We’ve known for weeks now that Dropbox has been talking to investors about a new mega round of funding. The company, which has only raised $7.2 million in a seed and Series A round in 2007, has been seeking something between $200 million and $300 million, we’ve heard. But now we know a bit more. And we’ve heard something from one source that is nothing short of shocking.

Dropbox held an auction last week during which investors made their bids to participate in the new round, multiple sources tell us. This week, Dropbox met with the VCs that made bids, and have been collecting term sheets. All they have to do now is decide.

Here’s the really crazy thing: one of the offers being considered may push Dropbox’s valuation to $10 billion post-money, one source tells us. Another source thinks that’s inaccurate, and believes the final valuation will settle closer to the lower end of the $5 billion to $10 billion valuation we reported last month.

A $10 billion valuation would be amazing for a number of reasons. But consider this: Pandora and LinkedIn, two companies that recently went public, have market caps of $2.16 billion and $8.63 billion, respectively. Yes, a startup with just 65 employees could be worth more money on paper than those two public darlings.

Also consider: Yahoo has a market cap of just $15.30 billion. And our parent, AOL, has a market cap of just $1.72 billion.

Dropbox has 25 million users (many of which are paying), uploading 200 million files a day.

More to come soon.

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Social media analytics company Simply Measured looked at a one week sample of tweets linking to one of three music services: Spotify, Turntable.fm, and Pandora. It found that 51 percent of the Tweets linked to Spotify, 26 percent to Turntable, and 23 percent to Pandora. So at first blush, Spotify seems to dominate. But if you strip out invite tweets, it’s a different picture altogether. Since Spotify launched in the U.S. a couple weeks ago, people have been flooding Twitter with invite links. Take those out, and it’s share of remaining tweets is only 2 percent. Turntable comes out on top with 52 percent of the tweets, followed by Pandora with 46 percent.

What this data suggests is that Turntable.fm is still a very strong early adopter addiction. And it too is still in a limited beta. Yet its users tweet out more than Pandora’s. turntable user share the songs that they DJ, with 40 percent of its tweets falling into that category.

Finally, Turntable users have an average Klout score of 34, compared to 32 for Pandora users and 29 for Spotify, suggesting that its users are more influential on Twitter, at least according to Klout.

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Social media analytics company Simply Measured looked at a one week sample of tweets linking to one of three music services: Spotify, Turntable.fm, and Pandora. It found that 51 percent of the Tweets linked to Spotify, 26 percent to Turntable, and 23 percent to Pandora. So at first blush, Spotify seems to dominate. But if you strip out invite tweets, it’s a different picture altogether. Since Spotify launched in the U.S. a couple weeks ago, people have been flooding Twitter with invite links. Take those out, and it’s share of remaining tweets is only 2 percent. Turntable comes out on top with 52 percent of the tweets, followed by Pandora with 46 percent.

What this data suggests is that Turntable.fm is still a very strong early adopter addiction. And it too is still in a limited beta. Yet its users tweet out more than Pandora’s. turntable user share the songs that they DJ, with 40 percent of its tweets falling into that category.

Finally, Turntable users have an average Klout score of 34, compared to 32 for Pandora users and 29 for Spotify, suggesting that its users are more influential on Twitter, at least according to Klout.

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Zillow, which will begin trading under the symbol “Z” on the NASDAQ, aims to raise as much as $71.6 million in the IPO.

Zillow, which initially filed its S-1 in April, currently lists over 100 million U.S. homes, including homes for sale, homes for rent and homes not currently on the market. Zillow launched a mortgage marketplace in 2008, and subsequently expanded into rentals and mobile.

The number of changes in Zillow’s pricing is similar to LinkedIn and Pandora’s pre-IPO pricing increases. And clearly both of those companies saw strong fluctuations in the share value post-IPO (though both companies have rebounded in July). Some tech companies like HomeAway, Fusion-IO and Yandex have seen steady share values.

According to Experian Hitwise, Zillow.com is the third most visited Real Estate site in the U.S and received 5.36% of Real Estate visits in March 2011, which is a 53% increase compared to March 2010. Clearly, Zillow has impressive traffic and is growing revenue but has yet to make a profit, and has been taking a loss for the past three years. These could be factors in how the market reacts to Zillow next week.

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Zillow, which will begin trading under the symbol “Z” on the NASDAQ, aims to raise as much as $71.6 million in the IPO.

Zillow, which initially filed its S-1 in April, currently lists over 100 million U.S. homes, including homes for sale, homes for rent and homes not currently on the market. Zillow launched a mortgage marketplace in 2008, and subsequently expanded into rentals and mobile.

The number of changes in Zillow’s pricing is similar to LinkedIn and Pandora’s pre-IPO pricing increases. And clearly both of those companies saw strong fluctuations in the share value post-IPO (though both companies have rebounded in July). Some tech companies like HomeAway, Fusion-IO and Yandex have seen steady share values.

According to Experian Hitwise, Zillow.com is the third most visited Real Estate site in the U.S and received 5.36% of Real Estate visits in March 2011, which is a 53% increase compared to March 2010. Clearly, Zillow has impressive traffic and is growing revenue but has yet to make a profit, and has been taking a loss for the past three years. These could be factors in how the market reacts to Zillow next week.

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First Pandora IPO’d, then it hit 100 million users and now it is rolling out a redesign

Ditching Flash in favor of HTML5, Pandora will be unveiling its new look first to Pandora One subscribers, rolling out to other users in the next few weeks.

We have yet to get our hands on the new Pandora (look for a walkthrough when we do), but word on the street is that it’s faster and much easier to use. The site hasn’t changed much in terms of layout, although it does have some new features.

Along the top of the site, there’s a music control bar that stays put as you click around; lyrics appear on the homepage, along with comments; and search has been tweaked. When you create a new station, as soon as you start typing, a drop-down menu will appear with suggestions tailored to your tastes (based on voting and listening history) as well as the keywords you’re searching for.

Pandora has also gotten a lot more social. It will now feature a “Music Feed” next to “Now Playing” that shows what all your friends on Pandora on are listening to, commenting on and Liking. Profiles have also been revamped, making them much more social locations, allowing you to check out other users’ activity and follow them with ease (you can still make your profile private, though).

The aim seems to have become keeping users within Pandora, checking out what friends are listening to and sharing their own activity in-site, much like a music social network.

Entertainment sites are increasingly trying to get into social. Apple’s Ping was a notable effort, as was Hulu’s recent integration with Facebook, allowing users to see what Facebook friends are watching, and to share specific video moments on the social network. MOG’s recently released HTML5 player features more recommendations with integration of Facebook Connect too.

What do you think of this social watching/listening trend? Are you down with broadcasting your tastes to the world?

More About: facebook, hulu, MOG, music, music subscription, pandora, redesign

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Newly public Internet radio company Pandora announced Tuesday that it has hit the 100 million registered user milestone.

About one-third of those users, 36 million, have accessed the service on a monthly basis.

Along with its user base, the company has also increased its market share. At the end of 2010, it had about a 2.3% share of all radio listening in the United States. According to its SEC filings, there were about 80 million registered users at that time. Now Pandora accounts for 3.6% of all radio listening in the U.S.

The company made the announcements at its first Financial Analyst Day Tuesday, where it also announced a redesign of its site.

Shares closed on Monday at $19.26 — nowhere near what prices reached in a surge after Pandora went public, but above the initial pricing of $16.

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Linkedin kicked off the tech IPO wave with its successful public offering. The company is now worth more than $9.5 billion. Pandora quickly followed suit. And later this year, Groupon and Zynga will hold their multi-billion dollar IPOs.

Singlegrain decided to condense the biggest tech IPOs of 2011 into a single infographic. It provides an overview of how each of these technology giants turned into billion-dollar Wall Street darlings.

Check out the infographic, and let us know what you think of the tech IPO boom in the comments.

More About: groupon, infographic, ipo, linkedin, pandora, Zynga

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One day before its highly-anticipated IPO, Pandora has upped its share price to $16 per share, valuing the company at $2.6 billion.

The price is well above its target price range of $10-$12, which itself was a 43% increase over its original $7-$9 target price. At $16 per share, Pandora will raise $234.9 million. The company will sell 14.7 million shares during its IPO, with the sale of an additional 2.2 million shares possible.

The rapid rise of Pandora’s IPO can be partially attributed to the market’s optimism for Internet companies. LinkedIn’s stellar IPO has paved the way for other Internet companies to shoot for higher valuations. Unlike LinkedIn though, Pandora is not yet profitable, losing $1.8 million on $137.8 million in revenue in 2010.

The Internet radio company has more than 90 million registered users and is adding “a new registered user every second on average,” according to its SEC filing.

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In the first test of investors’ appetite for high-profile IPOs since LinkedIn’s successful public offering last month, Pandora is expected to begin trading Wednesday.

Pandora is offering 14.7 million shares for $10 to $12 per share. The company increased the size of its IPO last week by 43%.

Unlike LinkedIn, though, Pandora is not profitable. The company lost $1.8 million in fiscal 2010 on revenues of $137.8 million and stated in a recent SEC filing, “We expect to incur operating losses on an annual basis through at least fiscal 2012.” Pandora has 34 million active users. Advertising generates 90% of the company’s sales.

Pandora’s public offering is expected to be followed by IPOs for Groupon and Zynga. Groupon has filed its preliminary paperwork for such an offering. Zynga is reportedly close to filing.

[via Bloomberg]

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In the first test of investors’ appetite for high-profile IPOs since LinkedIn’s successful public offering last month, Pandora is expected to begin trading Wednesday.

Pandora is offering 14.7 million shares for $10 to $12 per share. The company increased the size of its IPO last week by 43%.

Unlike LinkedIn, though, Pandora is not profitable. The company lost $1.8 million in fiscal 2010 on revenues of $137.8 million and stated in a recent SEC filing, “We expect to incur operating losses on an annual basis through at least fiscal 2012.” Pandora has 34 million active users. Advertising generates 90% of the company’s sales.

Pandora’s public offering is expected to be followed by IPOs for Groupon and Zynga. Groupon has filed its preliminary paperwork for such an offering. Zynga is reportedly close to filing.

[via Bloomberg]

More About: groupon, ipo, linkedin, pandora, trending, Zynga

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In the first test of investors’ appetite for high-profile IPOs since LinkedIn’s successful public offering last month, Pandora is expected to begin trading Wednesday.

Pandora is offering 14.7 million shares for $10 to $12 per share. The company increased the size of its IPO last week by 43%.

Unlike LinkedIn, though, Pandora is not profitable. The company lost $1.8 million in fiscal 2010 on revenues of $137.8 million and stated in a recent SEC filing, “We expect to incur operating losses on an annual basis through at least fiscal 2012.” Pandora has 34 million active users. Advertising generates 90% of the company’s sales.

Pandora’s public offering is expected to be followed by IPOs for Groupon and Zynga. Groupon has filed its preliminary paperwork for such an offering. Zynga is reportedly close to filing.

[via Bloomberg]

More About: groupon, ipo, linkedin, pandora, trending, Zynga

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Not reading this in a feedreader? If so this has been taken from the original post as seen here: iPhone OS 4.0 Rumored To Feature Expose-Like Multitasking [Latest iPhone OS 4.0 Rumor Explains Multitasking, Suggests It Will Be Expose-Like].

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Now that iOS 4 is here, we wanted to take a look at some of the coolest new features. Multitasking has long been one of the most-requested features for the iPhone, and one application scenario has consistently been used to argue for multitasking support: Pandora.

While users have always been able to listen to music while doing other tasks using the built-in iPod app, device owners who prefer to use a streaming service like Pandora haven’t been able to do so. That can make long trips — you know, those occasions where you might want to read a book or group of articles and listen to music — pretty painful.

Fortunately, Pandora [iTunes link] is fully supported in iOS 4. We’ve put together this video illustrating how Pandora works on iOS 4.

As you can see below, the application works great and integrates ingeniously with the iPhone’s new app switcher function. To quote The Office, “This is totally going to change the way I work out.” What do you think of the new Pandora?

Tags: iOS 4, iphone apps, music, pandora

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Pandora will ask you to enter the name of your favorite song or artist’s name and then Pandora creates a radio station that explores just that kind of music, Pandora plays all of your current and old favorites and it also introduces you to new sound tracks you may love. You can rate songs as you listen to them because Pandora caters your radio stations to your tastes and select the play list on your feedback. If you have Blackberry phone and you are a music lover then you must try this app, you can download this app from here.

You will need BlackBerry smartphone operating system 4.3.0 or higher version in order to download and run this app. If you are able to download and run this app then please let us know about your experience with this app in our comment box.

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In his own statement, Pandora founder Tim Westergren said they has been working on making the service more social for some time. "The idea behind today’s update is to make it really easy to share your Pandora stations and music discoveries with your friends – and vice versa," according to Westergren "To make this truly easy for you, we’ve partnered with the experts at Facebook. Starting today, you can easily link your experience on Pandora with your friends on Facebook. This quickly brings your Facebook friend list into Pandora along with your Facebook profile picture. It quite literally puts a whole new face on Pandora."
 

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Originally posted at Digital Noise: Music and Tech

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Facebook Connect, the company’s tool for bringing your social graph to third-party websites, will soon be no more.

During a press conference today at Facebook’s F8 conference in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the Facebook Connect brand would be eliminated as part of the launch of Open Graph. Instead, the company is standardizing the interactions between Facebook and third parties via Facebook’s new Open Graph protocol and the OAuth 2.0 standard.

Earlier today, Zuckerberg announced the Open Graph protocol and API, which will allow developers to more easily access social graphs and integrate them with their web services. Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft are among its 30 plus launch partners.

Because of these changes in policy and philosophy, the “Facebook Connect” brand will cease to exist. It’s still not clear exactly how Facebook will replace Facebook Connect or if it will be called something else.

Tags: facebook, facebook connect

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Pandora is becoming one of the hottest ways of listening to music these days, so this is significant news not only for Pandora, but for music in general. It stands to reason that the more people and the web itself get consumed by Facebook, Pandora will be along for a good portion of that ride, at least for people who…listen to music.

Pandora of course made an announcement of its own. "The idea behind today’s update is to make it really easy to share your Pandora stations and music discoveries with your friends – and vice versa," explains Founder Tim Westergren. "Now your friends can be a daily source of inspiration for new stations and music discovery. I’ve been testing out the service while we were developing it and I have to say it really brings a wonderful new human dimension to the listening experience."

Starting today, users can link their Pandora experience to their Facebook friends. "This quickly brings your Facebook friend list into Pandora along with your Facebook profile picture," says Westergren. "It quite literally puts a whole new face on Pandora."

Connecting Pandora and Facebook is optional. The company says it wants to be respectful to privacy and allows you to simply opt out. That’s probably a good thing for people afraid of being made fun of by their friends for having a Trivium station or something.

Those who do not opt out can get suggestions on new stations based on the music they’ve "liked" on Facebook. They can see which artists and songs you hear have been "liked" by your Facebook friends. Your Pandora profile page will feature Facebook info, and you can see music info about your Facebook friends who have Pandora accounts below your Pandora controls.

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There were three major announcements made during the keynote. These were:

1. The Open Graph

2. Social Plug-ins

3. Graph API

Essentially, Facebook thinks connections are going to become the new links. This will theoretically happen through what they’re calling the Open Graph. Zuckerberg explains this:

Facebook has focused mostly on mapping out the part of the graph around people and their relationships.

All of these connections are important parts of the social graph, but until now it hasn’t been possible to easily share the connections you make on sites like Yelp or Pandora with your friends on Facebook. And you haven’t been able to bring your friends from Facebook to share experiences on these sites or personalize them to you.

The announcement of the social plug-ins will play a significant role in making the connections involved in this Open Graph. These include a "like" button for the web, which the company as already deemed the most important of the plug-ins. When you stick a like button on your site, that connection will be integrated with Facebook through the Graph API. The activity will go the news feed, but it will also go to other relevant places in your Facebook profile.

Taylor shared examples from partners IMDB, Pandora, and ESPN. If you "like" a band on Pandora, that will go to the appropriate bands-you-like section on Facebook. On IMDB, every movie page will have a like button, so if you "like" a movie, it will be reflected in your movies section in your Facebook profile. It goes both ways though. You’re not just sending stuff back to Facebook. For example, there will be "like" buttons associated with athletes on their profile pages on ESPN.com. If you "like" one of these athletes, you can get updates about them from ESPN, via Facebook. Expect a lot of interesting two-way things to happen with the Graph API, as more and more developers are able to harness its power.

Other plug-ins include boxes for activity feeds and recommendations you can stick on your site. You can check out Facebook’s social plug-ins here.

Basically, the gist of the entire thing is that Facebook is taking over the web, and sites will be afraid not to take part. Facebook is injecting itself into every part of the web possible. As far as I can tell, this Open Graph is essentially a web itself. While it may not become THE web, it may increasingly become the one that matters.

Are we headed toward a point that if you are not somehow connected to Facebook you are not connected to the world at large? By the way, this is not going to do anything to slow Facebook’s growth down. Share your thoughts.

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In 2008, an estimated 6,000 people were killed and 500,000 were injured due to cell-phone related car accidents. “Distracted driving is an epidemic and it seems to be getting worse every year,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood. So, when Ford Motors decided to add Twitter to the arsenal of distracted driving devices, questions of safety where a salient concern.

2010’s Consumer Electronics Show assembled industry and government experts to answer questions and raise issues surrounding Ford’s keynote announcement that it would be launching social media-ready cars in 2010. The first and most obvious question participants had was:

Is using social media while driving safe?

“No,” says Peter Appel, the Obama Administration’s point man on transportation research. Appel’s curt, absolutist language is indicative of just how seriously the government is taking distracted driving. Given the Administration’s sobering stance, the next logical question is:

Is it Possible to Stop Distracting Technologies?

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Commercial products are already in the pipeline, which can disable cell phones while driving. For instance, Taser, the makers of non-lethal electrocution law-enforcement weapons, has developed an almost disturbingly powerful app that lets parents control their teen’s cell phones. Among its many features is the ability to disable calling and texting within the proximity of the car.

While it may not be constitutionally viable for the government to restrict certain behaviors (Appel tells Mashable that the Obama Administration has no interest in regulating what people can and can’t do while driving), Ford Motors has chosen to disable some tasks while the car is in motion. For instance, the central on-board dash disables complex tasks, such as watching music videos, until the car is parked. Ford tells Mashable that the policy to make paternalistic decisions for drivers was done independent of the government, leaving hope that the private sector can, to some degree, self-regulate safety.

Wheel Controls and Voice Activation

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The unwavering mantra of Ford’s CES keynote address was “hands on the wheel, eyes on the road.” Ford contends that steering wheel controls and voice commands facilitate more efficient task completion than fumbling with a cell phone.

Below is a video from Ford’s keynote comparing the completion time of steering wheel control vs. a handheld MP3 player. The first part of the video shows a music change task with an MP3 player, the second part is done with Sync technology. Notice the lane position metric in the bottom left-hand portion of the screen.

Here’s a comparison chart (courtesy of Ford) showing the measured eyes off the road time difference for other tasks.

Ford contends that Sync can substantially reduce task completion time and thus minimize distracted driving.

Will Drivers Actually Use a Steering Wheel to Tweet?

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Ford believes that voice and steering wheel-controlled social applications could bring social media to the driver’s seat in a safe and effective way. Below is a video of the voice-activated Twitter Sync app in action I shot while at CES.

It’s too early to tell if car manufactures can design a sleek enough user interface to compete with smart phones. Further, safety measures that prohibit people from actually reading tweets while driving may reduce usefulness of these applications to the point that they are no longer worth using on the road. The type of social media user obsessive enough to listen to tweets while driving may become too frustrated by the slowness of voice-to-text. After all, how many tweets can the average Twitter user scan through in the time it takes to voice one tweet?

The Ford representative in the video was more optimistic about usefulness of Ford’s technology for social applications like Pandora, a popular, customizable Internet radio application. Pandora has relatively few options (genre selection, “thumbs up” preference tagging), all of which can be seamlessly done with existing wheel controls and voice commands without negatively impacting the user experience.

Conclusion

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Ultimately, distracted driving is inevitable, and both governments and the automobile industry must face it head on. Ford’s new technology, which at least appears to make social media and multimedia safer while driving, is a step in the right direction, but it will take more than technology to beget safe drivers. If it is possible, it will likely require a combination of legislation, social awareness, and technological innovation to create a safe marriage between social media and driving.

More social media resources from Mashable:

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- 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology
– 7 Lessons for Better Networking with Social Media
– Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting
– How Social Media Has Changed Us
– 5 Tips for Building Lasting Online Friendships
– 4 Steps for Effective Online Networking

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, jhorrocks, bakalusha

Tags: autos, driving, ford, safety, social media, tech, texting, twitter

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So that whole mobile local, “check in when you go out” space? It’s so on.

This week we pit three of the top local check-in services against each other for the title of Check-in Champion: Foursquare, Gowalla, and Yelp.

As you may know, we’ve been doing a long-running Faceoff Series here at Mashable where we pit similar services and products against each other to see who can win the hearts and minds of Mashable readers. This time we look at two fairly established competitors in the mobile local space, Foursquare and Gowalla, and see how they stack up against the major competitor who just stepped in to challenge them: Yelp.

The long-standing local social network just last week added the ability to check-in to venues you visit, putting it squarely on the playing field in the mobile local arena. Yelp doesn’t yet offer the same level of “game-like” points and achievements for contributing your social life’s location metadata, but it does offer an incredibly deep set of data surrounding place information and user ratings and opinions. It will be interesting to see how this space shakes out with these various players’ different takes on the mobile social experience.

And right now, we’re asking you, dear Mashable reader, to stake your claim on which of these three mobile applications is your favorite. If you could only check in to a single site (and let’s face it, who wants to keep up with a multitude of check-ins every time you arrive somewhere?), which would you pick?

Leave your vote below; the poll will remain open until noon PST on Friday, January 22. Be sure to let us know in the comments who you voted the way you did, too.

Who would win in a fight: Yelp, Foursquare, or Gowalla?(online surveys)

Web Faceoff: Overall Results

Week 1:
– Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
– WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)

Week 2:
– Tumblr vs. Posterous
– WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
– Pandora vs. Last.fm
– WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
– Twitter vs. Facebook
– WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
– WordPress vs. Typepad
– WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
– Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
– WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
– TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
– WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
– Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
– WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
– Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
– WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Week 10:
– AT&T vs. Verizon
– WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
– Google vs. Bing
– WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
– iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
– WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
– Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
– WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
– Old versus new Twitter retweets
– WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Week 15:
– Gmail vs. Outlook
– WINNER: Gmail, 3684 votes (Outlook: 980 votes, Tie: 590 votes)

Week 16:
– Boxee vs. Hulu
– WINNER: Hulu, 626 votes (Boxee: 591 votes, Tie: 106 votes)

Week 17:
– Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS
– WINNER: Nexus One, 6743 votes (iPhone 3GS: 2818 votes, Tie: 592 votes)

Tags: -local, foursquare, gowalla, iphone, lbs, Mobile 2.0, mobile local, polls, social media, web faceoff, yelp

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Now that the Golden Globes are over with, it’s time for the Grammy Awards preparations to go into full swing. First up in the media blitz: CBS Radio has launched an Internet radio station that plays selections from Grammy-nominated artists. You can listen to it using a web-based player on your computer or the CBS Radio app on your iPhone or BlackBerry.

Artists featured on CBS streaming radio station include Jay-Z, Rihanna, The Black Eyed Peas, Green Day, Lady Gaga, P!nk, Bon Jovi, Silversun Pickups, Taylor Swift and several more.

CBS Grammy Radio is part of a large assortment of CBS Radio stations, including AOL Radio and Yahoo! Music stations. It’s linked from the official Grammy Awards website, CBS’s own site for the Grammys and other CBS Radio station sites. The station subtly suggests you buy ringtones for most of its songs by placing a “Get Ringtone” button over the album cover for the current song.

There’s even a DJ — a novel concept in a world flooded with Pandora and the like — but as far as we can tell, she mostly plugs the Grammy awards ceremony by listing nominees.

The Grammy awards will air on CBS on Sunday, January 31 at 8:00 p.m. PT.

Tags: cbs, grammy awards, music, radio

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I’m starting to think that Apple and the iPhone should be a bit concerned, because its Google-built Android rival is quickly gaining goodwill and market share.

Every week, we host a poll series on Mashable called the Web Faceoff, where we give you the reader a choice between two or three major tech or web-related products to choose from. In this week’s edition, we asked you to choose between the Nexus One and the iPhone 3GS, two of the best smartphones on the market.

After more than 10,000 votes, the Nexus One has thoroughly annihilated the iPhone 3GS. The Nexus One captured a full 66% of the poll (6743 votes), while the iPhone 3GS was only able to muster 28% support (2818 votes). 592 of you declared it a tie.

This result almost exactly mirrors our Android vs. iPhone OS poll, where Android garnered 66% of the vote to the iPhone OS’s 30%. Still, we’re shocked that a device that’s only been out for a few weeks could crush Apple’s device so thoroughly.

Our conclusion: Android and the Nexus One are charging at full steam. If Apple isn’t careful, it could eventually find its cell phone in second place.

Who Would win in a fight: Nexus One or iPhone?(online surveys)

Web Faceoff: Overall Results

Week 1:
– Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
– WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)

Week 2:
– Tumblr vs. Posterous
– WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
– Pandora vs. Last.fm
– WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
– Twitter vs. Facebook
– WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
– WordPress vs. Typepad
– WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
– Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
– WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
– TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
– WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
– Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
– WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
– Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
– WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Week 10:
– AT&T vs. Verizon
– WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
– Google vs. Bing
– WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
– iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
– WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
– Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
– WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
– Old versus new Twitter retweets
– WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Week 15:
– Gmail vs. Outlook
– WINNER: Gmail, 3684 votes (Outlook: 980 votes, Tie: 590 votes)

Week 16:
– Boxee vs. Hulu
– WINNER: Hulu, 626 votes (Boxee, 591 votes, Tie: 106 votes)

Tags: apple, Google, iphone, iphone 3Gs, Mobile 2.0, nexus one, poll, web faceoff

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What’s one of the single biggest media explosions of the past couple months? How about James Cameron’s massively epic Avatar? Aside from the much-documented use of Papyrus for the film’s logo, it was a pretty incredible film, especially from a visuals perspective (I thought the story was good, but not outstanding). This movie is about a lot more than the story, though. It’s all about the incredible digital creation of an entire digital world.

When I watched the film last week, I was really struck by the vastness of Pandora (especially since it’s only a moon), and the incredible imagination that went into the design of the various creatures. I don’t even know what too call most of them, but they all seemed to have their basic form in animals I recognized. There were giant beasts that looked like a highly modified rhino, smaller predators that ran like wolves in a pack, and a much larger predator that was like some sort of giant black panther on some powerful, mutating steroid (one of my personal favorites).

Obviously, though, one of the biggest parts of this budding franchise is the Na’vi, those wonderfully blue indigenous people of Pandora, who call themselves the People and are the guardians of their beloved world. It seems to me that these people have already completely captured the minds of the worldwide Avatar audience, and that this film could very easily establish an enduring legacy that will implant itself firmly in our cultural consciousness.

Just look at some of these examples of stunning fan art:

Neytiri by Orpheelin

Princess of the Omaticaya

Avatar Wallpaper

-Avatar-

Avatar

Na’vi

Avatar Na’vi

AVATAR

Neytiri

Jake Sully

There are some beautiful images here (and you can see even more below), and the implications of all these creations and astounding. The film has only been out for around one month, and many people have already seen it multiple times. I went to see it with a friend, and am considering going back to see it with my wife.

The film and it’s story appear to have already pieced deeply into our cultural fabric, and while I’m not certain that there is anything in the film quite as iconic as a character like Darth Vader or Yoda, the plethora of fan images and frenzy of discussion and activity surrounding the film will grow beyond the screen. I personally expect to see the foundation of an entire franchise, complete with novelizations, graphic novels, toys, possibly a cartoon series. I would even expect to see some sort of cinematic sequel, despite the massive cost of creating the first one.

Of course, the Na’vi people are at the very center of all of this, as we can see through even more artistic renditions of them:

Na’vi

DERP NA’VI OC

jake sully

Neytiri

Neytiri

The Na’vi Connection

neytiri avatar

Avatar’s Na’vi

Jake Sully Study

Neytiri

The immense popularity of these people raises some very interesting questions about exoticism and the human condition. I tried to include mostly original paintings and drawings here, but if you take even a quick look around deviantArt, you can easily find all sorts of instances where people have actually manipulated self-portraits in order to transform themselves into Na’vi.

This is nothing new, really. For years, there has been an entire sub-genre of fantasy in which people envision different types of humanoid creatures (often cat-like), in an effort to push past the mundane every-day-ness of their own humanity. It’s basically a form racial escapism (which is different from racism, since we are accepting that all of humanity encompasses a single race).

The very premise of the Avatar film takes this to a whole new level, though, since one of the key elements actually involves humans using technology to grow Na’vi bodies and temporarily transfer their consciousness into that body. It’s the ultimate fictional realization of this form of escapism! I think that this is at least part of the reason why these blue people, and the film surrounding them is proving so popular.

Avatar: Jake and Neytiri

Neytiri

My Na’vi

Na’vi

Neytiri

Ultimately, I see everything that’s going on here as a designer’s dream, albeit through a very specific form of design. I haven’t seen any interviews or special features myself, but I know enough about the special effects world to also know that hours and hours and hours of work must have actually gone into designing the Na’vi as a race. They had to look distinctly alien and foreign, but still resemble humans and be attractive enough for the audience to be drawn into their world.

It must have taken a significant investment, by a large number of incredibly talented people to bring the Na’vi from a conceptual people to an entire race of fully rendered digital characters.

Now imagine one of your own designs reaching such a level of cultural success as Avatar seems to be destined for. Perhaps it’s a logo that becomes as renowned as the Nike swoosh or McDonald’s golden arches. Or maybe it’s a poster that becomes so well known that an entire stream of similar designs emerge in tribute or reference, like the famous Uncle Sam poster. Maybe it’s a product, like the iPod, which defines an entire aesthetic, all on it’s own!

It would, I think, be incredibly arrogant and probably foolish to make such recognition the goal or purpose of any design. As designers our primary objective must always be to ensure the successful realization of a particular goal or purpose, which I do not believe should ever be fame itself.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t dream.

What do you think? I know I was kind of all over the map in this post, but I wrote it as a kind of showcase of and reaction to the incredible amount of beautiful Avatar artwork that I’ve seen popping up. Which ones were your favorites? Are there any other comments, reactions or ideas that you would like to add?

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Avatar may be one of the biggest grossing movies of all time, but it’s got a lot of fans feeling super blue (pun wholly intended).

CNN just came out with an extremely detailed report on the intense depression that Avatar is causing among a certain segment of fans, fans who psychotherapist Stacy Kaiser describes as “lonely to begin with. They’re seeing Avatar, they’re lonely people, a lot of them don’t have a lot going on in their lives right now… The movie opened up a portal for them to express their depression.”

These fans are turning to online forums — some of which have thousands of posts on how to deal with the cinema-induced sadness — to express their distress. Here’s a few excerpts from the CNN report:

“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it.. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ ”
– Mike

“When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning…It just seems so … meaningless. I still don’t really see any reason to keep … doing things at all. I live in a dying world.”
– Ivar Hill, 17, Sweden

In short, people are depressed because their own lives don’t measure up to the fantasy, a phenomenon Kaiser likens to the ennui one feels after seeing a romance movie if one happens to be unattached and dissatisfied.

CNN goes on to examine how the 3D technology only served to deepen the depression, as the realistic landscape of the film seems almost within reach, even though it doesn’t actually exist.

Well, if that’s the case, entertainment buffs better start popping the Prozacs as mainstream TV stations go 3D, and holograms are incorporated into standard award show fare.

Has anyone out there experienced post-Avatar depression?

Tags: avatar, Film, trending, video

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In order to play audio through your AirPort Express, you’ll need RaopX and inter-application audio router Soundflower. After installing both, all you need to do is go to Sound in System Preferences and change your default input and output to “Soundflower (2ch)” and start up RaopX in a Terminal session (just launch Terminal [Utilities -> Terminal], type in RaopX, and hit Enter). RaopX will build a 9 second buffer and then stream all audio from your computer to any speaker connected to an AirPort Express.

It’s certainly not as easy as picking “AirTunes” from a drop-down menu, but it’s hard to complain when you can finally stream Pandora, Mixtape.me, or your other favorite non-iTunes media player to AirTunes. Note: RaopX does not currently support Apple TV or iTunes Speaker Passwords.

RaopX is a free download, Mac only.

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We got a look at some screenshots and video from the unveiling, but we’ve been able to use early release versions of the Boxee beta on both Linux and Windows systems since then. Here’s Howcast’s helpful video, showing off some features and offering tips on getting started

And here’s what’s jumped out at us about this nifty little piece of software.

Click on any of the images in this post for a larger view.

Smoother playback and streaming, at least on Windows

Boxee is meant to be used on a media-minded, HDMI-connected mini-computer (a.k.a. a “Home Theater PC,” or HTPC), or perhaps a laptop hooked up to an HDTV. There’s a dedicated device, the Boxee Box coming in 2010 for “under $200.” The Boxee team has also recommended a few devices that are small, relatively cheap, and utilize the NVIDIA ION graphics chip to provide HD-quality video without requiring other high-end hardware.

I’d already built a cheap-but-powerful Boxee setup, but for the beta release, I switched that ASRock Ion 330 to a Windows 7 installation, with Boxee set to load on startup. I did that because Windows is the main platform where Adobe “Labs” Flash 10.1 offers 3D acceleration for Hulu and other web video streams—although the Boxee Box will see accelerated Flash as well. It’s also the best big-picture platform because Netflix requires Microsoft’s Silverlight software to stream—not available, as you might guess, for Linux.

Running the Boxee beta on Windows 7, I’ve been very, very pleased with both downloaded video files and streaming content. Watching Hulu or other decently-high-quality video is akin to watching standard definition television, while streaming HD videos from Vimeo or YouTube feels like living in the future. Adobe will eventually (we’d hope) add hardware acceleration to its Mac and Linux Flash players, and Netflix may well make its way onto Linux systems. For the time being, though, the specially built Boxee Box or a Windows setup seem like the road to high-definition happiness.

Focus on content, not sites

In the Boxee alpha, when you wanted to watch a movie on Netflix, you launched the Netflix button, then navigated through that app’s own interface to pick a movie or TV episode. When you were looking for a TV show, you’d head to the TV menu, pick the CBS, WB, or Hulu Feeds button (when it worked), then click-click-click to your show, and your episode.

Now when I want to check out that season finale episode of Glee I’ve been meaning to get around to (forever), I can head to TV Shows, start typing in G-L, and select it from the as-you-type results on the right. Boxee will ask if I want to stream this episode through Fox’s own site or Hulu, let me know if they’re ad-supported or not, and give me the alternate option of queuing this episode up, if I’m not ready for the sit-down yet.

It works this way for movies, too. Start typing in H-A-N, and if you wanted to stream Hancock over Netflix, head over and click on it. If you’re on a laptop, or using Boxee’s kinda awesome QWERTY remote in the future, it’s easy, and clicking out two letters on a virtual keyboard isn’t so bad with a standard remote, either.

The very handy Queue

Boxee’s Queue feature makes this find-and-click process even easier. If I’ve added Glee to My Shows, it will automatically show up in my Queue, the right-most column on the start screen. If I happened to see a link to the Hulu page for that episode in my web travels, I could queue it up with a bookmarklet. Or, if I’m really into my serial musical dramedies, I could add Glee to the ever-present pop-up menu. When you get to Glee‘s page, the episodes you’ve already watched through Boxee have dimmed titles, which is quite helpful as well.

The Apps and social hooks

If Boxee did nothing but play back your video files and hook up to Netflix or Hulu, it would be, well, XBMC Live, or just an open-source Windows Media Center. What differentiates Boxee is its support for independent app development, giving all kinds of niche, mashup, and just plain cool sites a home on your TV.

There are too many to try and name or catalog here in total, but in my own house, the Facebook and Flickr photo apps have become a relaxing way of keeping up on what friends are up to. Failblog and The Daily Kitten‘s apps provide shamelessly effective quick-hit entertainment, and I watched the entirety of The Guild‘s third season through Boxee on my TV. If I’m blogging from the living room, I can have Pandora piped through our speakers, or listen to NPR through its own app, or through the RadioTime tuner. As Boxee becomes more available and accessible to the average home, more apps are bound to come along.

And your friends, too, who get hooked up with Boxee will make the experience more enjoyable. Not that I don’t think the Boxee team lacks for cultural cachet, but they’re the only people, out of the 10 I’m friended to through Boxee, that manage to push anything into my recommended/rated feed. When more of your friends and fellow media lovers start using it, you’re bound to enjoy bumping into little surprises on Boxee a whole lot more.

What’s still missing

So Boxee’s taken a big step toward making their software more content-focused and accessible, but they could go farther.

• Hulu can remember where you left off in a video while you’re signed in, and it would be great if Boxee could do that, too—on any video site. This isn’t some overnight JavaScript hack, but, still, it’s one of the last big differences between your DVD/Blu-Ray player and web video.
• Video files that we download from around the internet have a huge variety of naming schemes. Jason’s detailed some techniques for helping the “scraper” in XBMC, and Boxee, recognize and organize your files in his guide to turbo-charging your XBMC installation, but more work on getting Boxee’s local file organizer to instantly locate and categorize TV shows and movies is always appreciated.
• Boxee still includes an automatic torrent downloader, and a web-server-based remote control scheme, but they’re both tucked away deep in the system options. Why not come out of the server room ghetto and make Boxee a remote-controlled BitTorrent champion, just like uTorrent?

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