Pandora is an online music source that plays various music depending on your interests. While it is predominantly used on a computer, the development team has created apps for many different mobile platforms. However, Tom Conrad, the CTO of Pandora, was under a lot of fire for not creating an app for the Android community. Today, he announced that Pandora would roll out a new app for Android, as development as already begun. Their next big mobile launch will be Android.

He does go on to say his reasoning for choosing the iPhone platform and even Palm Pre, before Android. Basically, the iPhone was a hot item because he felt it was more of a music phone with a strong developer SDK. After that, they checked out the Palm Pre, mainly because they would have been one of the 5-10 developers who could create an app that would be ready upon launch of the Pre. An opportunity Conrad and Pandora surely did not want to miss out on. For the Android community, Conrad did say he regrets not having an Android app already.

Whenever the Pandora Android app is ready to go, I’m sure it will please many G1 and G2 users.

For those of us who have used DVRs before, you know how convenient it is to record a TV show and then watch it on your own time. This way, you can do something more productive when a TV show is on, and you can fast forward through commercials. A drawback to DVRs is the fact that additional equipment must be purchased, and recorded shows takes up hard drive space. However, Cablevision came up with an offer that allows their customers to record TV shows where it is stored on their server, taking away equipment as well as hard drive space restrictions.

This immediately drew the ire of content organizations, who view network/VLAN-based DVRs as no different from a file sharing service. With a seemingly unlimited ability to store television shows becoming a possibility… a server farm can cluster recording, granting users who “record” them multiple access to the same stored file. Cablevision essentially only has to record each channel constantly, and then play it back to customers who opted into the recording at the time. Conceivably, a customer in the future could opt to record all channels at all times.

The United States Supreme Court chose not to review a New York-based federal circuit court, on the argument that such remote DVR usage is in violation of copyright laws. The latest ruling prior to the 10th-circuit appeal upheld Cablevision’s position, that a remote connection to Cablevision’s servers does not violate the Supreme Court’s position on placeshifting… a position that originated in the Court’s Betamax decision, which legalized video cassette recording of television shows.

The decision to not review the case marks the Supreme Court’s restraint in establishing new law of the land on such technologies. The Court continues to grapple with modern technology, on issues ranging from pornography to DVD encryption. While the federal appeals court decision will establish some precedent in placeshifting recorded shows over the internet, it is not as strong a precedent as if the Supreme Court had voted to uphold the ruling, as the law of the land.

Following up on the announcement of the latest Sprint Palm Pre update, new information has surfaced on the extent of the fixes. The main issue being fixed was an exploit that was being used to install homebrew applications with unsigned code on non-root enabled phones by sending an email with the installer link.

The problem arose when no security dialog or warning notification would display when the link was clicked, with the executable automatically installing itself and appearing in the application list with no confirmation whatsoever, which could have been easily abused by someone sending a malicious application via email and potentially causing serious damage to the user’s device and data.

By fixing this loophole thanks to the help of the homebrew community, Palm is demonstrating that it is keeping an open line of communication, while keeping the rest of the alternative methods for development open for the time being.

Mozilla has a mobile version of Firefox available, but today, they released their second alpha version, codenamed Fennec.

The new version was released so Mozilla could receive continued feedback for Fennec, feedback from developers, and encourage further development such as add-ons. Fennec is only available on the Windows Mobile 6 platform.

Firefox is well known for its performance, stability, themes, and add-ons. Fennec will be no different, as Mozilla wishes for Fennec to be associated with stability, performance, themes and add-ons. For example, Fennec even comes with a new theme, which is to make the browser more aesthetically pleasing. In case you don’t own a Win-Mo phone, you can opt to download the desktop version of Fennec as long as you’re running Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X.

Some of the new features within Fennec includes:

Improved panning performance
Newly designed theme
JavaScript error console is now built in
Improved add-on support
Numerous bug fixes
Improved UI polish

Users can download Fennec immediately right here.

Thursday, Google announced the release of the Android Native Development Kit, giving developers the ability to use

native-code with Android applications. Since Android applications run inside the Dalvik virtual machine, applications up until now have been programmed with Java. The NDK now allows for developers to use C/C++ with their applications, increasing the ability to reuse code and perform extensive CPU-intensive operations.

The NDK provides:
a set of tools and build files used to generate native code libraries from C and C++ sources
a way to embed the corresponding native libraries into application packages files (.apks) that can be deployed on Android devices
a set of native system headers and libraries that will be supported in all future releases of the Android platform, starting from Android 1.5 documentation, samples and tutorials

While the NDK will benefit a lot of developers, it isn’t all neccissary for all Android applications. There are drawbacks, and Google tells you that immediately.

Your application will be more complicated, have reduced compatibility, have no access to framework APIs, and be harder to debug. That said, some applications that have self-contained, CPU-intensive operations that don’t allocate much memory may still benefit from increased performance and the ability to reuse existing code. Some examples are signal processing, intensive physics simulations, and some kinds of data processing.

With that said, the NDK shouldn’t be viewed as a replacement to Java development on Android, but as a way to integrate C/C++ code and libraries along with high performance where needed. JNI is used to link C libraries with that of Android’s own set of libraries.

This isn’t the first stride Google has taken to include other languages within Android. Earlier this month Google announced the Android Scripting Language (ASE) which allowed users to “edit and execute scripts and interactive interpreters directly on the Android device.” Popular langues Python and LUA can be accessed and edited accordingly through the ASE.

Interestingly enough, there is a purported YouTube killer among us that goes by the name The Video Bay. Just by the name, you can tell it is related to The Pirate Bay, and the founders of TPB are preparing for the launch of a new video streaming website.

Some new changes appeared on The Video Bay’s homepage, specifically this message:

“To stay in the spirit on which TPB was founded and using the Latest Technology™, TVB aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specificly the and tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats. This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don’t bug us too much if the site ain’t working properly.”

Unfortunately, not much can be done on the website, but there are Beta Testers who have access to the unrestricted video content (which leads to the possibility of finding copyrighted material).

For those of us excited about the prospect of streaming unrestricted video content, no date has been announced when the site plans to come out of beta. The founders of the website simply have this to say, “It will be done when it’s done.” Â Of course, it will be interesting to see how it compares to the giant YouTube and even Hulu when it is officially made available to the general public.

Apple is now offering the first refurb MacBook Air units with the Nvidia GeForce 9400m GPU.

The specifications for the laptop are otherwise unchanged from its recent debut with a 1.6 Ghz intel Core 2 Duo, 13.3-inch glossy widescreen display, 2GB of DDR3 memory, 120GB SATA hard drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR radios along with integrated iSight camera.

At $1199, these refurb units are sure to go fast, especially when paired with AppleCare.

Buy the Refurbished MacBook Air with 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and GeForce 9400m from Apple
Buy the AppleCare Protection Plan for the MacBook Air from Apple

In what will probably stand as the best deal yet for Xbox Live Gold pricing, the Buy ebay store is offering Xbox Live Gold subscriptions for $27.99, which consist of the retail-exclusive 12+1 month offering.

The best way to take advantage of the deal would be to buy 2 cards for $55.98 and stack both of them together for 2 years of uninterrupted online multiplayer gamplay, chat and Netflix access, or give the additional card as a gift to a cheapskate friend.

The deal is good until 8AM Pacific Time this Sunday

It was bound to happen sooner or later and today it did.

The Palm Mojo SDK Developer Preview has been leaked for all to download and those who do will see what Palm has so far been restricting to those accepted in the early access program.

So far the SDK is exactly what it is which is a preview of how apps will be developed, and this means that anything developed using this version of the SDK is not meant to be deployed on released hardware as the toolsets lack polish and are less than ideal for building full-fledged applications.

AnimeNews and CentralGadget have been able to confirm that Hulu has begun actively blocking access to the streaming service to PS3 web browser users since early this morning.

Attempts to access content from Fox, NBC, Funimation, and other content providers have been met with the “This video/content is not available on your platform” messages when attempting to stream programming from the site, with as yet no official explanation from Hulu.

Speculation has run high that the streaming service is actively looking to enforce the strict separation between TV and internet programming ever since the protracted cat and mouse game began with social streaming media platform boxee being blocked from direct Hulu access earlier this year.

Another salvo was fired when Hulu released a dedicated desktop client that was meant to drive away other third-party plugins that used workarounds for Hulu access.

While Hulu access on the PS3 left something to be desired in terms of reliability and usability, it was still the easiest plug and play method to enjoy Hulu without having to resort to the purchase of additional hardware or the need to install additional software as is the case with many other alternative access methods.

Story developing with followups as necessary