Underground Media: Reloaded

In my neverending quest to find great music on the internet, I ended up moving beyond the simple streaming services. Not that I have anything against the staple of internet radio. In fact, as I've said before, I'm an avid listener of stations like smoothbeats.com and beatbasement.com . But sometimes I want to hear music that fits my mood. A playlist that goes beyond embracing a certain genre, and maybe goes two or three sub-genres deep. Usually that would mean firing up my own music collection. That is, until I discovered a site called Last.fm a few years ago. Their famed audioscrobbler is actually a computer algorithm that gathers info on the music you like, and matches it up with music it "thinks" you should like. I was addicted for a while until I figured out that the scrobbling game had some competition around town. I'll break a few of the major players down for you. Last.fm Ah, the apple of my eye. Last.fm was my *first* music recommendation site...

Well, folks, the other shoe has finally dropped. Google has entered the mobile phone space. And the iPhone has it's first serious competitor. Allow me to introduce you to the HTC G1. What's that you say? You haven't seen or heard anything about it? Not surprising, as Google is easing into this market. If the iPhone was the shot heard 'round the world, the G1 release was the equivalent of a BB-Gun. First of all, they launched with T-Mobile, the bastard red-headed adopted and later abandoned step-child of the mobile phone industry. Second, they partnered with handset manufacturer HTC, which is not exactly a household name these days. And finally, Google itself is not really promoting the phone. If there is such a thing as under-hyping a product, that's what Google is doing. Critical error or clever tactic? To understand Google's angle, we first need to look at what Google has invested. Unlike Apple, who branded their entire phone as an Apple product,...