That’s the building where I work on the right.

This guy had a kitten on a leash at South Station. It was cute, yet very, very weird. Not to mention the guy himself…

Rhapsody provides a subscription music service so you can listen to anything whenever you want and wherever you are, automatic playlists based on music you like, and “channels” that provide a continuous supply of new music either based on your own preferences or by genre. Your library is synchronized across all computers that you use.

It’s also a music player and a music store, but here lie its main weaknesses and it really doesn’t offer any advantages over iTunes (with the exception of $0.99 DRM-free tracks). In fact, as a music player it’s quite bad. All the problems I have with Rhapsody come from its music player functionality.

iTunes, on the other hand, is a pretty good (though bloated) music player, has a good music store, and is integrated with iPods and iPhones. Rhapsody doesn’t work with Apple mp3 players because of Apple’s restrictions, so you have to buy something other than what is arguably the best mp3 player on the market.

The only place Rhapsody and iTunes overlap is in the music player and music store functionality. Since Apple does a better job with these two components, it would be ideal to somehow merge Rhapsody into iTunes. Imagine having your current library of purchased music combined with the unlimited library of Rhapsody. Imagine your “Genius” playlist being populated with songs you can listen to right away instead of having to buy them first. Imagine loading up your iPod with a Rhapsody channel of music you’ll probably like but haven’t heard yet. Imagine being able to listen to your playlists from any computer where you log in. It would really be a perfect music experience.

Too bad that Apple and Real Networks will never go for it.

Fall started, and here’s the proof.

I observed an interesting pattern at the train stop this morning.

A message came up on the LED message board saying that the next inbound train to Boston would be arriving on the outbound track this morning. A few people noticed this and you could see the inner dialogs in their heads about whether they should trust the message and go over to the other side of the tracks. One person decided to tentatively trust it and went to the outbound track. Then a couple more people, myself included, went over as well. The gist of the small-talk overheard was “Sure, it says ‘outbound track’, but how often are these messages ever true?”

Now that there were a handful of people waiting on the outbound track, other brave souls started coming over too. Not long after, all the new people that arrived at the inbound track went directly to the outbound one without hesitating.

One can only conclude that seeing a large enough group of fellow passengers that decided to trust the message somehow gave it more validity. But the interesting thing is, the orginal few “leaders” had very strong doubts about going over. They didn’t know any better than the rest of the people, they just made a choice and went with it.

I think there are two lessons to be learned here:

1. If you want people to trust you, be consistently accurate in the messages you send out (unlike the MBTA).
2. Don’t blindly follow the crowd because, chances are, its leaders didn’t have any more of a clue than you do. Trust your own common sense.

Not unusual.