TomConrad
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Pandora sets its sights on in-car music streaming
Pandora has already come a considerable way from its rather modest beginnings, but it looks like the company unsurprisingly has some even grander ambitions for the near future, including a variety of options for in-car music streaming. That word comes straight from Pandora's Chief Technology Officer, Tom Conrad, who told attendees at the SF Music Tech Summit that the company is now working with various car manufacturers (including Ford) to better integrate Pandora music streaming into vehicles. That will apparently first come in the form of in-dash or hands-free controls to let folks use a docked device running Pandora and then, "within a few years," evolve to include full-fledged Pandora services built right into various in-car entertainment systems. Details are otherwise a bit light, but Conrad reportedly hinted that he'd have more to say at CES.
Pandora's CTO talks about Pre, webOS development, gaming, and small children
While we were happy just to see pictures, Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora, is one of the lucky few to have seen in action the innards of the software that keeps things moving on the Pre. He sat down with Palm Infocenter (on the wrong end of a zero-bar concall by the sounds) to talk details of webOS software development. Conrad clarified that, despite all apps being mixtures of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, webOS is more than just a big browser -- it has direct access to local files and UI elements. However, he echoed the fears of others that this web-friendly programming interface won't exactly be well suited for gaming, expressing hope that Palm will address this with integrated Flash support or some sort of a lower-level API to appease those who want to tap that OMAP processor directly. Hit the read link to hear the whole conversation yourself.[Thanks, Jay]
