Pandora
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AT&T gets cozy with Pandora for on-device radio
XM radio not so much your thing? AT&T's starting to roll out another officially sanction choice for streaming radio on some of its devices through a new partnership with Pandora. Basically, users can access their personalized Pandora stations directly from their handset -- up to 100 of 'em -- and the carrier specifically mentions that users can enjoy those stations anywhere within its 3G network, suggesting that the streams are probably of a high enough quality to actually be worth listening to. Check it out now on Samsung's SYNC, A717, and A737, the Motorola V3xx and V9, and the LG Trax, CU400, and CU405 for $8.99 a month.
Rip open a PSP battery to find Pandora inside
One of the biggest victories for the homebrew community was the development of Pandora's Battery, a device that allows hackers to unbrick and downgrade nearly every PSP on the market. Reverting systems from later firmware releases from Sony allows hackers to exploit the system and run homebrew on the machine.The usual method of producing a Pandora's Battery required multiple systems and a rather cumbersome software installation process. Quite possibly even more nerve-wracking than the current solution is a new hardware-based one, which requires actual disassembly of the PSP battery. Supposedly, only a single wire needs to be soldered in order for any standard PSP battery to turn into a service one. Quite a fascinating find!We wouldn't be able to muster up the courage to open a battery and start playing around with its innards. However, for the inquisitive, this is yet another fascinating discovery about the particular workings of the PSP.[Via PSP Hacks]
Today's most death-defying video: the PSP Unbricking
We told you yesterday about a magical battery that can actually bring a bricked PSP back from the dead. "Surely you jest," you replied, "that is a power wielded by God and maybe Ken Kutaragi." Well, friends, we now have video proof of such necromancy.After the break, take a look at the Pandora battery in action. Should you not want to watch the entire three-minute Lazarus Process, you can skip ahead to the 2:50 mark and finish from there.
Pandora's battery achieves holy grail of PSP hacking
The constant back and forth between PSP hackers and Sony's firmware upgraders may finally be over, with victory going to the hackers. The folks over at N00bz have released Pandora's battery, a downloadable exploit that creates a memory stick and battery combo that can downgrade any PSP back to the extremely hackable version 1.5 firmware. Even better, the hack will fix PSPs that have been "bricked" by previous failed hacks and "will continue to work for all future firmwares," according to the developers.The exploit is the result of months of behind the scenes work by a team of hackers that figured out how to reset a PSP to Sony's service mode. With hackers no longer needing to concern themselves with how to break new firmware, we can't wait to see what kind of homebrew software the community comes up with for the most powerful portable hardware widely available.[Via PSP Fanboy]
PandoraJam 1.0
I listen to music the way Jobs intended: on my iPod that is filled to the brim with only iTunes Store purchased music, however, I hear tell that there are some people out there that enjoy web based Internet Radio stations. Pandora is a favorite of these darn hippy freaks, with its large selection and easy to use UI. Sadly, a web service simply can't offer up the bells and whistles that an OS X app can.That's where PandoraJam comes in. This $15 app streams music from Pandora and it lets you record songs in AAC format which are then imported into iTunes with cover art and the tags you've set. It also streams Pandora to an Airport Express so you can jam to your LSD inspired tunes on your HiFi.
Pandora's music streaming gets mobile with Sprint
Pandora's tumultuous penchant for locking out US-based listeners based on licensing messes (thanks, RIAA) has taken a back seat to its new over-the-air launch with Sprint. While AT&T customers have had MobiRadio for years, Sprint customers tired of streaming Sirius will have a new reason to use that wireless data for music, so if you've got an EV-DO handset, get that phone browser up and hit Pandora's site. What you'll get in return is a Java applet that gives you access to Pandora's streaming content catalog -- access is free for 30 days; past that is $3/month, naturally.
Zing and Pandora together on a new device?
Looking suspiciously like a certain memory-maker's own WiFi-enabled device just recently launched, it would seem last night Zing and Pandora announced a partnership to bring a new WiFi-enabled media device to bare. (This, of course, in addition to their Sprint and Sonos deals.) A little early to tell anything much about this thing as of yet, but we presume it will go up against that Connect and the forthcoming Slacker in the exciting new realm of internet-radio-enabled portables.
Sonos announces new bundle, Pandora integration
While Sonos hasn't yet found it fit to upgrade their line of home audio streaming devices, they do have a new bundle at that $1,000 pricepoint: now, instead of two ZP80s and a controller, you take home a controller, one ZP80, and its bigger brother, the ZP100. But more interesting still, as of today Sonos is adding Pandora integration for $4 per month, meaning you can get music nerds' favorite recommendation-based customized internet radio streamed directly to your audio system -- album art and all -- for $36 a year (after upgrading to v2.2, available tonight). Not bad if you're a Pandora fan with a Sonos; check out the integration in our mini-gallery.%Gallery-3372%
The Filter iTunes assistant available
We told you about a closed alpha of The Filter back in December, and now a beta is available for download. Basically, The Filter is a little program that interacts with iTunes automatically to create playlists based on your mood. The first time you run it, it analyzes your iTunes library, comparing your tracks to its online database of 4.5 million songs. Then you just select a few (it recommends 3) tracks in iTunes, and hit the 'F' in The Filter's window. It will then create a playlist drawing from your personal iTunes library based on those songs. For each song it will put up a nice translucent window with the album art and the All Music Guide entry on that artist. In addition, you can use The Filter to generate appropriate playlists for your iPod based on mood or activity (e.g. high tempo music for working out).The Filter FAQ says that "the music recommendation engine that is continually learning the listening tastes and choices of tens of thousands of music lovers. This huge collection of information is combined with your own likes and dislikes to create a personal understanding of what songs from your collection you will like to listen to and when." It sounds a lot like Pandora or last.fm but using your own music library. I haven't used it enough to decide if it's accurate, but I think this might be nice alternative to using the randomly generated Party Shuffle. One thing that is unclear to me, however, is their business model since it does not seem to be advertising supported.The Filter for Mac is in beta right now and available as a free download. [Via theappleblog]
New Rockman ZX Advent screens and character art
Capcom released a ton of screens today for the new Megaman ZX sequel, Rockman ZX Advent, and they show exactly what we want to see in our Megaman games: running from left to right and shooting at robots, all delivered in gorgeous hand-drawn 2D. We could look at stuff like this all day. Coincidentally, that's kind of our job.In the first ZX, kids use "Biometals" ("Livemetals" in the Japanese version) to transform into robots similar to X and Zero from the Megaman X series, as well as a fused ZX form. The kids from last time, Vent and Aile, have been replaced by a pair of functionally-identical crimefighting children, called Grey and Ashe.They operate a new Biometal, called Model A, which enables transformation into a dual-wielding robot seemingly based on Axl from Mega Man X7, a game that we're glad is on the PS2 (so we don't have to like it).We've included character designs and a selection of screens for you. Bask in their 2D-ness after the break, won't you? We shrunk them down a bit from Dengeki's original display, to make the basking more successful. Over-enlarged DS screens are not cool.
Japanese hardware sales, Feb. 12 - Feb. 18: Cool stuff edition
Perhaps naught ever changes in the land of the rising sun, but this week felt especially mired in consistency. Christmas-colored arrows would tell you otherwise, but in fact the only changes in rank were the Game Boy Micro and the GBA SP swapping out the number seven and eight slots, respectively.So, what to do without our usual fountain of inspiration from which to draw? Part of our jobs include scouring the internet for days, nay, weeks straight, searching far and wide for things to make you, our readers, feel cool and well-informed. In our trek across digital lands we find many awesome things that may not relate to the Wii directly, and yet, we wished we could share them with you regardless. Now's our chance! You may have seen these three web-gems before, but for those who haven't, we do hope you enjoy. Now click that "Continue reading" link. Do it. - DS Lite: 136,846 64,331 (31.98%)- Wii: 63,618 14,932 (19.01%) - PSP: 34,505 2,330 (7.24%) - PS3: 20,676 2,755 (11.76%) - PS2: 16,192 159 (0.99%) - Xbox 360: 5,210 399 (8.29%) - Game Boy Micro: 953 69 (7.81%) - GBA SP: 843 137 (13.98%) - Gamecube: 347 36 (9.40%) - DS Phat: 153 32 (26.45%) - GBA: 40 4 (11.11%)[Source: Media Create]
PandoraBoy: Free Standing Pandora Client
We've previously posted about a widget that lets you run the Pandora streaming music service. Yesterday, I ran across something called PandoraBoy that basically wraps the Pandora flash player in some code so that it will run on its own outside of a browser. The cool thing about PandoraBoy, however, is that it allows you to control your Pandora experience using Global hotkeys, AppleScripts, or even the Apple Remote. In addition, it supports Growl for notification of track changes. Overall, it looks like a really good way to run Pandora, especially if, like me, you often crash your browser.PandoraBoy is a free download and Open Source.[Via Digg]
PSP Fanart Fridays: Death Jr.
Do you want to share your PSP-related fan art? Send an e-mail to andrew @ pspfanboy.com with the subject line "Fanart Fridays." A new piece of fanart will be shared every Friday. I'm a huge fan of all sorts of art including obviously video games. The Internet has really helped artists of all types show off their work. What I thought would be cool (and hopefully you agree) is to showcase a different artist (with their permission) every week that has PSP related fan art. This week's fan art features DJ and Pandora from Death Jr. in the opening pivotal scene from the first game. I know it got mixed reviews, but I enjoyed the Death Jr. for the most part and I absolutely loved the art style and characters. The above work was done by Gil and I think he perfectly captured the style and I especially love the way the colors are used. If I didn't know he did it, I would believe this was official art from the developer. If you enjoy the work as well you can check out Gil's deviantArt account. %Gallery-3450%
Custom soundtracks in Excitetruck?
Thanks to some new screenshots of the upcoming launch title Excitetruck, it now indeed looks as though we called it. That's right: if the picture here is any indication, the arcade racer will be able to read .mp3 files from your very own SD card and insert them into the game, a la the Xbox and Xbox 360. It's a nice little feature, and the ability to rock out to our latest find on Pandora while catchin' some air is quite enticing indeed.Does this feature matter to you guys? More importantly, how many games are actually going to support it? Only the flying spaghetti monster time will tell.
Be a Death Jr. grim reaper for Halloween
Sure, Death Jr. 2 has impressive graphics, but you know what looks even better? Real life. Yeah. Real life has amazing graphics that run higher than even PLAYSTATION 3's highly touted 1080p. In addition, real life features some stunning physics and lighting systems that just can't be beat (although the AI sucks most of the time).But one of the big disadvantages of real life was that it never let you play as one of the characters from Death Jr. Well, that is... until now. Smiffy's has just released their new line of Death Jr. costumes, just in time for Halloween. You can pick up just a mask, or you can go for the gold and dress up from head to toe as the grim reaper.You can also dress up as Pandora, or as the priciest, but easily the most awesome looking, Smith and Weston. The game comes out appropriately on Halloween.[Via GameDaily]
Widget Watch: Pandora, your personal Dashboard DJ
Pandora is a really interesting streaming music web service that helps you discover new artists based on the qualities of the music you like, such as the beat, artist's influences, genre, and much more. It's a pretty exciting experiment based on the Music Genome Project, and Download Squad wrote up a more in-depth overview last year while Pandora was still in private beta, though the service has since gone public for everyone to enjoy.Which brings us to the Pandora widget, which brings the goodness of this slick experiment to Mac OS X's Dashboard. However, after briefly tinkering with this, those who are very discriminating about their system resource should beware: this is one of the most resource-intensive widgets I've come across, hogging about 44MB of real memory and about 450 of my Virtual Memory on a 1.83 Ghz MacBook with 1GB RAM. By comparison, even a fairly active widget like iStat pro only gobbles up about 5.5MB/340MB, respectively. Still, if cycles are of no worry to you, this widget seems to work just as well as its browser-based counterpart, so Mac-slinging Pandora fans now have another option to get their experimental music listening fix.
"Don't Fear the Reaper": New Death Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom screenshots
Horrible reference to the Blue Oyster Cult, I know. Unfortunately in DJ's case, he does indeed fear the reaper 'cause his daddy IS the reaper and DJ made a mess out of a science fair. Hence the title Death Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom. Imagine the excuses DJ would have for daddy after unleashing an all-powerful Moloch. Point of the story is there are new screenshots for your viewing pleasure. They don't tell a whole lot about the game and granted there are only a few of them but it looks great. Not to go all feminist-crazy-like on you, but we (those of us who apply) are hoping to see more of Pandora in the game. The game is set to release Q4 of this year and we wouldn't be surprised if it is around Halloween. But we all know how release dates work... oh wait, they don't. [Via Go Nintendo]
Switched On: Pandora's Box (Part 2)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:Last week's column discussed Slim Devices' elegant Squeezebox hardware, its versatile but complex server software, and SqueezeNetwork, the companion online service through which the hardware accesses the Pandora music recommendation service. Pandora is considered by some to be a "Web 2.0" site -- the blanket term we're all aware of referring to a startup that generates more RSS than revenue.But Pandora's recommendation engine is the best I've tried. Unlike many others, it doesn't rely directly on the purchase behavior or music ownership of other people, be they friends or fellow customers. Rather, it leverages data from the Music Genome Project, a collaboration begun in 2000 to classify music via its attributes. In fact, some criticize Pandora for being "too good" at matching a song's style, and while there is a case that Pandora should include a control for how strictly it should match a given song or artist, users can at least create up to 100 different channels and diversify them by adding names of songs or artists to the mix.Pandora can offer a depth of detail as to which musical attributes it chose when recommending a song. However, it doesn't seem to account for at least some important factors, such as the qualities of a singer's voice. Pandora offers a free tier of service, but access via SqueezeNetwork requires a subscription, which costs between $3 and $4 per month. The low subscription price is worth it for at least a few months, but Pandora needs to greatly expand its catalog to keep subscribers interested. Fortunately, Squeezebox owners get a three-month trial of the premium service, a $12 value.
Switched On: Pandora's Box (Part 1)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:Slim Devices' Squeezebox and Roku's SoundBridge series are the two best products in the point-to-point digital media receiver market for music. Unlike the AirTunes functionality in Apple's AirPort Express, both products allow you to navigate libraries at the point of listening and neither requires you to turn on your television to hear music as multimedia offerings from a number of other companies. Operating over standard Ethernet or WiFi networks, the third-generation Squeezebox surpasses the sleek industrial design that marked the company's freshman effort, and retains the line's reputation for excellent sound quality when used with capable speakers. The bright vacuum fluorescent display that has long characterized the device illuminates a surprisingly effective and intuitive interface, although the dearth of navigation cues in its two-line presentation can sometimes result in disorientation.The minimalist appearance of the Squeezebox is actually a facade for a complex array of options. It's actually a client for two content sources -- SlimServer, the browser-accessible open-source server that can run on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows XP, and SqueezeNetwork, a set of Web-based content options. Much of the device's versatility can be chalked up to these sources. SlimServer, for example, has a plug-in architecture that allows the use of iTunes libraries, graphical screensavers, an alarm clock, and what may be the least fun Tetris clone ever created. It also has a large number of arcane configuration options for the advanced user.
