Pandora Radio - Free & Clean Online Radio

Many may already know, but I recently discovered a cool Internet radio station. It's "my station"!

Ok, so what this is is...
Pandora Radio has a huge database of music from all genre which each music is carefully analyzied by "The Music Genome Project". This database is then used to find music of your preference. "Doesn't sound anything new", you say?

True, other music services usually has "recommendation" features, but this analysis is beyond genre, artist names or the looks of the band. Also, it's very quick to get started. Just search one song by an artist name and it will start to play music from various artists like a radio station. Then you can give "thumbs up" to selections that you liked. Another great thing is, you can create as many "stations" as you like. So the music selection is NOT from all of your favorite songs mixed together, but you can create different flavors of your preference. You might like country and alternatives, but that doesn't mean you want to listen to both mixed together all the time, right?

Pandora has a very simple and clean interface. I find the selections by Pandora very appealing and helps me find artists that I did not know, yet sounds that matches my taste. Give it a try, or listen to my stations!

Note: Pandora uses Adobe Flash and your account information is stored there. Information stored in Flash seems to be shared across all users and browsers on the computer so be sure to sign out if you want to keep your information private.

"iPhone is going to dominate the mobile phone market."

I have to say, iPhone is going to dominate the mobile phone market.

Apple, today, announced the iPhone SDK which allows developers to create native applications. They also announced that in the next iPhone software release, it would be enterprise compatible by supporting Microsoft Exchange and Cisco IPsec VPN. This will be all built-in to the iPhone software, available by default.

Now, all this with the proven design of the iPhone hardware/software/user interface, what device could possibly beat the iPhone?

Personally, for the general public, enterprise, I think the Exchange support was an unexpected surprise. This probably is going to easily push iPhone share at a sky rocketing degree. I see many asking IT for an iPhone and you can really feel the demand. I also hear IT usually saying no to this, but they have no reason to do that anymore.

Louis Vuitton Sells Fresh Roses (with monogram)

Louis Vuitton is selling fresh roses with the monogram print on it. No kidding...

Unfortunately, this is sold only in Japan. But in case that's no problem for you:

Sold at Louis Vuitton stores in Tokyo
Available thru 3/13 and 3/16/2008
$40/each

For details, go to Louis Vuitton's website and navigate to the Japanese store.

GrandCentral Up-to-dates

As a "telecommunication 2.0" preacher, here are some updates regarding to Google's telephony service, "GrandCentral".

Click2Call Has Been Alive

I posted earlier that Click2Call may have been dropped, but Vincent@GrandCentral quickly posted a comment that it was not the case. And true, I am still able to use this feature; it may just have been a glitch.

Another thing was the lack of documentation regarding Click2Call. It doesn't mention this name, but it's now described in the help.

Forwarding Number Can Be Shared

Finally something new! One inconvenience was that a forwarding number could only be activated with one account, or one GC number. But now, a forwarding number can be used on multiple accounts, according to GC Blog.

Example:
My roommate and I each have a GC number. We want to forward that to the same home phone that we share.
Before, this was not possible, but now it's allowed.

My wife and I each had a GC number and was impacted by this limitation so I really have to try this out.

Other Help Documentation Updates

Some articles seems to be added in the help center including mentions about iPhone. This is good. At least this confirms that Goolge is putting some effort to make GC compatible with iPhone.

Although minor, it's good to see some updates so that we know Google is not ditching services after they acquire them.