Did you ever wish someone would design a radio station just for you? Pandora has gone and done it. The Web site instantly builds a streaming-audio station around your favorite song or artist, including not only the artist you named but others that it thinks might appeal to you. It's a great way to discover new musicians without wading through hours of music you don't like. You can create up to 100 stations -- one for every mood.

Pandora's software is based on the Music Genome Project, a six-year effort to analyze hundreds of distinct musical qualities in the songs of 10,000 different artists. Songs are grouped together not on the basis of marketing genre or release date, but because their underlying musical qualities are similar.

Pandora is available as a free, ad-supported service or on a paid subscription basis. The high-quality audio stream works best with broadband connections of 500 Kbps or higher. You can even buy a device to divert the stream to your stereo.