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I’ve never had this conversation about Last.fm, or iLike, or Imeem, or any other online music service. For whatever reason, Pandora seems to have hit a nerve with my demographic, just like MySpace did with teens and twentysomethings about two years ago.

These fans seem to be casual music listeners in their thirties, knowledgeable about computers and personal technology but not obsessed with it. They may have an
iPod at home, but have grown tired of their own personal music collection or haven’t gotten around to connecting it to their
car stereo. They’re old enough to remember a time when music radio didn’t suck, and would listen to more of it if they could find a station they liked. They’re amazed at how well Pandora fits their musical tastes, and wish they had a way to listen to it away from the computer.

Pandora on the iPhone.

Pandora is already available for selected other phones, but there it costs a few bucks per month after a free trial. Plus, none of those other phones have the mainstream brand-name appeal of the iPhone. The only question is the money–once Pandora on the iPhone takes off, how will Pandora make money from it? I’m hoping they don’t ruin the appeal of the service with overly intrusive advertising.

Once the early adopters have gotten through the queue, I think the
iPhone will appeal mostly to this same audience. Thirtysomething professionals who are interested in but not obsessed with technology will find the iPhone to be the first phone that actually lets them do things they want to do without requiring a certified geek to show them how. (Example: snapping a decent-quality photo and e-mailing it from the phone. Doing that from my Verizon-enabled Razr is not easy, and the pictures suck. My neighbor did it from his new iPhone in five seconds.)

In other words, Pandora’s perfectly poised for a big mainstream bump. And the iPhone version, covered here by CNET’s Donald Bell, is the necessary catalyst.

(Credit:
Pandora)

Pandora on the iPhone is attractive, intuitive, and offers an obvious tangible benefit–great music at no charge. Plus, if you just have to own a song, you can buy it from iTunes with one click (if you have an active Wi-Fi connection).

I’ve mentioned it before, but I continue to be amazed at all the buzz about Pandora’s online radio service, which creates playlists based on your musical tastes. About once a month, someone comes up to me and asks me if I’m familiar with it, and don’t I just love it?

A would-be Palin shares her inner-most thoughts on “The PalinDrome: Sarah Palin’s Blog”. A faux Levi Johnston (that’d be Palin’s soon-to-be son-in-law, for those of you out of the loop) can also be found online.

It’s also interesting to note what you can’t find on Palin on the Internet. As pointed out on Versionista, the Palin for Governor site disappeared the morning she was announced as McCain’s running mate.

Of course, one could always turn to Palin’s official biography for more information–but what fun would that be?

John McCain’s announcement last week that he has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate left the public thirsting for information about the Alaska governor– and inspired hundreds of commentators, entrepreneurs, and Palin imitators to try to fill in the gaps.

There could be a lot to glean about Palin’s views and policy positions from her churchgoing history, the Huffington Post pointed out Tuesday. However, the archived sermons cited in the article are now inaccessible.

If Palin doesn’t suffice as your VP pick, one site recommends you try her out as your new Segway.

And, of course, the most authoritative site on the Internet–Wikipedia–has changed the story of Palin numerous times.

You can join one of the hundreds of new Facebook groups passing judgment about Palin– ranging from “Sarah Palin has more Executive experience than Obama and Biden combined” to “I have more Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin.” There is even a Governor Palin Facebook application… that doesn’t seem to have any sort of application.

There are plenty of crude references to Palin online–on the less offensive side, one can buy merchandise calling Palin a “Babe-raham Lincoln.”

Multiply has also launched a tool that automatically uploads photos and videos to a private “locker,” from users can choose content to share with friends. All Multiply profiles are friends-only, as the site promotes an aim of friends-and-family communication and media sharing.

The site also has a more “adult” focus than many social networks; the average age of active users ranges from the upper 20s to mid-30s. “We’ve never tried to be the hip, cool nightclub,” Vice President Michael Gersh said to CNET News.com.

Members who opt in to the “digital scrapbook” program will be able to store high-resolution photos, as well as videos up to 20 minutes long. They will also be able to surf the site without ads.

Multiply hit the 9 million member mark recently and will likely hit 10 million in July, still paltry compared to the likes of Facebook and MySpace. But executives say touting huge growth numbers would be contrary to the site’s aim of connections between family and close friends, not random strangers or even acquaintances. Its members, according to Multiply numbers, post 2 million photos, 19,000 videos, and 55,000 blog entries every day.

“It’s much more organized and meaningful than some explosive megasite,” Gersh said. “People are sticking around.”

Multiply, a social network that has done a fine job of flying under the radar since its 2005 launch, has announced a new paid-account program that focuses on media storage. Called a “digital scrapbook,” this premium feature will cost $19.95 annually.

I was just wondering, but, well, how long and hard did the company think about snooping into its employee’s personal Facebook pages? I only ask because I know there are some people who have zero tolerance for this kind of corporate behavior.

Kimberley Swann thought her job was boring. So she said so on her Facebook page.

Ivell’s home page is a little on the dull side. But I did find a lively sentence at the very end of its home page spiel, almost every sentence of which begins with “We.”

So I went to a very sober Web site to discover the definition of this Social Accountability Standard, which seems to be referred to as SA8000. Here it is: “(The standard) measures the performance of companies in eight key areas: child labor, forced labor, health and safety, free association and collective bargaining, discrimination, disciplinary practices, working hours and compensation.”

“We follow a zero tolerance social accountability standard,” says the last sentence. Perhaps firing Ms. Swann is an example of Ivell’s zero tolerance social accountability.

(Credit: CC Schlusselbein2007)

Miss Swann, 16, was stunned.
She told the Daily Telegraph: “I did not even put the company’s name, I just put that my job was boring. They were just being nosy, going through everything. I think it is really sad, it makes them look stupid that they are going to be so petty.”

Here is today’s philosophical question: is your personal Facebook page an example of “free association”? Stephen Ivell, the owner, thinks the company acted properly. He told the Telegraph: “It is just a shame that it did not work out because she is a lovely girl. For a small company, when a decision is made, one thinks long and hard about it.”

Her employer, Ivell Marketing and Logistics of Clacton, U.K., gave her this update:
“Following your comments made on Facebook about your job and the company we feel it is better that, as you are not happy and do not enjoy your work we end your employment with Ivell Marketing & Logistics with immediate effect.”

This work of art is entitled "Bored at Work". It in no way represents the exciting opportunities at Ivell Marketing and Logistics.

If you attended Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, you can be excused for thinking you showed up at the partner event for Red Hat, Google, or Salesforce.

But this may be one area in which Microsoft needs to think a bit more. As The Motley Fool notes,

Microsoft is a smart company, and has obviously thought about these issues. I still wonder if the company will find that its partners don’t like having to compete with their old friend.

Microsoft is smart: Why reinvent the business model wheel when others have pioneered successful ways to deliver software value? Of course, Microsoft has never been the most innovative of companies - it has become the market behemoth that it is by out-executing its competitors, not by out-thinking them.

commentary

Tech watchers will see lots of familiar concepts in software behemoth Microsoft’s revamped go-to-market strategy….[Microsoft] proclaimed its newfound focus on delivering software and services to customers via “the cloud,” using a subscription-based model popularized by companies like Red Hat, Websense and Salesforce.com.

By tangling with its partners in accounts of all sizes, Microsoft may have finally proved to be too big for its own good. Since it got into the applications business, it has had a competitive relationship with its software partners. But now it will also be competing with its channel delivery partners.

After all, Microsoft’s new partner initiatives rely heavily on concepts devised and delivered by these companies:

Although partners will get a 12% cut of the first year’s subscription, and 6% thereafter, they will now be competing head-to-head against Microsoft for delivering value-added services. This marks a dramatic departure from the way Microsoft has worked with partners in the past. Mr. Softy formerly provided direct support and services only to the largest enterprise clients, while channel partners handled the rest.

And naturally, with at least hundreds of thousands of servers in operation and its data centers placed near power plants to cut electricity costs, Google is trying to get computing equipment makers more excited about efficiency.

“Maybe if you call this a land-held computer, perhaps they’ll help us,” he quipped, showing an aerial view of a sprawling Google data center.

The company’s servers simply can’t go to sleep, he said. Each machine is “rarely fully idle,” he said. “The fraction of time the servers are actually doing exactly nothing is very small.”

Google’s servers, though, have the opposite type of activity: they spend most of their time doing modest amounts of work, with frenzied moments of peak activity and complete lulls a rarity, Barroso said. The measurements are based on measurements of about 5,000 servers performing four different Google applications, he added.

The basic problem is that mobile devices and servers have different modes of activity.

Thus, Google is urging electronics designers to create products that more gracefully reduce power demands as activity diminishes. Servers naturally consume peak power at peak activity, but what’s bad is that they still consume about half peak power when at zero activity.

Mobile devices have been improving through better exploitation of the fact that they spend a lot of time dormant with occasional bursts of activity. That lets processors and other electronics save power by spending most time in low-power sleep modes, then snapping awake for peak-power high-performance modes when necessary.

Processors have gotten a bad rap for squandering ever more energy–indeed, Barroso himself, once a chip designer for Digital Equipment, has expressed such concerns. But chips actually are better than hard drives, memory, and network adapters at reducing power consumption during periods of moderate activity.

BURLINGAME, Calif.–Chipmakers have been applying lessons learned in mobile computing to servers in an effort to increase efficiency by lowering power consumption. But a noted Google engineer threw some cold water on the approach on Monday, arguing the two styles of computing are too different.

“The data center is a different device than the key targets for mobile electronics, laptops, and mobile devices,” said Luis Barroso, a Google engineer who closely studies the company’s power consumption, speaking at the O’Reilly Velocity conference here.

Some sophisticated hard drives, for example, can slow down their rotational speed to save power during periods of lower activity. However, “They need to bump to higher RPM to do something useful,” to read and write, he said, unlike processors, which can actually still process data when in low-activity modes.

See also: Ning, Karma411, FixMyStreet, Change.org.

Amazee looks like a good service with the technical framework for delivering on its promise. And while it has the social dynamic worked out within its own universe, it doesn’t have the hooks it needs into the rest of the world. As I was recently reminded when I tried Yammer here at CNET (it’s deathly silent in our little room), building a social service is only one part programming. The other 99 parts are social engineering.

The problem is, you have to solve your Love/Belonging issues before you can address Esteem, and Amazee is so theoretically pure that it cuts itself off from the real and messy world where the mass of users congregate.

The lack of a white-label version of Amazee is its greatest business fault and the service’s biggest opportunity. Facebook users already have the popular Causes app where they can talk about action and raise funds (although without Amazee’s workflow tools), but you can’t co-brand or remarket Causes for your site, and that, to me, represents an opportunity. (Amazee plans to make money by offering “private” pages, but as of yet those pages cannot be branded.)

Furthermore, Amazee is being built as a destination site. People who want to launch a cause on their own site can point users to the cause’s page on Amazee, but they can’t get their own branded version, nor (yet) hook the service in to whatever network of users they already have.

Switzerland’s Amazee on Wednesday is launching its site for building social projects. It’s a solid effort. The collaboration tools look good, and I like how it puts the focus on the project, unlike most other social nets that focus on the person. However, in its current form, Amazee is more impressive in theory than practice. I don’t want to say the project suffers from hubris, but I do believe it will need to climb down from its ivory tower to succeed.

Amazee CEO Gregory Gerhardt told me the goal for the site is to drive collective action. The tools the service offers are in support of that. But while Amazee has got the tools part of the equation well in hand, the collective part is lacking.

Part of this is due to the pure theory that Gerhardt is basing Amazee on. His was the only pitch in recent years that I’ve seen where Maslow’s hierarchy of needs played a key part. Gerhardt puts Amazee at the “Esteem” level: The service is about achievement and respect. He puts Facebook and social networks a slot down, at “Love/Belonging.”

The Amazee dashboard lets you manage your causes.

Within the site, you can set up a project, such as raising money for a cause, organizing a rally, or building an ark to save the planet’s animals–whatever. Amazee, unlike most social networks, is built around workflow modules, like a discussion forum, a file repository, a calendar, and other functions. The company’s team plans to layer in Basecamp-like tools for deeper task tracking.

The device is the company’s first effort into “Green” storage. It features triple interfaces: FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2.0 and it supports up to 1TB of storage space in RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration. Utilizing the latest technology in energy efficiency, the Guardian MAXimus provides a 15 percent power savings and consumes up to 50 percent less power than traditionally powered 1TB external hard drives.

The Guardian MAXimus is Newer Technology's first effort into "Green" storage.

It’s a little disappointing that the eSATA interface is left out, as the device is designed to house high-speed 3.5-inch SATA desktop hard drives. However, the Guardian MAXimus makes up for this by offering a relatively compact size and a sturdy, shock resistant casing. And it’s probably the first external drive on the market that’s certified by RoHS (an EU directive that sets standard for Restriction of Hazardous Substances) to be one of its kind that delivers maximum data protection and backup performance while using less energy.

I never thought tech devices that consume relatively little energy, such as external hard drives, can actually be optimized to consume even less energy. Apparently, I was wrong. Case in point: the Guardian MAXimus external hard drive enclosure from Newer Technology.

You can get the Guardain MAXimus now for $150 without the hard drive. The enclosure comes with a good bundle of software including: Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools, ProSoft Engineering Data Backup (For
Mac), and NovaStor NovaBackup (for Windows). It works with both PC (Windows 2000 or later) and Mac (OS 8.6 or later) platforms.

Click here for ongoing coverage from CNET News, ‘Tough times for tech’

Already, we’re starting to see signs of growing problems. Rumors are spreading of growing layoffs in Silicon Valley, and since the third quarter just ended, it’s a good bet that surprising earnings shortfalls could be the big news in the coming days.

There’s an old joke about economists: Being an economist means you never have to say you’re wrong; you’ve merely changed your outlook based upon further data.

Anyone who believes hundreds of little companies completely dependent on advertising for their revenue can survive is kidding himself. We’ve seen that play before, and it doesn’t end well.

And if you believe this has little to do with the tech industry, think again. That mess on Wall Street means it’s hard to get credit–whether you’re a giant company looking to make capital expenditures like new server farms, or a start-up looking to buy office furniture or put money down for rent. Wall Street has always been a cutting-edge technology buyer, and that spigot is all but shut off for now. Universities and states are announcing plans to trim or freeze spending, and private customers probably aren’t far behind. (Here’s a breakdown of how foreclosures on subprime mortgages could lead to another tech bust.)

Instead, the bust that could be in the wings is more likely to resemble the tech bust of the late 1980s, when a Wall Street and banking crisis, a recession (and yes, too many companies) conspired to cause rapid consolidation in the young PC and desktop software industries. In some ways, it was a longer, more painful episode for the tech industry. Tech spending and venture capital activity didn’t dramatically rebound until Netscape Communications released its first browser and the dot-com boom was on.

Nonetheless, while many may fear a replay of the dot-com bust, what could happen to the tech industry over the next year will be different for a combination of reasons: This isn’t a self-made disaster, there’s not as much public money on the table, and the rate of spending for Web 2.0 companies has been relatively modest when compared to the wild gold rush days of the late 1990s.

A depression? That may be pushing it. But as Thursday’s front page of The Wall Street Journal puts in very stark terms, bailout or not (the House of Representatives is expected to vote on a new version of the bailout bill Friday), signs are pointing toward a recession: auto sales are down; manufacturing activity is down; housing foreclosures are still high, while housing prices are down; and construction spending has tanked.

On top of that, venture capital spending is on shaky ground, mergers and acquisitions in tech are down, and successful initial public offerings on the stock market are as unlikely as they have been at any point since the dot-com bust. Also, anyone who believes hundreds of little companies completely dependent on advertising for their revenue can survive is kidding himself. We’ve seen that play before, and it doesn’t end well.

That brings us to the current, very shaky state of affairs for the global economy and–since we’re a site dedicated to coverage of technology–the high-tech industry. What worried economists six months ago has them in an outright panic now: one hyper-ventilating commentator on CNN opined on the day the U.S. House of Representatives defeated a Wall Street bailout package (or is that an “economic rescue” plan now?) that the economy was now on the brink of a depression.

So what’s happening now? Truth is, no one really knows because the modern tech industry has never had to navigate through this sort of economic uncertainty. Jason Calacanis has made some dramatic predictions about start-ups disappearing. He could be right: But then the start-up executives at the Web 2.0 conference three weeks ago (just as the scope of the Wall Street meltdown was becoming clear) who fell back on that “cautiously optimistic” catchphrase could also be right.

We’re going to do our best here at CNET News to keep you updated on the unfolding mess. (Or is it merely an untidy moment?) We’ll let you know who’s being acquired, who’s going under, where the big layoffs are, and whether there’s reason for optimism in the middle of all this bad news. Here’s a roundup of this week’s news.

But with the Verizon Wireless settlement, it looks like the plaintiffs’ case may have had some legal merit. A Sprint spokesman declined to comment on what Verizon’s settlement might mean for Sprint. But he said the company is confident that no matter what happens it won’t be asked to pay damages since a jury already found that customers owed the company more than Sprint was ever able to collect in early termination fees.

Details of the settlement aren’t public. But a Verizon spokeswoman said that the settlement will put to rest claims filed by customers in California as well as customers that are part of a nationwide class action lawsuit.

The settlement comes as these cell phone operators take heat from the Federal Communications Commission and Congress over the fees. The FCC held a hearing in June in which unhappy customers and consumer advocates railed against the companies for their business practices.

Verizon denied any wrongdoing. And the spokeswoman pointed out that Verizon Wireless was the first cell phone operator in the U.S. to establish a pro-rated early termination fee that decreases over the time of the contract. Since then, the other three carriers, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile, have all pledged to go to prorated fees.

The phone companies have argued that the fees are necessary to recover costs. Specifically, they say the early termination fees help cover the cost of phones, which the carriers subsidize and offer as part of a service contract.

One thing is certain. The battle over these fees is far from over. Verizon may have settled, but the issue is still very much alive in the hearts and minds of customers. And the FCC and Congress just may have to take action. The big question now is how far will the government go?

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he believed the fees, which in some cases have exceeded $200, were excessive. And he said he was concerned the early termination fees were not being used as a means to recover legitimate costs, but rather as a means to lock customers into a service provider.

Sprint Nextel won a victory in its battle when a jury decided last month that customers had indeed broken their contract with the carrier and that they owed the company $225 million, far more than Sprint Nextel was able to collect to from customers terminating their services early.

Now the judge in the case will have to decide whether the contract that Sprint imposed on its customers was even legal according to California law. A decision on that is expected within weeks.

So far the legal battles brewing against the phone companies have been a mixed bag. Cell phone users in California initially formed a class in 2006 for a lawsuit against all four major carriers: AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. But the court separated the cases and each carrier is battling the lawsuits on their own.

Verizon Wireless agreed to pay $21 million to settle a lawsuit filed by customers who claim the company’s early termination fees are excessive and unfair.