GeekLimit

Back in January, I talked about the possibility of having an iPod-esque device that would enable you to use Pandora while mobile.  I called it the PandoraPod, and beleived that it would usher in a new era of profitability for Pandora, a service I’ve come to see as extremely valuable.   What I like about them is the algorithm-based music recommendations that allow me to hear new and undiscovered music based on my preferences.  I prefer this over “other people that liked this also liked…” because in the latter, you run into the same old stuff over and over again – the system has a tendancy to feed itself.

Today I’m happy to see that along with a very nice site redesign, Pandora has announced that you are now able to use the Pandora service through four different Sprint phones for the very reasonable price of $2.99/month.  Yes, along with your Sprint data plan, you are now able to listen to an unlimited amount of new music for the price of 3 songs on iTunes.  You can even get a free 30-day trial!

Especially due to the threat of raised rates for internet radio (now coming July 15), I am very glad Pandora has found a way to not only monetize its services, but increase the value of its services by going mobile.

Great job, guys, and I’;ll be happy to see this work out uite well for you.  I’ve been pushing for you guys to go mobile, and I sincerely think this will singlehandedly launch Pandora to the top of the internet radio services.

It looks like the new iGoogle name for Google Personalized Homepage is starting to make a little more sense.  They’ve rolled out a new feature where you can make your own Google Homepage modules – “no programming required”.  Apparently you can make them publically available, or send them to certain people.  In any case, this is a good step.

In the past, you could customize your homepage with publically-available knowledge that mattered to you.  Now you can include private connections to other people in the same place.  I like it!  Unfortunately, it doesn;t seem to be available for Google Apps users yet for their Organizational homepages.  I can easily see this as an easy way for companies, departments, teams, etc. to make inter-company information available to the people who need it.

Good job, big G!  Even if they’re not the first in this space, it makes for a good value-add to an already-popular product.

The users of Digg have finally had enough with the false ‘management’ of front-page stories and the censorship of certain stories by Digg management. Upon posting stories naming the HD-DVD master key, several were taken down, as stories of that nature are on Digg. Users refused to give up, and began a massive flood campaign listing the key on Digg. At one point yesterday, the first five pages in the ‘technology’ section were all related to the incident, ad Digg had at least a 10+ minute downtime as the servers lost their ability to keep up with the flood.

Finally at around midnight last night, Digg founder Kevin Rose posted his own story listing the HD-DVD key and cited his post from the official Digg blog:

“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you ’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.”

As of the time of this writing, the post had been digg’ed 23,800 times after its listing 10 hours, 48 minutes. The digg system is still in recovery mode.

Personally, I feel any usefulness of Digg was lost when it was discovered that certain stories are engineered by the Digg staff to make it to the top, and some are killed. While it’s fine to have a directory service, it’s not OK to describe your service as being driven by the users when there is clearly a large amount of control being placed on the system by its management.

Digg the Kevin Rose post, and make sure to let Digg and other fake “crowdsourcing” companies know that although we’re “just users”, most of us do still have some sense of what’s morally right and wrong and we’re not afraid to act on it, even if it isn’t in the best interests of a company (or site sponsor’s) marketing strategy…