5 O’Clock Roundup, the 7 O’Clock Edition
Yes, Twitter does save all your tweets – – ReadWriteWeb asked Biz Stone about Twitter’s backup policy, and whether the company plans to stick to a pledge not to store GPS tracking info.
“We definitely save all the tweets although you’re right in noting that our search focuses more on newer content right now. And yes, the plan is to drop the coordinates after 14 days.“
Palm Pre now $99 at Amazon — I’m the guy who… Continue Reading
Boxee adds Pandora and makes its browser more Firefox-like for Hulu
Boxee, the streaming content startup, continues to push updates out at a brisk pace. Tonight, at its meetup in New York City, it’s announcing a few new features, one of which should help bring back Hulu support.
The marquee name being added to Boxee is Pandora, the online music streaming and recommendation engine. Fans of Pandora will now be able to listen to their favorite stations and make new ones right from within the application. This… Continue Reading
Push, the movie, coming soon. Push, Apple’s notification system, not.
At last year’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) where Apple showed off the iPhone 3G and the App Store for the first time, the company noted that third-party applications would not be able to run in the background on the iPhone, but said that a solution for that would be coming. That solution, called Push Notification, was due to launch in September, just a few months after the iPhone 3G and App Store’s July launch —… Continue Reading
Pandora Radio version 2.0 launching for iPhone today
Pandora Radio, Pandora’s iPhone application, was the top downloaded app in Apple’s App Store for all of 2008. By the end of the year, it had been downloaded over 2 million times. But the streaming music discovery service apparently isn’t content to rest on its laurels: Version 2 of the app launches today.
The new version will now contain 30-second samples for bookmarked songs, the ability to create a station based on a current song, station… Continue Reading
MG’s ten favorite iPhone apps of 2008
Now before I write anything else, let me just say that these are my ten favorite iPhone applications of 2008 and not necessarily what I think are the ten best iPhone apps — because really, there are so many diverse apps, how can one judge which are the best of them?
Also, this list includes no iPhone games because that category has become so robust that I’m going to make another list just for that. [Update: Here’s the list… Continue Reading
Sprint unboxes free Pandora across its network
Us iPhone users are spoiled: We get to listen to Pandora’s streaming web music for free thanks to its brilliant application (the top downloaded app for all of 2008 in the App Store). Owners of other devices, on other networks, haven’t been so lucky, as many have to pay a monthly fee to access Pandora. But that’s not the case with Sprint subscribers anymore as Pandora will now be free on phones that support it.
Previously,… Continue Reading
Pandora solidifies its place as the top iPhone app with its 2 millionth user
Late last night, Apple unveiled its new iTunes 2008 section of the iTunes store showcasing the best of what the store offered this year. The area dedicated to the App Store shows the apps that have been downloaded most. So what was the top app of the year? Pandora Radio, built by Pandora, the Internet streaming radio service.
So just how many times has it been downloaded? Many app developers try to keep exact numbers private,… Continue Reading
Sonos turns your iPhone into music player remote, streams new stations
Sonos, a company specializing in multi-room wireless music players, has launched an application that turns an average iPhone or iPod Touch into a remote control for its sound system. It also announced that its ZonePlayer product — which lets you set up wirelessly networked speakers throughout your house — has started streaming music from Internet radio stations Last.fm and Pandora.
The remote control app is available now through the iTunes App Store, and works on devices… Continue Reading
Mufin music recommendations: Half-baked or just right?
Online music recommendation engines are nothing new. Pandora is one of the most high profile, but services that do other things such as Last.fm, Imeem and now even iTunes, all offer this functionality in some capacity. Mufin hopes to stand out by doing things a bit differently: Analyzing only the music.
Most other recommendation engines using social aspects to determine what music should be recommended, Mufin head of marketing Petar Djekic explained. For example, if you… Continue Reading
Imeem revamps its site for a more cohesive online music experience
Before MySpace Music even existed, online social music service imeem had a deal with all the major labels and many of the smaller ones to stream their music for free over the Internet. The problem, is that the music was scattered all over the place, making a cohesive music experience harder to achieve than through services like iTunes (where you pay for all your music) or Pandora (where you cannot select which songs you will… Continue Reading
Could a digital music royalty price hike force iTunes into subscriptions?
There’s some talk today that if the National Music Publishers’ Association manages to increase the royalty rates for music bought from online music stores, Apple iTunes could shut its doors. That won’t happen. But it could force iTunes to change its business model.
The Copyright Royalty Board is meeting Thursday in Washington to set a new price for royalties. While the National Music Publishers’ Association wants the rate raised from its current 9 cents a track… Continue Reading
Roundup: Omaha’s Oracle bets on electric cars, web radio gets a win, a cloud computing critic, and more
In case you’re tired of reading about the markets imploding, here’s some unrelated news:
Warren Buffet invests in Chinese battery maker — He’s called the Oracle of Omaha for his ability to spot long-term trends. Take note, then, that Warren Buffet has bought almost 10 percent of a Chinese battery maker whose cells go into electric cars, BYD Company, via one of his existing companies.
Web radio bill passes House — Companies like Pandora and Last.fm may survive after… Continue Reading
Pandora launches mobile monetization strategy for the iPhone, but the royalty problem still looms
A service like Pandora is able to exist because of advertisements. The free online music discovery service has made headlines over the past year because the government decided to up the royalty rates online music streaming services have to pay when a song is played. Without advertising, the service would be finished. So it should be no surprise that the service’s brilliant iPhone application added advertising today.
The ads themselves are unobtrusive. They are simple overlays… Continue Reading
Yahoo: The ultimate music search engine — for four artist tracks and 25 playbacks at least
The best features for any product tend to be the ones that work exactly how you think they should. You can add Yahoo’s newly revamped music artist shortcuts in its search results to that list — sort of. Simply do a Yahoo search for an artist and a card will show up along the top of the results page with the artists’ site, links to albums, lyrics, etc. That’s all nice, if old. But the… Continue Reading
Video: Upcoming version 1.1 of Last.fm’s iPhone app?
Last.fm, one of the truly great online music sites, has an iPhone app, but I find it somewhat lacking. It seems to have most of the features it needs, but for whatever reason the app just doesn’t flow well. Loading time seems to be a constant issue and site navigation is clumsy.
That looks to change with new version of the application, as you can see in the video below leaked out by Digg founder Kevin… Continue Reading
Muxtape gets shut down. Pandora might get shut down. Everyone is pissed off. A call for patronage.
Muxtape, the popular virtual mix tape music sharing service, was taken down today due to a “problem with the RIAA,” reads a note on their site. That “problem” likely has something to do with the storage and usage of copyrighted music. Those of us who have been fans of the service for months knew this was coming eventually, it was just a question of when the service would get popular enough for the Recording Industry… Continue Reading
8tracks makes it easy to mix your own music play lists, and do it legally; 3,000 passes to early beta here
The music labels haven’t made it easy for unauthorized web sites to stream music on the web. But David Porter, the founder of 8tracks, has figured out a way around the copyright law obstacles to deliver a useful and legal sharing service to music fans.
New York-based 8tracks capitalizes on the same right that radio stations have to play live music over the air: it’s OK to stream recorded music over the web, as long as… Continue Reading
Mama’s got a Pandora-enabled Squeezebox, daddy never sleeps at night
The Pandora app for the iPhone and iPod Touch is simply brilliant because it takes the two great elements of the web browser-based experience, music discovery and no cost, and transfers them to a portable device. Pandora had previously been available on some other non-computer devices, but only if you paid a subscription fee. Now it’s rolling out a free version to select home audio streaming devices, according to CNET’s Crave blog.
The Logitech Squeezebox streaming… Continue Reading
Pandora and AOL Radio apps on the iPhone rock, roll users over to iTunes to buy
I have a confession to make: I haven’t listened to the radio in months. I’m fine with that, I have plenty of music on my various mp3 players, but it becomes problematic when I’m in the mood for new music. There are great online tools for this such as Muxtape and even iTunes music recommendations, but I often feel like something new when I’m on the go.
Enter two new brilliant apps for the iPhone and… Continue Reading
Roundup: Sony opens to online advertisers, Electronic Arts confirms Rupture acquisition and more
Here’s the latest action:
Sony opens to in-game ads — The company is about to announce support for ads in the PlayStation 3 video game console, and in-game advertising company IGA Worldwide will be the first to announce a deal, according to Forbes and other publications. As video games become both more lucrative and more expensive to make, this seems like an obvious revenue source, albeit one that may not be welcomed by all gamers. No word… Continue Reading