Picture from Peter DaSilva for The New York Time

For 10 years, no one would think Pandora, one of the most popular internet music on the mobile phones today was able to survive.  For a while, the found Tim Westgren was having hard time finding investors, but not anymore.  Here's a nice artible done by NyTimes.com

OAKLAND, Calif. - Tim Westergren recently sat in a Las Vegas penthouse suite, a glass of red wine in one hand and a truffle-infused Kobe beef burger in the other, courtesy of the investment bankers who were throwing a party to court him.

t was a surreal moment for Mr. Westergren, who founded Pandora, the Internet radio station. For most of its 10 years, it has been on the verge of death, struggling to find investors and battling record labels over royalties.

Had Pandora died, it would have joined myriad music start-ups in the tech company graveyard, like SpiralFrog and the original Napster. Instead, with a successful iPhone app fueling interest, Pandora is attracting attention from investment bankers who think it could go public, the pinnacle of success for a start-up.

source: nytimes.com

If you are wondering how soon Adobe Flashing is coming to mobile phones, here are some info that can help you.

Can Adobe clarify the roadmap for Android and Windows Mobile? Based on what was announced in February and June I was expecting some alpha release during MAX and had planned for that. The announcement at MAX there was to be some preview release in December together with the Open Screen Project partners was unfortunate, but no big problem.. Unfortunately that preview release did not materialize and 2009 has passed. Mobile Flash is different from the regular Flash in that I can not get my developers to just install it on the hardware they have, I need to get funding for new phones, acquire them etc. Budgets do not come overnight, so the sooner Adobe can provide us with a clear roadmap the better.

What I need to know is:

- what will be the first Android phone for which a Flash Player 10.1 alpha/preview will be released?

- what will be the first Windows Mobile phone for which a Flash Player 10.1 alpha/preview will be released?

- When?

To that, the Adobe rep replies:

We're waiting for OS updates from Google and Microsoft before we can distribute a Flash Player Beta. We expect this to happen early this year. Thank you for your patience!

The first Android devices that will support Flash Player are the Droid and Nexus One. The first WinMo device will be the HTC HD2.

And in another reply, the Adobe rep mentions:

You can expect the final release for Android to be available mid-year. All Android devices that meet our minimum s/w and h/w requirements will be supported. Unfortunately, I cannot say a lot more publicly about our port to the Android platform at this time.

As for WinMo, we have made the tough decision to defer support for that platform until WinMo7. This is due to the fact that WinMo6.5 does not support some of the critical APIs that we need.

source: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/550281?tstart=30#550281

This is pretty good news for people who uses google search a lot on their mobile phones, because google.com on mobile just got a new appearanc.

Mobile phone users who are fond of making searches using one of the most popular search engines on the market today, namely Google, are now able to enjoy a series of enhancements the company has just made to the appearance of the service. Google Search for mobile, accessible via a web browser from an Android or iPhone device, and other handsets to

via: softpedia

NAVIGON AG, the leading provider of mobile phone on-board navigation, today announced a significant update for MobileNavigator, the most feature-rich navigation app available on the iPhone platform. Extending comprehensive functionality, the update adds three innovative features: in-app Connection to Facebook and Twitter, Panorama View 3D with 3D terrain views powered by NASA data, and personalized route delivery via NAVIGON MyRoutes, an intelligent direction provider. NAVIGON is showcasing the update prior to its launch in spring at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, February 11-13, booth #575.

Version 1.5.0 Feature Highlights:

• Connection to Facebook and Twitter: A simple icon tap posts users current position, destination, and ETA without navigation interruption.

• Panorama View 3D: True 3D in-map views obtained from NASA's height and terrain data enable intuitive orientation of surrounding environment, and what lies ahead with digital landscape elevations, shadows, and geographic images. Panorama View 3D is integrated in-map, independent from the phone's data connection. The Panorama View 3D feature will be available via an In App Purchase.

• NAVIGON MyRoutes: Analyzes driving habits, patterns, location, time/day and provides up to three routes clearly displayed in-map with ETA, distance and driving times for each.

source: businesswire