Solo Technology

The Pandora blog announced the beta of Pandora Desktop today. It runs on Adobe AIR and offers a couple new features that you don’t get from the web version.

The biggest new feature is the ability to minimize it to the tray. Still get your music rolling but no “desktop clutter.”

Another nice feature is the right-click menu from the tray. You can change channels, create a channel and see what’s currently playing all from a quick right-click.

And well… that’s about it. It looks just like the web version, so no startling UI changes to work through. Definitely worth a grab if you like Pandora (I do!) and want a convenient way to listen and discover music.

I used to use Prism to “desktopize” Pandora – this is way better if only for the ability to minimize and the little tray menu.

On the flip side, like most AIR application, it does seem to have a heavy memory foot print…

[Previous mentions of Pandora]

2 Responses to “Pandora on the Desktop”

1. rob on June 4th, 2008 9:49 pm
   

   Ok, I downloaded and I have to admit it is pretty cool. BUT (you knew this was coming) I created my profile, but I had no option over how my profile works. They automatically dumped the id of ‘mullins72′. That really, really, really sucks. To make matters worse you can’t change the way it even appears to everyone else. I know it may seem petty, but I never bought into the whole ‘my identity is a number’ crap. In fact I hate it so much I probably won’t use this thing much even though it is somewhat cool.

   If they don’t fix this I really don’t think it will fly. Gen X, Gen Y, and the Millennials won’t buy it I don’t think. (BTW, I’m an X’er.)
   IMHO

2. Chris on June 5th, 2008 11:08 pm
   

   Hi Rob I’m older than an X’er and to be honest I never really realized this thing had a “profile” to be concerned with! I just log in to get my stations and then let it stream music to me all day.

   Perhaps I’m missing out, but for what I want it does great.

   Now, while I was toying with Last.fm I did experiment with pandora.FM quite a bit: http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/login.php

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