common that you never realized. If I like songs with a subtle blues or country influence, I’m probably a sucker for paired harmony, a syncopated rhythm, interesting part writing, and strong melodies, and that’s just a few of the characteristics. She will soon be playing songs you never knew existed, songs that make you say, “Wow! This is the coolest music ever!” Click the image that appears on your monitor as it plays and Pandora will let you give it a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down plus link you to iTunes to buy the mp3 or to Amazon for the CD. She’ll even explain why she chose that song. This is a light-year’s leap beyond Amazon‘s “People who bought this CD also bought....” suggestion. It’s all a result of practical application of a pattern-recognition system encoded into software to create powerful artificial intelligences. It’s hard to imagine where this may go. (Monday Morning Memo 3/27/06)