A Conversation with Tim Westergren from Pandora Internet Radio

Pandora internet radio is one of the most interesting and unusual experiments with music on the internet. At first glance it doesn’t seem particularly extraordinary. After all radio was around for decades before the internet existed. But Pandora is more than just a clone of traditional broadcasting.

The Music Genome Project

At the heart of Pandora is something called the Music Genome Project. In simple terms that means every song they offer is analyzed by someone with significant formal musical training to describe a number of characteristics. Based on a thumbs up or thumbs down rating you give songs as you hear them Pandora attempts to find the music you want to hear using a combination of those characteristics. You can even set up multiple personalized channels with completely different preferences.

On October 13, 2009 Tim Westergren, one of Pandora’s founders, came to Des Moines, IA to speak to a group of listeners. For the last couple of years he’s made many such stops in different cities. He came to discuss the history of Pandora and also its future. As he talked about where the company came from he asked for questions or comments from the audience about where it’s going.

After the meeting I sat down with him for a few minutes to discuss some things that are of interest to our readers. We talked about both the technology and the business of internet radio.

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Are you ready for Digital TV?

In recent months you’ve probably been faced with an ever growing amount of terminology and abbreviations about the new digital TV technology that’s just around the corner. You may even be using it right now and still not understand what all the public service announcements, TV station promos, and marketing is talking about.

The good news is you’re not alone. Figuring out the alphabet soup of technical jargon and marketing-speak is a problem faced by people all over. Fortunately it’s not as complicated as it seems on the surface. With a little bit of guidance you can learn how to cut through the noise and understand what’s really going on with your TV.

Read more at the Nero website

US consumers play game of find the DTV converter

If you are one of the millions of Americans who have received a voucher for a government subsidized DTV converter you may be thinking you can just drive down to the store and pick up the unit you want. As I’ve recently found out first hand it’s not quite that easy. The availability and selection of converters isn’t nearly as good as the public service announcements make it seem. In fact you might not be able to find what you need locally at all.

Let’s start with supply problems. After spending the better part of an afternoon tracking down a store near me that actually had them in stock, I’ve been calling various local retailers weekly to find out if this was simply a fluke. It’s not.

In fact when I’ve inquired at various Walmart, Target, and Kmart locations the answer has been that they’re out of stock most of the time. In just a couple of cases they indicated that the units come in at least once a week. At the majority of these national chain stores they apparently only receive them sporadically, and most of the time they fly off the shelves, often in less than a single day.

Read more at Afterdawn.com

FCC finally schedules a test for DTV transition

Now that the scheduled date for nearly all analog TV broadcasts in the US to be shut off approaches the FCC is finally getting around to some real world testing. Wilmington, North Carolina has been chosen for the tests, in part because all the local broadcasters already have digital signals available. On September 8 WWAY, WSFX, WECT, WILM-LP, and W51CW will turn off their analog signals, leaving only the digital signal available to viewers.

“The commission identified Wilmington as one of only a limited number of potential test markets because all the commercial stations in the market have already completed construction of their DTV channels and are operating at full post-transition power,” said FCC chairman Kevin Martin. “The commission will use the test market as an opportunity to work very closely in advance with broadcasters, viewers, cable companies and others who will be affected to anticipate and address any problems.”

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iPhone launch affected by activaction and upgrade server problems

If you bought one of the new iPhone 3G’s that were officially launched today you may have been unpleasantly surprised to find that it couldn’t be activated due to Apple’s servers being overwhelmed. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as any surprise considering the same thing happened last year when the original iPhone launched. No doubt many had assumed that experience would have guaranteed Apple would have taken measures to avoid it this time around.

And the issue isn’t limited to new phones either. Owners of the original version who decided to take advantage of the free upgrade to the new software version in order to use the new iTunes App Store are also having problems. Like the new phones they must be activated after installing the update, turning a number of iPhones already in use into significantly less useful iPaperweights.

Read more at Afterdawn.com

EMA report shows games, not Blu-ray with most impressive gain in ‘07

The Entertainment Merchants Associatioon (EMA) has released its annual report on the US home entertainment sales and rental market. After last year’s prediction that high definition discs would dominate the market by 2009 you might expect to see significant growth during 2007. In terms of percentage it was actually fairly impressive at more than 200% sales growth, but in terms of the total market that’s not as impressive as it sounds.

According to the report HD discs still accounted for barely over $260 million in sales during 2007. By comparison standard DVD sales amounted to nearly $16 billion. The EMA’s current estimate for Blu-ray is sales of $9.5 billion in 2012, when they are predicting it will account for higher sales than DVD.

much better for the gaming market. In stark contrast to DVD and other home video formats, spending for games saw a serious increase of 34% from 2006.

Read more at Afterdawn.com

Console sales mean higher revenue but lower profit for Best Buy

For the fiscal quarter ending May 31, Best Buy revenue was up by over a billion dollars compared to last year. Normally that would be good news, but this year it’s something of a mixed blessing.

The problem isn’t so much the amount of money they brought in as what was selling. While they had some success selling items like PCs and flat panel TVs, the big story was video games.

Read more at Afterdawn.com

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