I just received an email containing some terrible news. Pandora, an internet radio station which delivers songs based on your taste, has been told to block of all access to Canada. I have used this service so much and I can only hope that they are allowed to reopen their doors. The email is below.

Dear Pandora listener,

Today we have some extremely disappointing news to share with you. Due to international licensing constraints, we are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora’s streaming service from Canada. We began blocking access from almost all countries outside the U.S. last week and had originally hoped to maintain access to Canada. However, it has become clear in the last week that we just haven’t been able to make enough progress to continue streaming.

It is difficult to convey just how disappointing this is for us. Our vision remains to eventually make Pandora a truly global service, but for the time being, we can no longer continue as we have been. As a small company, the best chance we have of realizing our dream of Pandora all around the world is to grow as the licensing landscape allows.

We show your IP address is ‘24.xxx.xxx.xx’, which indicates you are listening from Canada. If you believe you are seeing this by mistake, we offer our sincere apologies and ask that you please reply to this email.

Delivery of Pandora is based on proper licensing from the people who created the music - we have always believed in honoring the guidelines as determined by legislators and regulators, artists and songwriters, and the labels and publishers they work with. In the U.S. there is a federal statute that provides this license for all the music streamed on Pandora. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent license outside the U.S. and there is no global licensing organization to enable any webcaster to legitimately offer its service around the world. The volume of listening on Pandora makes it a very expensive service to run. Streaming costs are very high, and since our inception, we have been making publishing and performance royalty payments for every song we play.

Until last week, we have not been able to tell where a listener is based, relying only on zip code information provided upon registration. We are now able to recognize a listener’s country of origin based on the IP address from which they are accessing the service. Consequently, on May 16th, we will begin blocking access to Pandora to listeners from Canada. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We will be posting updates on our blog regarding our ongoing effort to launch in other countries, so please stay in touch. We will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you. We deeply share your sense of disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.
tim_signature.jpg
-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

This is a one time account message

Good news for all those who use Google Analytics, a new BETA version of Analytics has just been rolled out and its better than ever. This comes at an excellent time as I was considering purchasing the online metrics software from www.getclicky.com which is shotty at best.

Whats new? Well Google now offers information on EVERYTHING about your site and arranges it into nice graphs and charts for you. A flash based mapping system allows users to narrow down to continents, countries, and cities giving detailed statistics along the way.

In addition to all of this, everything is organized into what we would call “widgets” which you can send to your dashboard for quick checking of stats.

For more information, take the Google Analytics Tour, its well worth checking out.

I have received a bunch of Joost invites. Anyone that would like one please leave your email below so that I can copy and paste it into the invite box. Please post your email, none of this Jake AT geeeee male dot com.

I’m really happy joost has decided to give out more invites, it shows that they are getting closer to the release date. While the programming is still a little weak, it is slowly getting better.

I finally finished my first year of university, now I can get back to design.

This is a shirt I did for a band in Montreal called Red October. Check them out on their myspace. They are on tour right now, so if they are in your area then go and check them out!

Hey Everyone, sorry I took so long to get these invites out.

My joost isnt connecting to the network right now, but once it does I will send the three lucky winners their invites.

Thanks for all the submissions, I must have had at least 40.

Hey everyone, so for the past few weeks I’ve been a beta tester of the new online TV platform Joost. So far its been great, there is tons of TV shows that are fun to watch and rumor is that big deals have been signed with the major TV companies. If you would like to be a beta tester I have three invites up for grabs. Give me an email at wesbos@gmail.com with the subject “Joost”. In the email include anything that may make me want to give you an invite, beg, make me laugh, give me a link on your site, or tell me a story. The best three emails will get Joost invites. I will be posting the results on Friday.

Rob Dobi is one of my biggest influences in the graphic design busiess. Everything he does, from Full Bleed Clothing to his own portfolio is very well done.

Well, Rob has done it once again with a new project called Your Scene Sucks. Twelve illustrations of “scene” types complete with description and personal comments. Check it out for a great laugh.

Over the next week and a half I will finishing off my first year of University. Unfortunatly this means lots of studying and no a lot of time for blogging:(. So just to let you know, there may not be too many posts in the next week and a bit but after that be prepared for lots of posts and some big changes. Thanks to everyone who reads my blog, everyday when I see the visitor numbers jump a little I feel the love.

For those who are curious, here is what I am taking this semester at Ryerson University studying Information Technology Management (ITM).

ACC406 - Introductory Management Accounting
ITM200 - Introduction to Application Development
MGT200 - Introduction to Management
MKT100 - Introduction to Marketing
SOC203 - social class and inequality

I cant count the number of times I have needed a free myspace graphic header when working on a bands site and I’ve seen too many designers naturally go straight to www.myspace.com and download the myspace graphic off the header of the myspace page. Problem is that logo isn’t always the right size and colour that is needed. In the end the logo is pixelated and discolored looking like crap not doing justice to a usually well designed site. Here is a high resolution JPG of the myspace graphic logo, crisp lines only in black and white. Enjoy!

There is nothing I read more of than technology news and if your like me you can never have enough websites for check for the latest news about things going on in the tech world.

A few days ago I was asked to blog for the site Have Laptop Will Travel. Since telling people about tech news is a second nature I accepted the offer and I’m now on a one month test run. The site gets a ton of hits so I’m using this opportunity to strengthen my personal brand. If things go well, Ill be with this site for the long run.

If you ever have any news that you think would suit the site please feel free to shoot me an email (wesbos@gmail.com). Other than that, I ask that you add this site to your RSS readers/ bookmark it and check it every now and then.