My iPod contains 10 vastly different playlists, but they're all beginning to sound stale.

Name a tune from any playlist and I can tell you which artist follows. Even without thinking, I know that Mozart's Adagio from his Piano Concerto No. 12 follows Morcheeba's "The Sea."

As a music critic, I like to explore the horizons. To do so I visit online playlist generators or Internet radio stations. They go by names like Pandora, GrokMusic or Slacker. And they are just the ticket for shaking up my listening routine.

Several have been around for years, yet many people in my age group have yet to discover them. Only a quarter of those ages 36 to 50 now listen to an Internet radio station, according to a recent Pew study. Even among adults ages 18 to 35, a group considered more Internet-savvy, a little more than half were not listening to free streaming samples of songs online.

"Most people, as they get older, lose touch with music," said Tim Westergren, chief executive of Pandora, the most popular music streaming site. "They're stuck with the music of their youth and have a very hard time finding new stuff."

Pandora launched in 2000 as a site where audiences could find independent musicians. Even today, 70 percent of the 85,000 artists in Pandora's collection are independent artists, Westergren said.

Pandora and a growing list of competitors have become a powerful tool, one that feels like a virtual radio station and uses musical experts to suggest tracks from an archive of thousands of recordings.

Some, like last.fm, go a step further by incorporating a social-networking element where you can meet people with similar tastes, no matter how obscure the music. And most work with smart phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones.

Here are five free, user-friendly sites that offer an experience very much like falling through a musical rabbit hole:

www.last.fm

• Scoop: The runner-up to Pandora in popularity, this site claims more than 30 million users in roughly 200 countries. What sets last.fm's apart from Pandora is its music suggestion software called "Audioscrobbler" (requires download), which automatically adds the tracks you play to your profile. Allows you to meet other members and groups with similar tastes through social- networking forums like one called "I Still Buy CDs," a forum that boasts 54,212 members.

• How it works: Type in the name of an artist and get a screen of suggested tracks, artist information and videos. As you use the site, it builds a detailed profile of your tastes from Internet radio stations, computer or portable music device.

• Cost: Free

• Pros: Simple and elegant screen layout; great musical social networking site; downloadable to all smart phones

• Cons: Requires download of last.fm software; your listening choice information is shared with record labels

www.pandora.com

• Scoop: The leader in the music-suggestion realm, with more than 30 million users, Pandora uses an algorithm called the "Music Genome Project" to suggest artists and new songs.

• How it works: You select artists or songs you like, which triggers an online playlist. Using that information, Pandora launches a streaming station to explore that part of the musical spectrum. The Music Genome Project captures the complex musical DNA of the songs and uses a team of 50 musicians to plumb it, then kicks out suggestions. The result? You get a Green Day suggestion with your Nirvana.

• Cost: Free

• Pros: Well-stocked library; available as an app on smart phones

• Cons: Sometimes makes quizzical suggestions; doesn't allow skipping back to tracks; large banner ads.

www.slacker.com

• Scoop: Don't let the name turn you off. This clean application allows you to listen to more than 100 stations for free or upgrade to a subscription. You can try stations programmed by music experts or create a custom station.

• How it works: Click your favorite music category on the home screen, and you are taken to a screen of subgenres. For example, if you like jazz, it offers up eight subgenres, from "smooth" to "acid jazz" that are easy to navigate. The site also offers up "Top Hit" or "Top Station" lists and album reviews.

• Cost: Free. Offers upgrade to its "Plus" plan at $4.99 a month or $47.88 a year. The upgrade gives you no ads, unlimited song skips and complete lyrics. I thought the free option was well worth dealing with an ad every half hour.

• Pros: Good sound quality and nice graphic look; little or no buffering; works as an app on most smart phones

• Cons: Free option allows only six songs skips per created station and periodic ads.

www.awdio.com

• Scoop: Do you have a hankering to listen to live music being played in, say, Ibiza, Spain? Or in a hip club in Manhattan? If so, then this site is for you. Awdio.com is the first platform solely devoted to broadcasting live music and the first to offer a music player that broadcasts multiple channels of live music to any Web browser.

• How it works: From the home page, navigate to the Events Page box and a calendar of what is being performed, where and when. Includes schedules for upcoming acts from more than 100 venues worldwide, from rap to house to classical music. A great tool for listening to music festivals with their multiple stages.

• Cost: Free

• Pros: High-quality streaming of live music

• Cons: Limited to live events; many festivals' broadcasts are obscure; does not suggest music; no smart phone app.

www.GrokMusic.com

• Scoop: This site wins my vote for the best name and the most graphically simple music-suggestion page. Use a music map on the home page to links for similar artists, or fill in the music- suggestion box that allows you to reach across dissimilar genres for new music. It also offers music articles, bios and links to radio station webstreams.

• How it works: Upon entering, you are prompted to type in the name of an artist. Typing in U2, for example, creates a bubble map that offers artists such as Travis, the Killers and Queen.

A music-suggestion box below that asks for three artists. Putting in U2, Beyoncé and Beethoven brought up a dozen suggestions, including Rihanna, Mozart and the Pussycat Dolls. You can indicate whether you "Like it," "Don't like it" or "Don't know it." This input feeds the Grok Music discovery engine for future use.

• Cost: Free

• Pros: Easy to use, fun for play, the site suggests music far afield from home entry.

• Cons: The music- suggestion process can be clunky, and there's no smart phone app.

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Employee Robert Brown, foreground, helps customer Broc Hervey load a 50-inch Samsung LCD television into his vehicle at the Natomas Best Buy store on Christmas Eve. Hervey, a student at Sacramento State, said he saved for three months to buy the TV.

They're what people wanted most after computers or cash, the flat-screen TVs nestled this morning beneath Sacramento-area Christmas trees.

Analysts say 2009 was the year when wishes most easily came true, with prices finally breaking the $499 barrier on their relentless way down.

"We narrowed it down to a 40-incher between $400 and $500," said recent UC Davis grad Brad Brown, roaming Best Buy in Elk Grove in the season's final shopping hours. It will be his first flat screen, coexisting with student loans.

At higher price points, too, holiday buyers this year could finally stop waiting and just say yes.

"It's time for one of these," said retired teacher Lynda Ledbetter of Sacramento, sitting outside Fry's on the doorstep of Christmas Eve. "It's his Christmas present."

This morning her husband, Robert, will open a 46-inch $1,699 LCD flat screen, which he liked for its lower energy usage.

Similar entertainment delights await thousands of capital-area households today. The whoops and shouts signal another mass arrival of fresh technology.

Buyers in the United States have taken home 100 million flat-screen TVs since 2005 – a third of them this year alone, says the Consumer Electronics Association, a Virginia trade group.

Not only do these sleek newcomers take TV watching to a new level, they also will increasingly change how homes are designed and apartment leases are written.

All these new family friends will displace thousands of bulky older TVs. American homes are already packed with an average of 2.8 sets apiece, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

You can't just throw these old TVs in the trash. In Sacramento, they either have to be put out at the curb for special collection or dropped off at county waste facilities.

For more information on disposal options, visit the California Integrated Waste Management Board Web site at www.ciwmb.ca.gov/ Electronics/.

You can also take old TVs to an e-waste collection drive, an increasingly popular event with sports teams and nonprofit groups.

Increasingly, those hefty remnants of technology-gone- by will be going right out the door, or maybe into the spare bedroom. Britt Beemer, chief executive officer of America's Research Group in South Carolina, predicts 2010 will be an even bigger year for flat-screen sales.

"We'll probably sell more of these in the next two years than in the last 10," he said.

A recent Citibank survey of Californians, indeed, revealed that two-thirds of consumers who put off buying flat-screen TVs this year "for financial reasons" will buy one in 2010.

This explosion of sales is well on its way to eliminating the old-style "entertainment niche" that is a fixture of most post-1960 houses, said Lori McGuire, president of McGuire Research, a Sacramento building industry consulting firm. These are recessed spaces for cabinets and deeper TVs built into the living room – much like those for refrigerators in the kitchen.

"Pulte and other big corporate builders are leaving the niche behind," she said. It's now an option. Other builders are downsizing the niche, making it more cabinet-sized to hold a flat-screen TV and accessories such as DVD players and video game consoles.

"Some builders are also eliminating the fireplace as a standard feature," McGuire said. Why? You guessed it. Eight decades after the Federal Radio Commission issued the first TV station license in Maryland – and 40 years after color television became easily affordable – the 46-inch flat-screen TV is the new family hearth.

Americans now spend an average of four hours and 49 minutes watching television each day, according to New York's Nielsen Ratings.

Architects and interior designers increasingly say they design furniture, walls and windows in main living areas using a large flat-screen TV as the focal point. Cable outlets in all rooms, along with computer wiring, are also typically standard now in new homes, said McGuire.

For many who get flat screens this morning, the question this afternoon is how to mount it. These new TVs can be placed atop cabinets or mounted to walls with mounts ranging in price from $70 to $250.

Don't go the wall-mounting route if you rent, said Cory Koehler, a senior executive at the Rental Housing Association of the Sacramento Valley.

"Most rental agreements have a deal where the resident must get prior permission for an alteration, and this qualifies as one," he said. "An alternative is to buy a nice stand."

The introduction of ever-larger plasma and LCD televisions has caused energy use to jump in the past decade. Combined with associated devices, such as DVD players, TVs now account for 10 percent of household energy use, according to the California Energy Commission.

As more consumers join this mass-market phenomenon, utilities such as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and Pacific Gas and Electric say they've been successfully pressing manufacturers to make flat-screen TVs more energy-efficient.

Last month, the Energy Commission approved the nation's first mandatory energy-efficiency standards for televisions, which will take effect in 2011. Three-quarters of the televisions sold in the United States today already comply with the regulations, which won't affect already-purchased televisions.

SMUD planner Janis Erickson said units manufactured next year will be 45 percent more energy-efficient than those now in many homes. By 2012 they'll be 60 percent more efficient.

Erickson said today's LCD models, which are most popular with consumers for their sharper images, use less energy than the plasma models, which are more popular with sports fans for being faster and eliminating blurring.

"They should be pleased with whatever they bought," she said. "Chances are if they bought in the last year it's one of the energy-efficient ones."

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The state's top computer boss is getting an early Christmas gift: $4.7 million in federal funds for cyber security projects and a statewide digital mapping system to improve emergency incident management.

The money for the state's chief information officer, Teri Takai, includes $2.35 million for her information security division to conduct a statewide cyber security risk assessment.

California Emergency Management Agency spokesman Jay Alan said the federal money his agency is disbursing will boost the state's ability to prepare for, prevent, manage and recover from terrorist or cyber attacks, as well as natural or human-caused disasters.

"It will be used to help us stay one step ahead of the bad guys," Alan said.

Takai's information security office is also getting $1.35 million for the Secureca.gov domain name system project, which involves upgrading the technology behind state Web sites and communication addressing.

The upgrade will beef up security to prevent hacking or attempts to compromise state IT infrastructure.

Bill Maile, a spokesman for Takai's office, said the grant money will support efforts to protect the state's technology infrastructure, saying it will "greatly advance the state's cyber security program."

A 2008 global security report, which Takai's security office obtained, said cyber attackers are increasingly part of organized and well-funded groups, generating millions of dollars in the underground economy "where tools specifically developed to facilitate fraud and theft are freely bought and sold."

Hackers and vandals have been linked to major attacks and breaches of state systems in the past year, Takai's office says in an October report.

• A six-month hacking effort at the University of California, Berkeley, saw 97,000 Social Security numbers stolen. Hackers infiltrated restricted computer databases between October 2008 and April 2009, putting the health records and personal information of 160,000 students, alumni and others at risk.

• In April, vandals cut underground fiber optic cables, causing Internet and telephone outages to thousands of San Francisco-area residents and businesses, including 9-1-1 lines and mobile phones. Most major telecom providers suffered disruptions.

Takai's office said it will use its final $1 million to help Cal EMA develop geographic information systems (GIS) maps of critical infrastructure and other key locations statewide, such as command centers, shelters, vulnerable populations and gathering locations, to improve emergency responses statewide.

Cal EMA awarded the money to Takai's office after receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.