I Sweat Your Music Collection

Using iTunes "Rendezvous" system (recently renamed to Bonjour), iTunes users can share their library of music over their local network. And by share I mean stream -- that is, others can only listen to your shared music, not copy it. Anyway, a few people have studied the social nuances that surround this technology (e.g. Grinter at GTech). For example, users are afraid of what other's might think of them based on their music collection (even though the sharing is somewhat anonymized).

I found this anecdote of appropriating iTunes sharing over wireless networks to meet people (and as a sort of low bandwidth instant messaging client) to be quite interesting.

The scene is both postmodern and Reineresque: young man with PowerBook in coffee shop discovers amazing music collection shared via iTunes. He hopes to God it belongs to the raven-haired hotty in the corner. He proceeds to share a library of his own, no songs, but simply titled, “Maria, I sweat your music collection.” She takes note, creates a library called “try_the_new_dalek”. And so began a library-name-only flirting session that will no-doubt make Mac haters seethe and AppleHeadz swoon. Either way, it’s a way to pass the time between scones and textbook chapters on a lonely Tuesday eve. Try it before it becomes some new, creepy form of cyberstalking. from engadet