Chimps have culture; researchers observe them to imitate local customs when they change groups. Recall last year’s report about the cultural activities of humpback whales as reflected in the spreading popularity of an unfamiliar whalesong introduced by visitors from a different region. New Scientist

Driving with a soda as risky as a cell phone. SF Gate

Personalize me, baby “The Net is finally
delivering on an old promise: Introducing us to new music
that we really, really like… Another company has emerged from
Boston: Media Unbound. Like Firefly, Media Unbound is
offering a personalized recommendation system that will
suggest bands you might enjoy, based on ones that you
already like. Unlike Firefly, Media Unbound does what it
promises to do: introduce new, obscure bands you’ll actually
like.

And Media Unbound isn’t alone — there’s also Mubu.com,
which offers a similar service; and MoodLogic, which takes
a more search-engine approach. Similarly, the
music-discovery search engine Gigabeat was purchased by
Napster two weeks ago.

And that’s where it gets interesting. If personalization that
works truly has broken through, it’s possible to imagine a
future in which obscure bands do get more time in the sun.
Because personalized music recommendation technology in
combination with file-trading services like Napster or
Gnutella could be an amazingly potent brew.” Salon

R.I.P. Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth; “Car Designer, Cultural Icon Created Rat Fink” LA Times

The Music of the Internet: “This site converts the IP-Address of your computer(or any internet address you enter) to music. The sound is created online
from the four nodes of your IP address with a fractal composition program…” There’s also a link to download the composition program, MusiNum, itself.

The Vocabula Review: “A society is generally as lax as its language.”

OtherSide City Search: enter a city name and it’ll tell you what’s on the exact opposite side of the globe, i.e. where you’d end up if you dig straight down and keep going. Since this site was mentioned on Metafilter, it’s so busy its search script chokes and it gives you an error, but sooner or later you’ll get it to work, I’m sure. This site, jessamyn.com, does pretty much the same thing, and is less busy. Write me if you think you’re the FmH reader closest to the exit from my tunnel starting here in Boston; we can arrange to meet halfway and split the effort, okay?