Rdio iPad App On Its Way

by Brenna Ehrlich

Music subscription service Rdio will soon be releasing an iPad app, making it one of the few services of its kind to release such an offering (at least officially).

It’s not available yet — Apple has yet to approve it — but Rdio is saying that it will soon add an iPad app to its roster of platforms, including web, Mac and Windows desktop clients, mobile phone applications for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7, in-home devices like Sonos and Roku, and in the car on Pioneer AppRadio. News of the app’s existence leaked Tuesday, but Rdio does not know when the app will officially be available for download.

We will have a hands-on locked and loaded as soon as you can get your paws on Rdio for iPad, but we can tell you now that it will be a similar experience to Rdio as it appears on other platforms, complete with social aspects (the ability to follow friends and influencers), offline caching, user profiles (featuring user collections and activity), charts, playlisting, new releases, recommendations and artist radio stations. Users will have access to 9 million songs on the iPad, provided they are Rdio Unlimited subscribers (for $9.99 per month).

Among the many on-demand contenders, Rdio is one of the few to offer an iPad app (Pandora, which is not on-demand, was an early iPad adopter). Slacker Radio has an app designed for iPhone and iPad, and services like Spotify and MOG’s apps work on the iPad. But Rdio’s product was built especially for tablet use.

Again, this service is not yet available in the iTunes App store.

Startup Plotting a Pandora for Books

by Aaron Maxwell

Name: BookLamp

Quick Pitch: A book recommendation engine built on book content and writing style instead of sales data.

Genius Idea: Making it easier to discover good books that haven’t neared the best seller list yet.

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Stephen King fans recognize the name Richard Bachman as a pseudonym that the famous author published several books under early on in his career. Had Amazon’s book recommendation capability existed before King’s identity was ousted in 1985, however, it would be unlikely to have recommended Bachman to a King lover. Similarly, few friends were likely to have heard of the new author.

“At times, being able to ignore the marketing data can be good for the recommendation,” explains BookLamp CEO Aaron Stanton.

BookLamp has created a book recommendation engine that when asked to search for books similar to Stephen King novels will turn up his alter ego’s writings. It works by cataloging what the startup sometimes refers to as “DNA of books.”

The Da Vinci Code, for instance, contains 18.6% Religion and Religious Institutions, 9.4% Police & Murder Investigation, 8.2% Art and Art Galleries, and 6.7% Secret Societies & Communities (among others), according to BookLamp’s engine. The program also catalogs things like denseness and length, all of which allow it to take someone’s favorite book and recommend others like it.

Throughout the last two years, the company has formed partnerships with about 11 book publishers who use the tool to help select manuscripts. In early August, it plans to launch a full consumer-facing product in partnership with Random House and Kensington Books.

Since the process requires BookLamp to scan the entire content of a book in order to catalog it, only the about 20,000 books from these publishers will be available at first. But unlike the current site, which is intended as a demonstration of the technology more than a consumer product, readers will be able to tweek their recommendation criteria. For instance, they’ll be able to request “something like the Da Vinci Code” but “less dense” or “shorter” or “more fight scenes.”

The angel-funded startup is already breaking even and plans to continue pulling in most of its revenue from its publisher partners. Stanton says that he doesn’t anticipate selling books on the site or advertising.

Aside from pointing people to literary contentment, their business goal is rather to encourage other publishers to sign on.

“We’re hoping that the BookLamp site is able to do for us is to get into the mindset of the editorial people, ” Stanton says. “So if the executive brings us down and says take a look at this interesting thing, they can say, oh yes, our readers are using this material.”

Pandora Files for IPO

by Adam Ostrow

Pandora has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, setting the music-recommendation service on the path toward an initial public offering.
Rumors of an IPO had been intensifying over the past month, with the company said to be looking to raise $100 million in an offering. Pandora did not disclose the size of its offering in its filing, but it did reveal detailed financials.
For the nine months ended October 31, 2010, the company reports revenue of $90 million, with the bulk of it ($77.8 million) coming from advertising and the rest from subscriptions. The company is essentially at break even, with a loss of just $0.3 million in that same period.
Pandora also now has more than 80 million registered users, with the average listener tuning into the service for more than 10 hours per month. The majority of that activity now takes place on mobile devices, with the company also saying that the “number of listener hours on mobile devices has surpassed listener hours on traditional computers and we expect that this trend will continue and is likely to accelerate.”
More recently, the company has been working to embed its service in more places, including autos and Internet-connected televisions.
The filing comes as the market for tech offerings continues to heat up, with Demand Media successfully completing its $150 million IPO last month, with other big deals including LinkedIn, Kayak and Skype likely to take place later this year.

Why Pandora can't just play your favorite band

By Mark Milian, CNN

(CNN) -- Pandora's internet radio service doesn't force variety onto listeners for their health. In this case, it's the law, says founder Tim Westergren.


The website lets users type in the names of their favorite songs or musicians in order to get a radio station customized to their tastes.


Newcomers to Pandora, and even some longtime listeners, have wondered why, if they type in, say, "The Beatles," they can't just get a marathon of Fab Four tracks.


The answer is tucked away in a support page on the company's website and was addressed directly by its founder last week.Pandora operates under a government statutory license, a class of agreements managed by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board. This allows Pandora to play a maximum of four songs by a particular artist during a three-hour listening session, the company says.


The provisions, which ban "on-demand" listening, also prevent Pandora from offering functions such as rewind, Westergren notes.To match Pandora's catalog, companies like Apple and Rhapsody, which offer downloads or on-demand streaming, have to negotiate agreements with the four major labels and dozens of music publishers.

Spotify, the popular European streaming music service, has spent more than a year trying to convince labels to sign on and blames the complex U.S. music industry for delays.For several years, Pandora has tried to lobby Congress and resist royalty fee hikes proposed by a major music industry organization.


"It would be way too hard to license directly with over 80,000 artists in our collection -- the majority of whom are independent," Pandora's Westergren wrote on the question-and-answer service Quora.


The tradeoff: Having to endure songs from Ringo's solo records inbetween Beatles hits.

Top 25 Android apps: The best of the best

By Jason Hiner

The Android Market may not have as many apps as the iPhone App Store yet, but there are still enough to be overwhelmed, and it’s growing at a breakneck pace. To help you sort through them all, here’s my list of the best apps I’ve found on Android. Again, remember that this is a snapshot in time. The Android platform is developing so quickly right now that I guarantee my home screen look different a month from now.
The best way to view my list of the top Android apps is in the screenshot gallery. However, you can also view my top 25 in the list below.

The screenshots

The list

1. Google Voice
Google Voice is a service that is so useful I consider it one of the top benefits of Android itself, especially since Apple rejected the Google Voice app for the iPhone. It gives you a phone number that can ring to multiple places or devices and it allows you to access all of your voicemail and text messages over the Web. The Android app integrates even deeper. It can make outgoing calls look like they’re coming from your Google Voice number so that you can keep your real mobile number private.
2. Advanced Task Killer
One of the realities of having a multitasking mobile OS in Android is that you have to manage your apps so that they don’t hurt performance or battery life. Advanced Task Killer (or ATK) is my favorite. It even comes with a widget that you can tap once to kill all open apps.
3. Dropbox
Dropbox is a great cloud service that automatically syncs a folder of files between multiple computers (Windows, Mac, or Linux). This app extends Dropbox to Android and interacts with other apps (such as Documents To Go) to open the files.
4. Evernote
Once you get used to typing on a virtual keyboard (and it honestly took me over a year to do it), then these devices are great for note-taking, and Evernote is a great note-taking app. It is similar to Dropbox in that it saves data locally but syncs it across all your machines and devices.
5. DroidAnalytics
For some reason Google doesn’t have an official app (for either Android or iPhone) for Google Analytics. The best one I’ve found on Android is DroidAnalytics. Another good one is mAnalytics.
6. Documents To Go
The free version of Documents To Go offers a great little reader for Word and Excel files. You can upgrade to the full version (for $15) if you want to edit files and add PowerPoint files to the mix. If you do want editing capability, I’d also recommend taking a look at QuickOffice.
7. Amazon Kindle
I never warmed up to the Amazon Kindle e-reader, but I’m a big fan of the Kindle mobile app. Since it was released I’ve read a lot more books simply because my smartphone is always with me and I can pull it and read a few pages anytime I’ve got a couple minutes free.
8. Places Directory
This is an awesome app for finding shops and services near your current location. From restaurants to movie theaters to medical facilities to taxis, this app is very accurate and takes advantage of the business information from Google Local. This app is better than the info you get from a GPS unit (or app) and better than any of the similar apps available on the iPhone.
9. Tripit
I dig Tripit. It is by far the best app I’ve found for keeping track of all my travel itineraries. It runs on some great backend systems. You simply forward your confirmation emails for your flights, hotels, rental cars, and more to Tripit and it automatically organizes them into trips with all your details and confirmation numbers.
10. Seesmic
Twitter is an amazing instant-intelligence engine and it was made for mobile browsing. Although there’s an official Twitter app for Android now, Seesmic is still the best Android Twitter client.
11. FCC Speedtest
I’m obsessed with running speed tests to check my bandwidth in various places, both to see 3G fluctuations and to check the quality of Wi-Fi. There are a number of really good speedtest apps, but my new favorite is the FCC Test app.
12. Astro File Manager
Another one of the great things about Android (if you’re a geek or a tinkerer) is that you have lower-level access to the system itself. Astro is an app that lets you navigate the Android file system.
13. Got To Do
There are plenty of to-do apps to choose from on Android but I prefer Got To Do because of the solid interface and the fact that it can sync with the online service Toodledo.
14. Gist
Many of us have contact lists scattered across various computers, devices, and online services. Gist is a Web service that can bring them together and even pull in stuff from the Web to help you stay up to date with your most important contacts. There’s an Android app as well as an iPhone app.
15. TED Mobile
TED is a fascinating event that features a meeting of the minds of some of society’s most influential thinkers. You’ll definitely disagree with some of them, because there’s a large diversity of opinions, but many talks are worth listening to. What I love is that they’ve taken the videos from their conference and made them freely available on the Web. This app provides a great way to access the videos. I hope more conferences follow TED’s lead on this.
16. Pandora
Pandora is a streaming “radio station” for the Internet age. You simply search by an artist or song and it will create a running playlist based on that one piece of information. It intersperses an occasional ad between songs but the ads tend to be fairly localized and occasionally even useful.
17. Shazam
If you want to impress your friends with a mobile app, show them Shazam. Ever hear a song being played at a store or on the radio and ask yourself, “Oh, what song is that?” That’s where Shazam comes in. Just hit the button and let it listen for 15 seconds, query its database, and then return the name of artist and the song. It has about an 80% success rate.
18. Dial Zero
Are you one of those people who dials a customer service line and just keeps pressing zero until you get to talk to a real person? Then Dial Zero is your new friend. This app provides a directory of a ton of U.S. businesses and gives you numbers to help you get closer to a real person and instructions for which prompts to hit to speak to a human being as quickly as possible.
19. Google Goggles
This is a fun app that is a little but ahead of its time. It does visual searches. You can take pictures of things and then the app tries to tell you what they are. It’s limited in its scope but it is pretty cool, and it’s definitely a peek into the future. One of the coolest features is the ability to take pictures of text in a foreign language and let that app translate for you. In a foreign country, this can help you read street signs and avoid going into the wrong bathroom. :-)
20. Google Sky Map
Ever look up at the night sky and try to tell your kids the name of that constellation you’re pointing at, or try to remember which planet that is in the southern sky? Google SkyMap lets you point your smartphone at it and get the information. This is part of a new breed of apps called “Augmented Reality” apps that layer digital information on top of real world experiences.
21. Tricorder
A lot of geeks I know like to say that our smartphones are becoming more and more like the Tricorders on Star Trek. Well, here’s a fun app that turns your Android device into a virtual Tricorder. It even offers some useful environmental information, including GPS data, wireless data, and ambient sound measurements.
22. FxCamera
Honestly, the camera software on Android is an area where major improvements are needed, but this app is a great example of what’s possible. It has solid camera controls, full customization options, and offers some great effects for photos.
23. Photoshop Mobile
Photoshop is, of course, the best known photo editor in the world and its mobile app doesn’t do anything to hurt that reputation. But while the desktop version is know for having a zillion features, the mobile app is distinguished by its simplicity. It’s the best Android (and iPhone) photo editing app for simple crops, brightness adjustments, and sharpens, for example.
24. Bump
Bump is a fun (and useful) idea for sharing info between two phones using the accelerometer, and it works across Android and iPhone. You can use it to share contact info (yours and others), photos, and apps. You both simply open the Bump app, choose what you to share, and then hold the phones in your hands and bump your hands together.
25. Barcode Scanner
This app turns the Android camera into a barcode scanner. You simply scan a product’s UPC code and let the app go to work to find it in Google Product Search or a search on the open Web. You’ll be amazed at how fast it works. This is great for when you’re shopping retail and you want to check the price of a product online before buying to make sure you’re paying a fair price.