Songza is a music streaming service which specializes in curated playlists with names like “A Michael Jackson Dance Party,” “Easygoing Alt-Country,” “Indie Sellouts,” and “Songs to Raise Your Kids To.”
Fire up the Songza website or the the company’s apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, or Windows 8.1 and you’re greeted with a list of recommendations based on the time of day, weather forecast, or other details. It’s kind of like Pandora… except instead of continuously trying to improve your playlist by giving songs a thumbs up or down, the Playlists are already hand-picked by human beings who seem to have pretty good taste.
Now there’s a report suggesting that Google is looking to buy Songza in hopes of bringing the company’s expertise to its Google Play Music All Access service.
Hopefully if Google does acquire Songza, it won’t kill the company’s existing free streaming music service… which is frankly one of the most awesome online music services I’ve used in the past few years. But Google doesn’t have a great track record with this type of thing… when it acquires companies, it often shuts down their existing apps.
- Google said to be offering $15 million for curated music playlist streamer Songza
That doesn’t seem like a lot of money when Apple just paid $3 billion for Beats… ostensibly to get at that company’s curated playlist features.[NY Post] - Lenovo Flex 10 SSD cheap mini-laptop gets a *lot* faster with an upgrade to an SSD
The Flex 10 is a small laptop with a Celeron Bay Trail processor and a touchscreen display that twists 370 degrees for use in kiosk mode. It sells for as little as $300. But it has a relatively pokey hard drive. Here’s how to upgrade to something faster. [UMPC Portal] - Microsoft unveils new Windows Phone partners with handsets that will sell for as little as $115
Big names like HTC and Samsung already make Windows Phone devices, not to mention Microsoft-owned Nokia. Now Blu, Prestigio, and Yezz are coming on board to help flesh out the low-end smartphone lineup. [Windows Phone Blog] - Minix Neo M1 remote control hits the FCC
J&W’s Minix brand includes a number of relatively well-regarded Android-based set-top-boxes. Here’s a remote control you can use… to control them. [FCC] - Kingsoft Office for Android becomes WPS Office
One of the more popular Office apps for Android is getting a new name. It’s still available as a free download. [Android Police] - OTA update for the NVIDIA Tegra Note 7 brings support for Netflix HD video streams
Sure, the Tegra Note 7 has a 1280 x 800 pixel display, but now it can stream 1080p movies from Netflix… that might not matter much if you’re using the tablet alone, but use the HDMI output to connect a TV and your tablet becomes a set-top-box. [@NVIDIATegra] - Intel is making some serious headway with makers of cheap Chinese tablets
ARM-based chips have dominated the Chinese tablet space in recent years, due at least in part to the low cost of MediaTek, Allwinner, and Rockchip processors. But in the past half year Intel has made some serious progress and a surprising number of Intel-powered tablets are on display at Computex… many of them running Windows 8.1 software. [Mobile Geeks]
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