A few days ago, Sarah Perez reported that Pandora was available on Windows Mobile. I was pretty excited to see this, only to find out later that the application was not supported on my new Palm Treo Pro. However today, my colleague Eric Strait pointed me to this CAB download. I just tried it, and it worked fabulously. I’m not certain this is an "official" Pandora release however.

Pandora is a beautiful application that is essentially an internet radio station with multiple channels. Pandora is a Valley crowd favorite, and has risen to the top of the list of the most downloaded applications on the the iPhone.

For my mobile music needs, I’ve been using Imeem over Skyfire on my Palm Treo Pro. A native application by Pandora is definitely welcome. The application is very simple which it makes it very easy to use.

Here’s a video demonstrating the application in action on the Motorola Q9c:

"ai"

mypace launched it’s online music service, myspace music last week. I’m a little torn about how I feel about the service and whether what they have to offer will lure me over. My initial take on it is that it’s a lot like a very popular service I have used for as long as I can remember, called imeem.

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myspace is a social network with a music streaming service in myspace Music. imeem’s approach is kind of the opposite – it is a music streaming service with a social networking overlay.

myspace has the clear advantage when it comes to number of users and the number of popular artists on the site. However, imeem is growing at a preposterously high rate:

• In September 2007, TechCrunch had reported that imeem was the fastest growing social network in the US, up 1590% in monthly uniques.
• And according to Comscore, imeem had displaced Yahoo! Music as the top (US) music streaming site.
• Back in August ‘08, the SF Chronicle reported that imeem was seeing 27 million uniques and about 65,000 new registrations each day.

The SF Chronicle article brings me to my next point – what I love about imeem is their involvement in the local music scene. They are small enough that they can get involved in music festivals and help promote local artists. Yet they are big enough with their reach that these artists want to get on imeem. Most recently, imeem sponsored the Treasure Island Music Festival and Outside lands, two very popular local festivals here in San Francisco. imeem definitely has a very viral angle to it and has the potential to lure local indie artists. I can see these artists getting lost in the fray in myspace Music. imeem also has a fairly comprehensive flavor of international music on their site – I’m only guessing this is something imeem tends to overlook for now, but this helps sustain imeem’s international visitor growth.

Both myspace and imeem have adopted OpenSocial. This was a decent move for myspace given that they had blocked sites like imeem from their site not too long ago, but I think it was also a safe move to appease the web 2.0 world, really. For one, I can’t think of one application from this list that is of any relevance to me. I wonder what the adoption of these applications on myspace has been. While imeem has also adopted OpenSocial, what’s more compelling is their Media Platform APIs that they launched in March this year. I can see a lot of potential for adopting imeem’s services through mobile devices or even desktop applications.

imeem also recently launched a site redesign, something that is welcome by most users. I remember having a discussion with my sister about a year and a half ago, and what had turned her off about imeem was that it looked cluttered and a lot like this site she used at the time called (surprise surprise) myspace.

It’ll be interesting to see how this battle plays out in the long run. Competition is undoubtedly a good thing – in fact I’d like to think that myspace Music may have had something to do with imeem’s site redesign. But I don’t think there should be any concern about myspace dislodging imeem’s existing user base and having them pack up and move over. They key to winning in this space will be about how easily users outside of myspace can discover new music.

“ai”

I’m suffering from a serious case of blogger’s block. If you’re wondering, yes, it is like writer’s block in a lot of ways. I’ve also been extremely busy and suffering with some (professional) issues. But aside from that, everything’s been peachy. In a few lines here are some things I’ve wanted to communicate :

• MIX08 was awesome in many many ways.
• I was at SxSWi. Loved it! It was my first time, and I think I can easily say that its my fave conference yet.
  • Along with my Chinese-American friend Vivian, I caught the world premiere of Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. I recorded some bits of the Q&A portion of the premiere and plopped it on youtube : video1 and video2. (ps : someone in the movie dies)
• We launched Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 in SF last week. I had the privilege of doing portions of the keynote with Bob Kelly.
• I got the chance to attend the Under the Radar conference for startups at our campus in Mountain View. That was pretty cool. You can catch all my tweets on it.
• I’ve been twittering a lot. So far, so good. It’s an interesting evil, this Twitter. More on that later.

Here’s what’s coming up :

• I’m helping organize and I’ll speaking at our DigiGirlz event tomorrow (3/25). As many of you know, I love working with kids, and this is the part of my job that really gets me going.
• Next week (4/1) the famous Code Trip swings around to NorCal. We’ll be doing some exciting things up here – stay tuned to the website for details.
• I’ll be speaking on a Web 2.0 panel on 4/14. Wanna come?
• We’ll be bringing some of the MIX magic to the valley. We’re calling it ReMIX and it’ll be held on 4/17 at our Mountain View campus.

Here are things in the pipeline that I plan on writing about in the near future :

• pedanticism (I know it’s not a word)
• "children of the world"
• why is craigslist so popular?
• sometimes yes, sometimes no (I may combine this one with the one on pedanticism)

Shout-outs :

• Shout-out to my buddy Kurt Brockett. This guy is cooler and awesomer than the Fonz. Kurt gets it. He’s always been the life of every party that I’ve been to. And above all, I have immense respect for him because of all his personal accomplishments. He’s a model 27 year old, and I admire him for it.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned, yo. Tah!

now playing : Virginia Moon by Foo Fighters, featuring (s)Norah Jones

"ai"

PS: I, too, have jumped on the bandwagon and joined FriendFeed. You can see catch my "lifestream" at http://www.friendfeed.com/anandiyer.

I have a problem. Songs magically make their way in to my head, and often stay there. Sometimes, I can’t get them out. Sometimes, the only way to get one song out, is to get another one in. There was this incident, and then this incident. It seems to keep happening.

I was super excited when I read this headline on KillerStartups.com : "SongTapper.com : Name That Tune Stuck in Your Head". Of course, this would’ve been a killer idea if the site actually worked. The user interface on the site sucks. I tried ‘tapping’ for several songs, including the one I thought the site should’ve picked up because it’s kinda unique (Gold Digger, Kanye West), but nothing. I think the site’s a giant time-sync with poor navigation and UI.

Can songtapper recognize any of the songs you have stuck in your head?

"ai"

You couldn’t be listening to a better song on a wet Friday afternoon…

now playing : "the past and pending", "the shins"

"ai"

now playing : "hear me out", frou frou

"ai"