2018 Gold Earrings blog

The Pandora playback screen looks much like the standard iPod playback screen, complete with cover art.

What can I do with the Pandora application for the iPhone and iPod Touch?

Yes. New iPhones can use the Pandora app to stream music over 3G or Wi-Fi. Updated first-gen iPhones can stream over Wi-Fi or Edge, and the iPod Touch will obviously only stream over its Wi-Fi connection

An option key allows you to bookmark artsist or songs, or purchase the current song directly from iTunes.

(Credit:
Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

Will using the Pandora iPhone application run down my battery quickly?

Will the iPhone version of the Pandora application stream music over the new 3G cellular connection?

Apple publicly unveiled the Pandora Internet radio
iPhone and
iPod Touch application during the unveiling of the iTunes App store on Thursday, July 10. Tim Westergren, CEO for Pandora, was kind enough to give me a personal tour of the new application. The following is a synopsis of just about every question I had for Tim. Editors’ note: This is not an interview transcript, but a roundup of information on the Pandora iPhone application presented in a FAQ format.

Not likely, since most alarm clock docks trigger song playback from your music library. Some iPod alarm clock docks include an auxiliary input, however, so if you kept music streaming from Pandora all night (and somehow managed not to run down your battery), then it’s possible. Seems like a pain though.

Will Pandora music streams display album art?

Pandora's intelligent recommendation engine explains song choices.

(Credit:
Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

Pandora may eventually consider placing short audio advertisements in its streams, but, Pandora’s first priority is to grow its user base.

Yes. Reports so far suggest that the new iPhone’s battery performance is at its worst when using its 3G connection. Streaming Pandora content over the iPhone’s Wi-Fi connection should produce better battery performance than using 3G.

The iPhone does not currently support streaming stereo audio over its built-in Bluetooth; however, third-party Bluetooth audio adapters are available that fit any minijack audio output.

(Credit:
Pandora)

Pandora's song voting system has made it to its iPhone app as well. Voting on songs helps fine-tune Pandora's personalized song recommendations. People can also pause and skip tracks.

Can I stream Pandora wirelessly from my iPhone over Bluetooth?

(Credit:
Pandora)

If I can connect my iPhone to my
car stereo and stream Pandora over 3G, why would I listen to music on commercial or satellite radio?

What’s the audio quality like?

Does the Pandora iPhone/iPod Touch application have the same limitations on track skipping as the Web version of the Internet radio station?

Yes. Any stations, artist bookmarks, and song like/dislike preferences will be identical between the Pandora Web service and the Pandora application.

How much will iTunes charge for the Pandora application?

Yes. Because of legal restrictions, users cannot skip tracks on Pandora more than six times per hour. Fortunately, Pandora’s Music Genome Project is pretty good at coming up with song selections.

Pandora’s serves its iPod Touch and iPhone audio streams as 64Kbps stereo MP3 files; however, the quality and file format may be retooled once Pandora’s tech team has some time to work with the new iPhone’s hardware.

Will Pandora stations I’ve already created using the Web service be available on the iPhone application?

(Credit:
Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

Keep in mind that Pandora is a music-only service, so you’ll need to get your talk radio, sports, and traffic reports elsewhere. That said, so long as you have decent 3G reception in your area, streaming Pandora internet radio to your car stereo via your iPhone should work fine.

How will Pandora make money off a free application?

Yes, although some music in Pandora’s catalog is still without cover art.

For music lovers, the Pandora internet radio application for the iPhone and iPod Touch is a welcome addition.

Most of the features of Pandora’s Internet radio Web service will be available on its iPhone application as well. People can create radio stations based around artists or songs, bookmark favorite artists or songs, pause and skip tracks, vote on songs, and view descriptions of why a currently playing song was included in your stream. You also have the option to purchase the currently playing song directly over the iTunes Wi-Fi store.

Can I wake up to Pandora radio if I dock my iPhone or iPod Touch into an iPod alarm clock?

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Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

You can create and save custom stations directly from the Pandora app.

It’s free.

EveryScape is a very cool 3D map viewer that has the neat trick of going inside buildings–for a fee. It’s a clever model and very nice looking product, but Google does perhaps 75 percent of what this company does, and has a much larger footprint. And then there’s Microsoft’s PhotoSynth. Could be an acquisition candidate for either company. Previous coverage: EveryScape brings 3D map views inside buildings. At the Launch Pad session, the demonstrator showed a cool prototype of a mobile version of the service on an
iPhone.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, a session of product demos showcases several apps and products with a broader perspective than in previous years. These demos were selected because they dealt with global issues, such as the financial situation, global warming, health care, and even “intractable religious wars.” A panel of judges discussed each of these products. Here is the Webware take:

GoodGuide's new iPhone app.

GoodGuide was one of my favorite products from the TechCrunch50 conference. It tells you how environmentally and socially responsible consumer products are, as well as what harmful materials they may include. Great design and easy to use, as well. See “GoodGuide will save your skin.” Announced here Thursday: iPhone and SMS versions, so you can scan items on store shelves while you are shopping. A cool service gets cooler.

(Credit:
Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)

Carbon Networks Corporation. This is a service that helps companies understand their carbon footprint, and then monetize it. Say what? It looks like a private carbon offset market for businesses. It also provides tools to help companies account for their emissions. For a thorough overview, see our previous coverage, “Carbon counter Carbonetworks grabs funds.” Given that managing carbon emissions is not a core competency of many businesses, it makes sense for analysis and auditing firms to profit from helping companies address the issues.

Qik is a live-streaming product that runs on mobile devices (the company keeps adding support for more platforms). It also lets users chat with the broadcaster. It is an incredibly cool product, and a very powerful tool for journalists, activists, and so on. There are good competitors in this space, however.

(Credit:
Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)

Mok Oh, the founder and chief technology officer for EveryScape demos his company's 3D experience on the iPhone.

Sungevity is a seller of residential solar systems. What’s really cool about it is that to get a quote, you go online, locate your house on a Virtual Earth map, and the company gets back to you with an image of your home with panels on its roof, as well as predicted energy output. Sungevity handles any governmental rebates for you. I tried the system a month or so ago and was astounded by how little it would cost me to put a system up on my roof. See Cutting down solar costs with satellite imagery. Also check out RoofRay.

Predictify is sort of a prediction market, although the CEO says it’s not. It’s really a platform for discussion, he says, and a generator of consumer data. Sponsors ask questions and are charged for the “predictions” that users generate; the most accurate users get rewarded for accuracy. See “Predictify helps you understand other voters.” It’s a very clever market research tool, and publishers can also put widgets on their sites to drive reader engagement. It’s a smart model but like some of the judges, it leaves me a bit cold; I don’t think of market research saving the world.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/ CNET News)

According to Girouard, Google Apps, at $50 per user per year, has 10x better economics than a well-provisioned suite of Microsoft Office products, which would include some administrative support. Rebecca Wettemann of Nucleus Research told me that the difference between a Google and Microsoft solution on Salesforce.com differed by a couple orders of magnitude, and that the Salesforce.com alliance gives Google a sales channel. She also noted that companies should take a tiered approach; some users might need Excel and others could do fine with just the spreadsheet in Google Apps.

Benioff said one of the goals is to “get rid of the albratross of IT.”

This locking of arms by Benioff and Schmidt should force Microsoft to show its hand sooner than later. On April 24 in San Francisco it plans to offer more details on its Live Mesh service, which reportedly synchronizes data between a variety of devices. That won’t quell the call for a nearly free cloud-based, collaborative suite of applications as Salesforce for Google Apps gets some traction.

“Although the two companies are working in the same space in different ways, the models are getting closer and closer. The clouds are beginning to merge,” Schmidt said. Google has even changed its tag line to reflect its investment in applications, from search and ads to search, ads, and apps.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Google chief Eric Schmidt.

For customers who need offline capabilities, Salesforce.com provides support. Dave Girouard, general manager of Google Enterprise, said that Google is committed to making all of its apps available offline via Google Gears. (Google Docs currently has offline support.) “As the Internet becomes more persistent it becomes less of an issue,” Benioff said.

“Customers are demanding a new generation of software, and the standard bearers of the previous generation have not stepped forward,” Benioff said during the rollout event. “The power will be to run your applications in the cloud,” he proclaimed. Coincidentally, Microsoft is launching on Monday the first day of the free 30-day trial of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.

Schmidt also gave his take on the alliance of Google and Salesforce.com. “We know what it takes to build this next generation of services,” he said. “You need a company with values,” he said, citing the social responsibility leadership of Salesforce.com. Importantly, he said, Salesforce.com figured out the model for making money selling services from the cloud. “That model is the defining model of the new computing cloud age,” he said, and it is “a 20- or 30- or 40-year vision.”

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Google/Salesforce.com)

Now the question is whether enterprises will be attracted to the merged clouds. Salesforce.com is eating its own dog food, moving its entire company to Salesforce.com for Google Apps. It’s a viable, and extremely low-cost, alternative to Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, and related products. Salesforce.com has integration with
Microsoft Office, but no equivalent to Gtalk.

Benioff also has referred to Microsoft as a kind of albatross, the old guard of software holding on to the client/server past. Previously, Benioff described Microsoft a dinosaur: I think Microsoft is still a dinosaur. More than ever, it tries to hold onto its monopolistic position around technology that they hold, whether it’s SQL Server, whether it’s NT, whether it’s Windows, whether it’s Office–these are their cash cows they don’t want slaughtered. Benioff recognizes that to achieve success he must eventually replace, not just complement, the enterprise software giants. The alignment with Google is a direct shot at Microsoft, as well as Benioff opportunistically aligning his company with the current alpha company in Silicon Valley.

In a dinner theater setting at the Four Seasons in San Francisco, Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff and Google’s Eric Schmidt officially rolled out Salesforce for Google Apps, the integration of Google Apps, Gmail, Calendar, and Google Talk with the Salesforce.com platform, in 15 languages.

The site is a more specific tool than the publicly available Google Trends tool, unveiled last week, that shows relative Web site traffic for various Web sites.

Google announced a tool called Ad Planner on Tuesday that lets advertisers find Web sites whose visitors match various demographic attributes.

Right now, Google’s tool is available by invitation only, however.

The tool, which was expected, also can show in detail how many people visit a particular Web site. The tool competes with offerings from companies including ComScore and Nielsen Online.

Data can be exported into a spreadsheet for further analysis or for import into Google’s DoubleClick MediaVisor tool for managing ad campaigns, Google said.

(Credit:
Google)

“Enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit,” the company said on its AdWords blog.

Google Ad Planner lets advertisers scrutinize Web site characteristics.

The reason for shutting down the DRM-licensing servers was “every time there is an OS upgrade, the DRM equation gets complex very quickly,” said Bennett, general manager of entertainment, video, and sports for MSN. “Every time, you saw support issues. People would call in because they couldn’t download licenses. We had to write new code, new configurations each time…We really believe that, going forward, the best thing to do is focus exclusively on Zune.”

For the past 18 months, Microsoft has continued to enable former customers of MSN Music to move their song libraries to new computers. Discontinuing that service has been widely criticized. Critics have long said that DRM was a means to control legally purchased music at the expense of consumers. To them, the current situation with MSN proves it.

Bennett said that former MSN Music customers can back up their songs by burning them to CDs. But what about the loss of sound quality should they decide to rerip the music?

Bennett is the Microsoft executive who notified former customers of the now defunct MSN Music service on Tuesday that the company would no longer issue DRM keys for their songs after August 31. This means that, while former customers can listen to their music on authorized computers for as long as the hardware lasts, they won’t be able to transfer songs to a new PC after that deadline.

“No one ever foresaw being in this situation,” Bennett said. “It’s not something we like to do. We want to make it easy and as painless for our customers as possible. We really feel, in the long term, what’s best for people who want to buy music from Microsoft is to move to Zune.”

Microsoft shut down MSN Music in November 2006, following a failed effort to turn the site into a legitimate iTunes challenger. Redmond threw its resources behind the Zune digital music player and its music store, Marketplace.

“Had we had the ability to deliver DRM-free tracks at the time, we absolutely would have done that,” Bennett said. “We talked to the labels at the time about that. As a company, we have continued to push for this. Zune has a subset in their catalog of DRM-free MP3s. Now, the industry is making progress. The labels are understanding the downside of DRM when its used the way they wanted to use it, they end up punishing the users who bought music legally more than those who want to circumvent the system.”

Rob Bennett knew people were going to be angry.

Bennett defended Microsoft. He said the company never wanted DRM on its songs.

“Had we had the ability to deliver DRM-free tracks at the time, we absolutely would have done that. We talked to the labels at the time about that.” –Rob Bennett, Microsoft executive

“We (delivered) music at 160 kbps,” Bennett said. “In my personal (experience), you’re not going to lose that much fidelity.”

Bennett added that Microsoft believes in protecting intellectual property, but the company also wants people to enjoy their media without unreasonable restrictions.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Bennett said that continuing to support the DRM keys was impractical, that the issue only affects a “small number” of people and that focusing exclusively on
Zune was the best way to go. He also noted that it wasn’t Microsoft’s decision to wrap music into digital rights management.

The acquisition will enlarge GroSolar’s presence in California, bolstering its efforts to be a national player in residential solar installations. Currently, the industry is largely made up of local installation companies.

Borrego Solar Systems plans to focus on its commercial and government business, following the acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Dealers in GroSolar’s existing distribution network will see immediate benefit, as we roll out additional best practices to serve our local installers, launch new programs to give homeowners easy access to solar power, and expand the largest distribution warehouse network in the industry and in California,” Jeff Wolfe, GroSolar CEO, said in a statement.

GroSolar, which operates in 12 states and Canada, will add Silicon Valley, Berkeley, Sonoma, Orange County, San Diego, and Massachusetts with the Borrego Solar acquisition.

GroSolar announced plans Thursday to acquire Borrego Solar Systems’ residential solar installation business, in a move to expand its footprint nationwide.

The company’s acquisition comes at a time when the industry is poised to reap the benefits of solar tax credits receiving an eight-year extension as part of the federal stimulus bill.

News.com Poll Obama as gadget
If Barack Obama were a piece of tech gear, which would he be?

iPhone (aka the JesusPhone)
Baby’s first Walkman
Facebook
Windows Vista

View results

If none of our poll options quite fits, in your view, be sure to suggest your own ideas in the Talkback section below. We know you’ll come up with some great ones.

Republicans try for four more years

Democrats’ quest for the White House

As part of CNET News’ election coverage, we thought we’d turn the Crave Friday Poll to a burning question on the minds of so many voters. If the two major presidential candidates were tech gadgets, which would they be? We’ll start with Barack Obama and move on to John McCain next Friday. After all, we believe in equal opportunity (that’s equal opportunity harassment) here.

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