One of the things that’s always seemed a bit odd about Pandora’s excellent internet radio service is that it doesn’t sort music by genre. Instead, you pick a song or artist you like, and Pandora will populate a custom-made radio station with songs that are similar in one way or another. Generally this works pretty well and it makes Pandora an excellent service for finding unfamiliar songs and artists you might like. But sometimes it seems like it would be a whole lot easier to just pick a genre to get started.

Someone at Pandora apparently feels the same way, because tomorrow Pandora will launch new genre-based stations. For instance, you’ll be able to select stations such as “Love Songs,” “Classic Rock,” “Today’s Hits,” or “80′s Pop” to get started. You can further personalie the stations by giving songs the thumbs up or thumbs down.

All told, Pandora will be offering over 100 genre stations, which you’ll be able to find at pandora.com/genres or by clicking the “Create a New Station” panel.

You can access Pandora on the web at Pandora.com. There are also mobile apps for iPhone, Android, WebOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile. The new genre-based stations feature should be available Wednesday, August 25th.

Research in Motion has officially launched the next version of its app store for BlackBerry phones. BlackBerry App World 2.0 has been in beta testing for the past few weeks, but last night it went live to the general public.

App World 2.0 is available as a free download for customers in 65 different countries, as long as you have a BlackBerry phone running Blackberry OS 4.5 or higher.

The new app store includes better search, support for QR codes, information about apps you’ve installed in the new “My World” section, and support for carrier billing or PayPal payments.

Developers can also price apps as low as $0.99, which is about $2 lower than the previous threshold. That could have a huge impact in the number of third party apps sold for BlackBerry devices. Apple’s iPhone is the runaway success story in the mobile app space, largely due to the number of inexpensive apps available for download from the App Store. Turns out Apple has demonstrated that people are willing to pay for mobile software — as long as it’s cheap.

On the other hand, it’s possible that lowering the price of BlackBerry apps won’t have a big impact at all, and that we’ll simply confirm something that a lot of people already guessed — customers buy BlackBerry devices for their excellent communications features, not necessarily for their ability to play video games.

Research in Motion has released its new podcast app for BlackBerry. It’s cleverly titled… BlackBerry Podcasts, and it allows you to find, download, manage, and play podcasts on supported devices.

The app comes preloaded on any new phone running BlackBerry 6 (which right now means the BlackBery Torch 9800), and it’s available for download from the US and Canada BlackBerry App World for phones including the BlackBerry Bold, Storm, Pearl, Curve, and Tour.

BlackBerry Podcasts supports audio and video content. Users can search the catalog for podcasts and subscribe with a single click. Right now there are a limited number of the feeds in the library, but RIM is adding new feeds in a variety of categories including Arts, Business, Comedy, and Education. there’s also a Blackberry channel with “how to” videos covering various aspects of the BlackBerry experience.

New podcast episodes can be downloaded automatically. You’ll also receive a notification when new episodes are available. You can choose whether to allow your phone to download new material over the air or only over WiFi. And you can set the maximum number of episodes to keep on your device.

You can find more screenshots at Inside Blackberry.

AT&T has launched a new version of its U-verse app for iPhone users. It’s designed to let AT&T U-verse customers schedule recordings on the go — and download and watch some TV content on their mobile phone. AT&T says this makes the company the first TV provider with a mobile app that doesn’t just let you manage your DVR, but which also lets you watch TV shows.

The new app is called U-verse Mobile, and it repalces AT&T’s older Mobile Remote Access app for the iPhone. The DVR scheduling capability is available to all U-verse TV customers, but you’ll need to sign up for a U300 or U450 subscription plan if you want to be able to download videos using the mobile app.

Word on the street is that U-verse Mobile will eventually be available for BlackBerry 6 and Windows Phone 7. There’s no word on an Android version.

You can download the Free U-Verse Mobile app for the iOS from the App Store.

via NewTeeVee

SmartWiFi is a BlackBerry app that’s designed to help prolong your battery life by turning off your WiFi when you’re not using it.

Here’s how it does that. You set up one or more preferred WiFi hotspot locations, and once you wander out of the zone, SmartWiFi shuts off the WiFi on your mobile device. It determines your location by tracking your movements from cellular towers. When you come back to your preferred spot, the app will turn your WiFi back on.

For instance, you can set up your home and work wireless networks as preferred spots. When you leave the the house, your WiFi will shut down, helping you squeeze a little extra battery life out of your phone. When you get to work, it turns back on.

SmartWiFi supports up to 100 preferred locations. The app normally costs $4.99, but you can download it for free today only as part of Handango’s Free App Friday promotion.

thanks Dave!

Facebook has rolled out an update to its mobile web page that lets you control your privacy settings on mobile devices. Up until now, you could only adjust your privacy settings using a desktop browser.

In order to access your mobile privacy settings, you have to visit m.facebook.com/privacy on your phone. You won’t find the link if you just go to m.facebook.com.

But once you do find the page, you can adjust your settings to allow everyone, friends, or friends of friends to see information you post from your phone. You can also create custom settings. For instance, you can allow everyone to see your website and bio information, but only allow your friends to see posts, contact information, family, or relationship status.

Unfortunately, the settings only apply to the Facebook mobile web site. If you use the iPhone, Android, WebOS, or other mobile apps for Facebook, there’s still no way to adjust your privacy settings — although I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw that feature in future updates.

via ReadWriteWeb

Research in Motion has outfitted BlackBerry 6 with a shiny new Webkit-based web browser. It’s much faster and easier to use with a touchscreen phone than earlier BlackBerry browsers… but the folks at CrackBerry have determined that it’s not quite as fast or responsive as the latest Google Android and iPhone web browsers — at least not on currently available hardware.

CrackBerry took three top of the line phones for a spin and checked to see how long it took to load several web pages on an iPhone 4, Samsung Captivate, and BlackBerry Torch 9800. The verdict? The BlackBerry came in third in every test — although to be fair, the phone also has a slower processor than the other two devices. The browser might actually be faster on a speedier device… if there was a speedier BlackBerry device on the market right now. But there’s not.

The good news is that the new browser is significantly faster than the last-generation BlackBerry browser. So there’s that.

You can check out a video of the test after the break, for all the gory details.

Read the rest of this entry »

Google has launched a new feature for its mobile search engine that might not seem all that exciting, but which can actually be quite handy. When you visit google.com in a mobile browser, you can now click on the “history” link near the bottom of the screen to bring up a list of your recent searches — and not just searches from your phone, but from any machine you’re logged into.

In other words, say you’re trying to remember the name of that restaurant you looked up before you left the house. Just grab your iPhone or Android phone, go to Google.com and hit the search history button and you should see a list of recent searches you made from your desktop browser — which could help you find the right place.

If you actually visited a web site in your last search, you’ll even see thumbnail images of that web site next to the search history results.

You can remove history items by tapping the edit button at the top of the page. You can also see results that you’ve starred, either on your desktop browser or your phone.

If the whole thing seems kind of spooky, you can disable search history by selecting “do not save searches” under the settings menu.

One of the biggest improvements in the upcoming BlackBerry 6 mobile operating system is the new and improved BlackBerry web browser. The new browser is based on Webkit, like the browsers for iOS and Android devices. And we’ve gotten a few glimpses of the browser in action over the last few months. But now the folks at Research in Motion have posted a detailed description of the new browser. Here are some of the highlights:

• New start page with a focus on bookmarks and search
• Tabbed browsing
• Support for subscribing to RSS feeds
• Smoother panning and zooming
• Pinch to zoom on touchscreen phones
• Faster page rendering and support for web standards

You can find more details at the BlackBerry blog.

Research in Motion has been teasing us with previews of the new BlackBerry 6 operating system for weeks. But today the company officially introduced the first phone that will run the new OS: The BlackBerry Torch 9800. It will be available for $199.99 with a 2-year contract from AT&T starting August 12th.

The operating system will also be able to run on older BlackBerry devices including the Bold 9700, Bold 9650, and Pearl 3G.

BlackBerry 6 is still first and foremost designed with corporate users in mind, with strong security features and support for push email. But RIM has also baked in a new and improved Webkit-based web browser and new multimedia features as well as improved search features and a revised home screen layout.

Other new features include integration with Facebook, Twitter, and instant messaging services and the ability to synchronize media between a BlackBerry device and a PC over a WiFi connection.

If you’re looking for more information about the BlackBerry Torch 9800, I suggest you check out Gizmodo’s first look. It’s one of the best, most detailed articles on the phone I’ve seen… today.