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I’ve been a member of the great Pandora.com for quite a while now; It’s one of the best online radio stations out there. I received an email this week that explained due to licensing restrictions, I could no longer listen to Pandora because I am outside of the US:
Today we have some extremely disappointing news to share with you. Due to international licensing constraints, we are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora’s streaming service for most countries outside of the U.S.
It is difficult to convey just how disappointing this is for us. Our vision remains to eventually make Pandora a truly global service, but for the time being, we can no longer continue as we have been. As a small company, the best chance we have of realizing our dream of Pandora all around the world is to grow as the licensing landscape allows.
My first reaction was “NOOOOOOOOOO!” Now that I’m in belgium, I really rely on Internet radio so I am able to listen to the music I like. I’ve only found one terrestrial radio station that I like here. So, I replied to the email and explained that I am a US citizen and am living here because my husband is in the Army. I pretty much begged and I didn’t expect to receive a response back. But, I did. They wrote a very detailed response explaining that on a US military base, we would have access because US Military bases are on “domestic US” internet addresses. Unfortunately, I am in a unique situation and we are stationed at a NATO base, so we won’t have the domestic IP address.
Unfortunately I won’t have access to Pandora anymore while I’m over in Belgium, but I was really impressed with how they were willing to help me get connected if they could. I’m a contributing member, but I think I paid $36/year or something. That’s not a huge sum so I thought it was nice that they took the time to address my individual situation. Pandora will continue to get my support and hopefully over time the licensing restrictions will be lifted and I will be able to listen while I am still over here in Europe.
If you live in the US and haven’t tried Pandora.com, you definitely should. They provide an outstanding service.
About six weeks ago I purchased a TomTom GO 910 GPS. Most people over here in Belgium seem to have GPSs , but I have fought off buying one for a couple of reasons:
- Lack of money to put towards a GPS.
- I wanted to learn my way around. When I talked to people here I would reference a place and they had no clue where it was, even though they had been there 10 times because they simply did what the GPS told them and never bothered to really get situated with the area themselves. I wanted to make sure I knew how to get around here.
So what prompted me to buy one? Well, there are a few things really. In the part of the country I live in, it is only required that a street sign be posted once on the street and it is usually on the side of someone’s house. So the street could be 5 miles along, with 10 intersections and as long as a street sign is somewhere on the street; then that is fine…according to them! It makes it very hard to figure out what street you are on and when you are following directions and looking for a streetname.. it is a major PITA.
After months and months of research and comparison shopping (yes I’m THAT person), I decided the time had come to buy one. I wanted to start taking road trips around Europe and make the most of my time here as it is limited! The nice thing about the 910 is it is preloaded with maps of the US and Europe. So when we do go back to the states, we can actually use it. My only experience with GPS systems is one of the Garmin eTrex handhelds for backwoods hiking and camping. So seeing this thing was pretty cool. It mounts on my windshield with a suction cup that so far seems to work fine. What’s really cool about it is it has a 20 GB hard drive and 12gb is dedicated to MOI! I usually take my iPod nano in my car with an FM Transmitter. So now I have 12 GB to work with. Excellent. I can even movies or pictures on it if I want; although that would be a little bit distracting. I have no loaded it up with my favorite tunes yet as I don’t have an FM transmitter for it. it comes with a wire that I can apparently plug into my car’s audio system somewhere, but after 5 minutes of looking I gave up. I decided to just buy the mount with an FM transmitter built in.
I got to try it out last week when I flew to Austria. When we landed in Salzburg we rented a car and headed into the bavarian alps. Alot of the roads are very small backroad mountain roads and it was good at identifying those and letting us avoid them if we wanted to…we didn’t! Those are usually the roads with the best views. I’m very happy with the GPS so far. It talks to me and tells me where to go. I can even choose if I want to hear a man’s voice or a woman’s voice. I’ve always enjoyed the sound of british accents so i am listening to Simon from the UK tell me what to do. It could get interesting 
When I get bored with Simon, I can change to Kate just to change things up! I may just go french and choose Bernard or Juliette. That will show me if my French lessons are paying off or not. If I feel like I’m letting the word “dude” slip from my casual vocabulary too much, I can download Bodie..dude.
All in all, i like it. I can’t wait to get my music on it and see how that goes.
If you do, here is a great badge you can put on your website! Seriously though, who thinks of things like this? I laughed hard when I saw this website. Read more »
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Do you ever stumble upon sites that just look so pretty and you just want to stay and read more? Well I just came across one today. I was looking for concert information in the area and I had heard about a couple music festivals and I came across Rock Werchter 2007.
The colors are awesome. I’m usually pretty down on Flash sites but I loved the implementation here.
The website really just matches the incredible lineup:
I say no. If you run a website or have a blog, there is a good chance you keep up with your to read your website statistics and if you don’t…you should. There are so many different website statistics packages out there, so how do you know what to use? Do you use one or use several? I use a few myself. awstats is great for analyzing your log files; W3Counter is another, although I haven’t tried it yet but have been considering it. Between awstats and Google analytics most of my needs and the needs of clients are handled successfully. So, do we really need another stats program? Sure!
Performacing Metrics has been around for a little while now but was recently unveiled. I can’t give an official review right now, but its worth taking a look at. Click the image for a better resolution:
So, do you think too much information is a bad thing? There are so many stats programs out there and some are better than others, but is there one that is the end-all be-all to website stats?
