pandora

Pandora CTO: 'The iPhone changed our lives'

The majority of Pandora's business comes through mobile devices; 70 percent, to be exact.

Yet like many Web services that began with only the desktop on the mind, the early Pandora team had no inkling that mobile would become the runaway success it is.

"Like most rock bands, Pandora was sort of like a 10-year success in the making," Tom Conrad, CTO and EVP of Pandora, told the audience at GigaOm's Mobilize conference in San Francisco.

Despite holding on to the ambition to become "the future of radio," in Conrad's words, Pandora's … Read more

Facebook get groovy with music services

Kindle lets people borrow e-books from their public library, Pandora gets a site redesign in HTML5, and Facebook has some big changes in store at its F8 developers conference.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Buzz Out Loud 1557: Facebook is not the boss of me (Podcast)

Adam Curry joins the show today to discuss Google's antitrust hearing (charade or not charade?), Facebook's redesign backlash, and how HP's board is looking at ousting Leo Apotheker as CEO--which apparently has many more political ramifications than we would have expected. Things you find out when Adam is on the show.

Pandora pushes out HTML5 site redesign, lifts cap

In just a few short years, Pandora's apps for iOS and Android have become an ever-present part of the smartphone experience. But as the company's growth in mobile exploded, its Web-based player was stuck in the past with a design that no longer matched the look of its apps or standalone Pandora One desktop software.

Today, Pandora unveiled a dramatically overhauled site design. Beyond a welcome new look, the code behind the site now uses HTML5 in favor of Adobe Flash. In its own press release, Pandora credits the switch to HTML5 for opening up creative new cross-platform … Read more

Facebook adding Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, and more?

We may finally have the answer to the great mystery of who Facebook will partner with to bring a music service to its massive social network: Everyone.

Dutch entrepreneur and developer Yvo Schaap took a look at the HTML for all the major music services and found that several had references in meta tags to what appears to be a custom Facebook format.

Specifically, Schaap found Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, Soundcloud, Rdio, Deezer (France), and VEVO all seem to be tagging their songs to be Facebook-compatible.

Among the notable services absent from the list are Pandora and Napster. Pandora has been … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1548: Carol Bartz? Unprofessional? Say it ain't effin' so. (Podcast)

The Yahoo aftershocks continue as Carol Bartz gives an angry, expletive-filled interview to Fortune and employees give Jerry Yang an angry, expletive-filled earful at an all-hands meeting where Yahoo tries to explain what comes next. Also, Apple upholds its reputation as a silent impenetrable fortress that doesn't care much for your security, by failing to patch Safari against fraudulent Web certificates and not saying a dang thing about it.

Workout got you down? Pandora hopes to help

If you're like me, a jog without music just drags. Visions of the proverbial gerbil on the exercise wheel penetrate the brain, and the miles go by achingly slowly. Add the right song, at the right volume, and suddenly the run becomes something akin to enjoyable.

Recognizing the value of a good workout station, Pandora today announced a new workout genre with 12 stations. And the winners are:… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1540: Astronomy is a girl's best friend (Podcast)

On today's show, we discover the universe's biggest diamond floating out there in space. Plus, the FCC is investigating why cell phone networks went down during this week's East Coast earthquake, especially with Hurricane Irene bearing down on the East Coast even as we speak. Our BOL PSA to you: text, don't call. And also, be safe. Plus, Pandora makes some money and the most awkward voicemail session ever.

2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid: Smarter, more efficient

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." That must have been Toyota's mantra when approaching the redesigned 2012 Camry, because the broad strokes haven't changed much for this generation. However, for prospective Camry owners, that's a good thing. The Camry's strong points--comfort, safety, and reliability--appear to have been left intact. But the areas in which the previous generation of the Camry could use a bit of improvement--cabin technology, fuel economy, and that awful interior design--have been massaged and tweaked.

We took a ride in the 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid XLE to get … Read more

This Day in Tech: BART shuts down cell service to stop protests

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Friday, August 12.

Bay Area Rapid Transit, a regional transportation system in the San Francisco area, cut wireless service prior to a planned protest at four downtown San Francisco subway stops. Activists were responding to a shooting by a BART police officer, but their protest seems never to have materialized because of the disruption of cell service. "BART staff or contractors shut down power to the nodes and alerted the cell carriers," James Allison, deputy chief communications officer … Read more