Pandora’s new podcast is a perfect example of how a complementary podcast can boost interest and foster new business developments in a company. Hosted by Kevin Seal, the podcast delves into the world of music theory and analysis with the minds behind the Music Genome Project.

They state on their page

We thought it might be interesting for folks to learn more about what goes into songwriting. These podcasts are our attempt to give you an inside look at the techniques musicians use to put their signature on the music they write and perform.

And indeed, for any music lover out there who wants to become a more active listener, the Pandora Podcast promises to deliver interesting facts about tonality, harmony, melodies, and much more.

The podcast also allows Pandora to show off the wide array of artists that are in their collection and foster interest from listeners to new bands. For example, the first episode features the band 20 Minute Loop demonstrating various principles of harmony. I had never heard of the band before, and, after listening to the show, I am now a fan. In addition, they give many examples of bands that exhibit the musical qualities that they talk about in the show, which they link to in the post.

The podcast serves to educate users about music theory and the principles behind Pandora. But also, it creates buzz about the artists that are featured. Both of these make the podcast a smart move by Pandora.

Bloglines is one of those services that has been stagnant for quite a while. Ever since being acquired by Ask.com, the basic interface has remained unchanged. Regardless of this, Bloglines has dominated in the world of RSS readers, even if it’s not the best.

I suppose the number one reason why I use Bloglines is because I’m entrenched, both mentally and physically. I’ve experimented with other readers, but, I never seem to have enough time to transfer my OPML and learn a new interface. I guess I’m destined to enjoy/loathe the unchanging interface of Bloglines.

That was, until they actually made a change. Gasp.

It was probably a few months ago, but I remember waking up one day and seeing the reading pane automatically refresh without reloading the page. At first, I thought I was hallucinating–no, was this really happening? They actually implemented a useful and elegant feature.

With all jokes aside, Bloglines isn’t really a bad reader, it’s just old. All the cool kids are jumping to newer web RSS readers like Rojo, Google Reader, and Netvibes. The Bloglines team should really think about a redesign, especially with some of their older features that no one uses, like the Clippings, and with some of their newer features, like the potentially confusing Playlists.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and what better time to have a write-up about a ridiculous website that has only one offering. When I first heard this on the radio, I couldn’t stop laughing. When James Yu first visited the site, he couldn’t start laughing. I guess it will only be funny to some.

Write someone’s name into “Da breakup song”, and give them a couple reasons why you’re breaking up with them. Maybe they’re cheap, fat, have bad breath, talk too much, have no car, forgot your birthday, blogged mean things about you? All are included in the customizable breakup song. The song is sung, or rapped, by Lady Raptastic, who I think is really a white guy trying to sound like an uneducated African American woman.

While waiting for the song to load there are some funny one-liners such as: “Hold on, I be doin’ my nails”, “OK, I be getting up”, and “Hold on fo’ one sec”. Warning: the beginning of the song, whether you like it or not, will be stuck in your head if you hear it more than twice. I have 3/4 of my family, not including myself, singing the beginning. “Dees song is especially fer you…Jo-el, Jo-el you about to be broke up, Jo-el, Jo-el you about to be broke up.” Catchy, ain’t it?

My interest was sparked when I saw a solitary ad from PayPerPost, the service that pays bloggers to write nice things about companies or products. Upon further research, I found the group behind Da Breakup song, MindComet, is also tightly connected with, if not the parent company of, PayPerPost. Ted Murphy, the Founder and CEO of PayPerPost, is also the Chariman of the Board at MindComet.

Interestingly, the people behind PayPerPost also created Disclosurepolicy.org, a disclosure service that helps bloggers generate a statement that will disclose any conflicts of interest they may have. Ironic. It reminds me of the tobacco companies who pay millions in advertising to tell kids that smoking is bad. I don’t believe the tobacco conglomerates are really opposed to kids trying cigarettes and subsequently becoming addicted to smoking; nor do I believe that PayPerPost wants bloggers disclosing that they are paid to write a favorable post about a certain company. Consumers are more likely to try a product a blogger recommends if they don’t think the blogger was paid to write about it– PayPerPost knows that.

MindComet is an interactive marketing company, and while they have some diverse offerings, I find a lot of what they have to be quite strange. For instance, they have a lot of blogs about different forms of online marketing such as emailmarketingvoodoo.com, cgmvoodoo.com (cgm is consumer generated marketing), and behavioralmarketingvoodoo.com. I’ve studied a lot about marketing, and I think associating voodoo with marketing lessons doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth. In my mind, Voodoo provokes images of one devious person trying to manipulate or control another.

One good thing that can be said about MindComet is that they are highly productive.

I’m wondering if MindComet were the ones who sent the site to the radio station. And if so, was the station paid to do so or did the DJ just genuinely like the site and song?

Here’s a couple of my favorite lines from Da breakup song:

“I am suspect, when you give a gift to me, because everything you buy is buy one get one free
You so cheap the only time you use Grey Poupon, is when you have a free Grey Pou-pon cou-pon”

Also check out Monkey Mail which is on the Career Builder website. I enjoy the text to speech feature where I type in my Mom’s dog’s name several times and watch the dog look around very bewildered.

Yes, I’m referring to the long awaited results to the BuzzShout blogger contest that ended at the end of October. And while I’m glad my catchy title has caught your attention, I’m sorry to report that we don’t yet have a winner. All submissions are in, and James and I are working together to agree on which one should get the grand prize.

Allow me to explain what has taken us so long. We’ve spent lots of time attending events and interviewing “Web 2.0″ visionaries. The videos that we’ve been posting take a surprisingly long time to edit, though I think we’ve finally gotten through the learning curve and the editing time seems to be going down. By the way, did I mention that the two of us behind BuzzShout also hold down day jobs?

Anyway, we will have a winner picked soon. Thank all of you for your submissions, and keep your eyes on your inbox as we will be emailing the winner before the big announcement. I badly wanted to submit my own entry to win the part of the cash prize that I wasn’t throwing in, but hence I couldn’t. So, if you know of other blogging contests on another site, and if they have a prize as cool as ours, please let me know so I can send them my entry.

Cheers!

Today, Flickr launched Camera Finder, which lets people browse and track trends in camera usage on Flickr. In addition, they’ve linked in camera price comparison and shopping at Yahoo Shopping, which is a brilliant move.

Currently, the most popular camera on Flickr is the Canon Rebel XT.

When I’m in the market for a new camera, I typically peruse sites like Amazon and dpreview for specs and sample pictures. But, nothing beats looking at pictures taken with the camera from people like me. This is where Flickr’s Camera Finder comes in–they let people see the performance of the camera in the hands of the people. Amazon does this to an extent, by allowing people to upload sample pictures for products. But, their collection pales in comparison to the one that passionate Flickr users upload.

What Flickr should do is to allow sites like Amazon to get access to their photo collection for either a fee or revenue sharing. In the end, this could very well be one of the most lucrative moves Flickr has undertaken.

During the Stirr Mixer, we caught up with Adam Marsh, the CEO of PrefPass for a quick interview.

The goal of PrefPass is to personalize websites without having to register. They provide an easy means for site managers to validate users. And, in turn, the users get a quick way to login without the hassles of filling out long and tedious forms. PrefPass will also be able to track the preferences of users as they login to numerous PrefPass enabled sites. This preference data can later be used for contextual ads and other useful tools for site managers.

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Interview with Adam Marsh of PrefPass (3 minutes, direct download)

At the last SF New Tech Meetup, we did an interview with Ori Soen, the CEO of MuseStorm. MuseStorm is in the hot field of widgets, providing services that are built on top of dynamic web data. Their company is based in Israel, so it was a real treat to see Ori in the Bay Area, who was here for the Widgets Live Conference.

In addition, let’s give Joanne Wan (of Stirr and Valleywag fame) a big welcome for conducting her first interview here at BuzzShout!

Click To Play

Interview with Ori Soen of MuseStorm (5 min, direct download)

Photo by Scott Beale

Nick Douglas of Valleywag has left the building. The talented and sometimes controversial writer is no longer the lead editor at Valleywag, and, they are looking to fill his shoes.

Valleywag says

Nick Douglas, editor since launch earlier this year, is leaving. […] Nick Douglas, the kid we plucked from college to launch Valleywag, will be a great journalist. And we will look stupid for letting him go. (To reach Nick Douglas, send email to popsnap at gmail dot com.) But, to helm the site, we’re now looking for someone with, ideally, some background in reporting.

For a blog that tries to reveal everything about industry gossip and secrets, they’re certainly keeping Nick Douglas’s departure rather low key. He really was the voice of Valleywag, and, even though I don’t usually read it everyday, I enjoyed his witty banter on the state of Web 2.0 gossip. It won’t be the same without him.

Now, he can start his own blog, and, I’m sure that the first entry will be about the circumstances of departure from VW.

Also, VW has also redesigned their page, and oh, what a horrible redesign it is. They say that the original design of VW was weak, but, I think that it’s not only weaker now, it’s bad on the eyes. The original design was one of my favorites in the gawker regime.

Will this be the start of the decline of VW? Nick really had the personality within the Web 2.0 world, and, his departure will leave the new guy with a lot of catching up to do.

Tomorrow, there will be an event organized by Monte Jade that features a panel discussing the transition from an employee to a founder. This is especially relevant in the current fertile climate of Web 2.0 companies. Many times, the founders of these companies have made the jump, or are thinking about making the jump, from their day job to a potentially risky job as CEO.

The panelists include some founders who have successfully made this transition:

• Tom Cole - Partner at Trinity Ventures
• Dave Lu - Founder of FanPop
• Charles Ying - Founder of Mobile80

This event should be especially interesting to people who are curious to see the trials, tribulations, and delight in heading off on your own as a business trailblazer.

When
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
6:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Where
Orrick
1000 Marsh Road
Menlo Park, California 94025

For more details and registration, refer to the Upcoming.org page.

Michael Masnick, the President and CEO of Techdirt, was gracious enough to do an interview with us at the Office 2.0 Conference. Techdirt, which has been around since 1997, has a simple mission: getting the right information to the right people at the right time. They do this by employing a balance between human expertise and technology.

In the interview, Michael talks about what Techdirt does, including some of their new initiatives, such as the Techdirt Insight Community, which allows companies to harness the knowledge and expertise of bloggers. Find out if you can be part of the Techdirt Insight Community, and get paid to blog. Speaking of blogs, Techdirt is a great one, but what other blogs does Michael like? Find out now…

     

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