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Source:Mashable!

Let me say from the outset that I am a thorough fan of Pandora and its browser-based and iPhone-friendly offerings. Both work exceptionally well. (Most of the time, anyway. Music recommendation isn’t a perfect science - with or without a so-called Genome Project involved in the process.) Yet the Washington Post has featured an exposé by Peter Whoriskey this weekend to the effect that Pandora, save for a swift change in royalty fees stipulated for Internet music playback by SoundExchange, the representative for a number of studios in the industry, will soon be facing a “pull-the-plug kind of decision.” So says the founder of the service, Tim Westergren.

That, I hold no reservations in saying, would be (all but) tragic. Pandora has added considerable value to the custom radio market, and its arrangements with mobile phone carriers and home theater systems by Slim Devices (Sqeezebox) and Sonos are quite elegant methods for casual listening sans a PC.

Yet, I feel I must beg the question: Is the royalty system all that gives Pandora and the people behind it the kind of finite outlook they predict as a result of drastically increased licensing costs? Might it not be at least partly due to the competition’s much more expansive implementation of social services intertwined with music streaming and recommendation that targets Pandora for expiration? Is it, when all is said and done, an algorithm, or a set of algorithms, that music fans wish for? Or is it interactive, person-to-person frameworks by which to share and learn of favorite artists and new releases they crave more? Popular names like Last.fm and imeem are readily serving to such demand quite well.

For the time being, Pandora seems quite healthy, I’ll allow. Google shows that the last 12 months for the site have generally moved upward from a low of 200,000 visitors per day in July 2008 to 400k by July 2008. It then witnessed a surge to about 450k in the days immediately after. But a service like imeem, for instance, which carries quite a few social networking components in addition to its media-rich archives, has a sort of all-in-oneness to it, and Google marks it as having had 400k visitors in July 2007 turn to 800k a year later.

Similarly, Last.fm is also a popular destination for social music entertainment. Its name is well enmeshed in the market. Mind you, it is early neck-and-neck with Pandora, user-wise, so it would be silly to think it’s anything of an outstanding financial success. But in terms of assets, I would venture to peg Last.fm as a more promising wager going into 2009 and beyond. (Just for reference, Google Trends shows Last.fm as having experienced ups and downs over the last four seasons, but it has often maintained a rough 400k daily visitors.)

Now, there is without question a noticeable segment of the Pandora listenership that has with it a critical feature for the service’s continuance: allegiance. There’s considerable affinity for the service, from the core utility to the various accessories the company has added to its repertoire, and if SoundExchange weren’t forcing its hand greedily, Pandora would not be in serious trouble. But unless it can command a greater advertising premium - Westergren told the Washington Post that it would soon add intermittent, in-stream ads, a la NPR (“The next half-hour is brought to you by…,” is the example he offers) - the company really is at the mercy of SoundExchange. More users would perhaps be helpful to bring in more ad dollars, but Pandora would then have to deliver more streaming music, and pay in kind for that increase. A rather circular situation, in short.

Perhaps brighter days will greet the gang at Pandora in the weeks to come. But it has investors to satisfy, and the burden of SoundExchange clearly isn’t making life easy. ($17 million of a projected $25 million in revenue for this year will go toward royalties.) I only question whether the Last.fm class of social music sites is really where the future lies, and that something like Pandora, while superb in its own right, is not heavy enough on community building to sustain itself indefinitely.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Pandora Now Free!Reciva Adds Pandora To Their DevicesPandora Now Available Anywhere With GlobalPandoraSnocap Launches Pandora MashupRumor: Pandora Adding Videos?Pandora Remains Blocked to International UsersLast.fm and Pandora - Music Discovery Services

Source:Mashable!

So you’re a modern day storm chaser. “Twister” remains in your top 5 favorite flicks ever. You trawl YouTube for highlights, send off 140-character-long remarks about everything from monsoons around Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, watch for news of tornadoes in the American Midwest, and follow coastal onslaughts brought on by hurricanes of intensities grand and grander. Put on your wetsuit then, because a hardy sea creature called Fay, presently traveling through Cuba, is slated to hit southern Florida early next week, and the volume of information available to Web-savvy observers is extensive.

Of course, you can visit the de facto forecaster for many a weather watcher - Weather.com - for relevant information. The site is home to news reports, an interactive tracker, videos, and satellite data. All the standard stuff. If you’re situated in the target zone, for whatever reason, and you’re one to document such occurrences, you can upload videos for site visitors to see.

Another base of operation on the Web, MyFoxHurricane.com, run out of the Floridian city of Tampa Bay, seems to do Weather.com one better so far as visual material is concerned. The front page is literally stuffed with satellite readings, both static and time-lapsed. And like Weather.com, MyFoxHurricane offers coverage of all regions most vulnerable during the year’s peak hurricane season: the Eastern Atlantic, the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and the entire southeastern seaboard of the US. The site also gives users the ability to view live video, watch a “supertracker,” chat with fellow visitors, and even transfer hurricane data to Google Earth if you choose. The site presents links to various governmental and non-profit organizations as well. One such destination is NOAA’s National Weather Service website.

The National Weather Service website is, visually speaking, predictably basic, but it’s a useful resource nonetheless. For a quick way to look at multiple perspectives taken by NOAA of the situation pertaining to Hurricane Fay’s presumed path of travel north through Florida, the NWS is perhaps one of the best places to go. No video to consume, from what we can gather, but if you’re interested in the goings on surrounding the cyclone, you can glean some unfiltered output in the ‘State’ link under the ‘Text Messages’ designation.

AccuWeather is one more source for information on storms, which, like all of the abovementioned destinations, has done the duty of putting Fay front and center. It has gathered the requisite satellite and radar data, video updates, analysis, and warnings for advanced preparation, and, if need be, evacuation. It should be said that the layout of AccuWeather is somewhat of a strong point for the service. Nearly everything one could wish for is immediately on tap.

Mobile

As for mobile readings and alerts, both Weather.com and AccuWeather make for quality information engines. Each service’s mobile-specific websites are free to use (they do require mobile Web connections, however). For iPhone owners, the always-available Weather application, which consults AccuWeather, does lack in detail, so if you find yourself wanting for an enhanced view of Fay’s situation this week, WeatherBug [iTunes URL] provides a free application download.

There is also Twitter to consider! Sure, it’s had its ups and downs, some particularly newsworthy in and of themselves. But as with the geological tremors that swept parts of California late last year and earlier this year, there’s no question that the microblogging service we’ve developed undying love-hate relations with will prove useful to anyone concerned with Hurricane Fay and her abusive intentions.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm and is filed under video, News, social networking, web 2.0, web, Weather, Lists, local, Miami, austin, cyclone, fay, hurricane. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.