Ljung (left) and Wahlforss demonstrate the new SoundCloud features at the company's San Francisco office.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired
For seventy million users of Sony's PlayStation Network, this is a weird time — one in which they're being simultaneously deprived of the shoot-em-ups they crave and used as pawns in an epic conflagration between Sony and a shadowy, wily opponent. It started on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th, when a post on Sony's PSN blog noted that the PlayStation Network and Qriocity service — which the PlayStation 3 console relies on for multiplayer PlayStation 3 games, movies, and music — were out of commission. A day later, another post estimated that it might be a day or two before they returned. Then one announced that Sony had detected an "external intrusion" and had intentionally taken the services offline to fortify them....
People who are interested in new music beyond their old, time-worn favorites or the standardized mix of oldies and chart-toppers found on the FM dial have probably tried Pandora, Last.fm, and YouTube by now. Those are indispensable tools for any music fan these days, but they're not the only games in town, when it comes to pleasing your ears with new sounds.
Check out these five ways to discover music, listed in alphabetical order. Some are brand new, while others have been hiding in plain sight all along.
...
The medical intern started her presentation with an eye roll. "The patient in Room 3 had some blood in the toilet bowl this morning and is here with a pile of Internet printouts listing all the crazy things she thinks she might have."
The intern continued, "I think she has a hemorrhoid."
"Another case of cyberchondria," added the nurse behind me.
In the end, the patient did, indeed, have a hemorrhoid. She was safe to go home with a treatment plan and some reassurance. But I wasn't so sure if what doctors call the "Google stack" (the printouts listing all the potential and worrisome diagnoses) was really such a problem. After all, her symptoms were scary — she may very well have come to the ER regardless of her Web search. The real problem was with my team: we weren't well equipped to deal with her online homework — and it became a distraction. ...
