Pandora Launches Comedy

Pandora enters the "spoken word" market with Comedy. I have been enjoying "Today's Comedy Radio" (started from the genre list) and "Cheech and Chong Radio" it in the car through my iPhone. The Cheech and Chong station is a mix of both music and skits. Something is wonderful about driving and laughing. Here's a link to an article about the launch in the New York Times:

"Pandora Internet Radio Service to Offer Large Archive of Comedy Clips"
by Ben Sisario

Great review for Powercloud

D-Link DAP-2555 AirPremier N Dual Band, PoE Access Point powered by CloudCommand Reviewed on SmallCloudBuilder.com

Anyone who has tried to install and manage a multi-AP wireless network using browser-managed gear understands the value of centrally-managed WLANs. Unfortunately, the pricing of systems from Cisco, Meraki, Ruckus, etc. puts managed Wi-Fi systems beyond the reach of most small businesses that could benefit the most from them.
Part of the high cost is in the access points themselves, although in some cases this more a reflection of what the market will bear rather than higher cost of material of the APs themselves. But another piece of the cost is the hardware controller(s) required to manage the APs.
What D-Link's partner PowerCloud Systems has done is develop a cloud-based system for managing network equipment. PowerCloud's technology, called CloudCommand, isn't limited to managing wireless networks. But it's PowerCloud's first application with D-Link as their first equipment customer.

.... Installation is dead simple and configuration options are limited so that inexperienced users won't get confused.

Full review is here

Visit Powercloud's website here

SoundHound is Amazon App of the Day on their Android Appstore

Visit Amazon's Android App Store here

Image Vision Labs in the press for its Walden investment

An Anna start-up may have a way to prevent that and potentially turn itself into the region's next $100 million venture.

Image Vision Labs has developed online filters for inappropriate images, texts, videos on websites and mobile devices. Customers include Apple and Photobucket. It also recently partnered with Alcatel on a development project.

The company is pursuing licensing agreements and partnerships with Web and wireless service providers, but there's also potential for other industries.

The eight-employee company just landed a big vote of confidence - its first institutional investment of more than $2 million from San Francisco-based Walden Venture Capital and other private investors. That followed about $235,000 in funding from two smaller sources this summer.

Chief executive Steven White wrote the code for Image Vision Labs' software and co-founded the company in late 2008 with chief operating officer Mitch Butler and Chad Harbour, head of Web sales.

Click here for the full article in the Dallas Morning news

CES: Pandora is Everywhere

Great article by Eric Savitz in Forbes:

Suddenly, Pandora is everywhere. The Internet radio service is on Blu-Ray players. Televisions. Factory installed and after-market car stereo systems. Home audio systems. PCs. Tablets. And phones. Thanks to more than a decade of hard work, the company has emerged from the massively troubled music industry as a leading player – and one which stands to benefit big time from the spread of high-speed wireless bandwidth and the proliferation of wireless devices.

In a wide-ranging breakfast interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, CEO Tim Westergren laid out the how Pandora has grown from troubled startup to Internet icon – and gave a glimpse at where the company might go next.

Pandora has been around for 11 years, but didn’t launch the Internet radio service until late 2005. The company’s original business idea was to build a music recommendation engine; originally called Savage Beast Technologies, the company tried to license the software to music sellers like Amazon.com (AMZN) and CDnow...

read the full article here