Pandora Finds Its Funny Bone

Last August I wrote about Pandora adding genres to its service, praising its attempt to innovate despite being the leader in its market. Luckily for its music-loving users, Pandora has continued adding to its site in 2011.

Earlier this week Pandora added comedy genres to their list of stations, letting users add stand-up routines and sketches from different decades and styles. There's a pretty good mix of stations, including a Working Class Comedy genre if you like the Blue Collar Comedy Tour style, or Golden Oldies if you fancy yourself more of a Bob Newhart person.

As with the music stations, users can like or dislike a comedy sketch with a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" voting system. Pandora's thumb-voting has been popular, and the site reported on Monday that they surpassed 10 billion thumbs.

Most people seem to like the new comedy stations, and its good to see Pandora thinking outside of the box.

Water, water everywhere at the Kitchen and Bath Show

Andrea and I have just returned from Las Vegas, this year's site for the annual Kitchen and Bath Show. The poor housing market continues to take its toll on manufacturers, many of whom were absent from the show, particularly U.S.-based appliance makers. However, of the companies at the show, water and water conservation was a recurring theme.  Here are my picks for Best of Show:

• No touch bathroom faucet from Delta (first one to market) http://www.deltafaucet.com/videogallery/index.html#vid-Addison
• High-style water-saving Kohler lav faucet with color inserts (and cool joystick control) http://kohler.dirxion.com/bold
• Have a spa experience with a digital showerhead (and a remote control, of course): http://levaqua.com/
• Get instant hot water without a big, energy-saving hot water tank in the basement or closet: http://rheem.com/products/tankless_water_heaters/residential
• And to wipe the water up, here's a touch-less paper towel dispenser: http://www.cleancutdispenser.com/

Andrea and I are planning on trying out some of these products to see how they work in real life situations. I'm particularly keen to try out the no touch faucet and the digital showerhead!

Apple Reminds Us That They Still Make Desktops Too

Although practically all of the spotlight the past year has been on iPads and iPhones, Apple apparently wanted to remind us that they aren't just about smartphones and tablets.

Apple did just that with this morning's announcement of the latest upgrade to their iMac line.

The tech blogs were buzzing this morning after many were noticing that Apple stores were closed. The immediate reaction was that Apple was getting ready to unveil the new iMacs, and within hours were proven right.

Granted, the rumors of the upgraded iMacs had been flying for weeks so this was expected, but now that they've finally hit the stores it's time to take a closer look:

• Ditches miniDisplay ports in favor of the new Thunderbolt connection, which is 20 times faster than USB. The technology was developed by Intel and could become the new standard for connecting peripherals to your computer, and these iMacs are the first device to implement it.
• The new Sandy Bridge chips will provide a big boost in speed and performance.  
• Includes a built-in HD camera with Apple's FaceTime software.
• Despite a noticeable upgrade to the line, Apple kept the price comparable to previous iMacs. Prices range from $1,199 to $1,999, and here's a basic breakdown of the available options:
• $1,199: The "budget" model gets you the 21.5-inch iMac with a 2.5GHz quad-core i5, AMD Radeon HD 6750M and 500GB hard drive.
• $1,499: This price keeps the 21.5-inch screen but upgrades the hardware to 2.7 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, AMD Radeon HD 6770M and 1TB hard drive.
• $1,699: For an extra $200 you get the same internal specs I just mentioned, but with the larger 27-inch screen.
• $1,999: The high-end of the new iMac line takes the larger 27-inch screen and bumps the internal specs to a 3.1 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, AMD Radeon HD 6970M and 1TB hard drive.

All in all this, looks to be a solid upgrade to the iMac line, but the big question will be whether this can slow the steady decline of the desktop computer as more and more focus goes to tablets and laptops.

A Week With The "New" Nook Color

Having owned a Barnes & Noble Nook Color since December, you can be sure I wasted no time in downloading last week's major update.

The update promised an OS update to Android Froyo with flash support and a curated app store, which had many wondering if the update would turn the Nook Color from a e-reader/tablet hybrid to more of a full-fledged tablet.

And now that I've had the update for a week, here are my thoughts:

• As someone who used the Nook Color mostly as a mobile web browser, the flash support is fantastic.
• The app store is actually much stronger than I thought it would be at launch. While most of the apps cost money (and some of them are downright pricey), there are a couple of free apps that are definitely worth checking out. My biggest recommendation is Pulse, a great news feed that is perfectly-suited for the Nook Color.
• However, there are still some kinks to work out with the apps, because I've had trouble getting Angry Birds to install. I'm still looking into it, but at this time there is still a noticeable lack in my ability to launch virtual birds into pigs and various structures.
• The OS jump to Froyo seems effective, but it's a little harder to notice to casual users because there are so many other updates. On the other hand, the fact that there isn't a noticeable increase in lag despite the addition of more apps and other features is a sign that the OS update is doing its job.
• The e-mail feature is nice because you can now sync your account to get notifications and actually send emails. Before the update, I could view messages through the web browser but I couldn't compose new messages.

Overall, I'm happy with the Nook Color update. However, I hope Barnes & Noble doesn't rest on its laurels and continues to develop what could be the best value-based Android tablet on the market right now.

Apple Sheds Light on Location Tracking Data

There has been much hullabaloo lately surrounding Apple and it’s reported location tracking of iOS devices. Are they tracking our every move, every exact location? Perhaps storing it in unencrypted files, accessible to anyone from our mother to our boss? Well in reality, no they are not.

Apple finally responded to these accusations, hoping to set the record straight. In a question and answer statement, Apple has tried to put some of these rumors to rest.

To start off, Apple says that they never have and never will track the location of your device (like an iPhone). The company also says that there is much confusion surrounding the technical issues in providing mobile users fast and accurate location information, which they are partly to blame for.

According to Apple, the location data that researchers saw on the iPhone is merely the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can actually be more than one hundred miles away from your specific iPhone.

There are two bugs that Apple plans to fix. The first is that previously when you turned off Location Services, your iPhone continued to track those Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers near you. They are working on fixing this.

The second bug was that people’s location data had been stored for up to a year on the iPhone. They are changing it so that the iPhone will only store up to seven days of data.

Finally, the company says it will release a free iOS software update sometime in the next few weeks that reduces the size of the Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone, start encrypting and refrain from backing up this cache and delete it entirely when Location Services is turned off by the user.

Do you think Apple is doing enough? Or is this a case of consumers wanting fast location based information, and then complaining about it’s invasive nature?