Now that music has become mostly a commodity in the minds of consumers, music industry companies are having to think of new solutions in order to stay relevant and profitable. While they struggle to figure out how to reach those consumers, companies like Last.fm, Pandora, and Slacker are exploring today’s real innovation in music - customized and personalized listening experiences.

While all three services offer their own unique implementations of online radio, there are a number of ways that each solution trumps the rest in features and user experience. Let’s dive in to a comparison and find out what makes these services so slick:

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10. The White Stripes - Icky Thump

9. Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!

8. Daft Punk - Alive 2007

7. Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

6. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

5. Feist - The Reminder

4. Justice - †

3. Battles - Mirrored

2. Amon Tobin - Foley Room

1. Menomena - Friend and Foe

I’m extremely excited to see Menomena at The Social this Saturday. Here’s a fantastic video for their song, “Evil Bee”.

Well I have decided (in less than 1 day) to return the Helio Ocean.

It has some really nice things going for it. The next Sidekick could benefit from incorporating the following features:

• Much brighter and higher resolution screen - this was a joy to look at compared to the SK3 screen. Even though the size was slightly smaller, the quality really makes a tremendous difference
• 2MP camera - the image quality from the camera was very high quality, both in high and low light situations - puts the SK3’s to shame
• GPS - the ability to have the phone know exactly where you are, and then with a single button, automatically search for businesses or locations and give you a turn-by-turn map is really incredible. There’s an obvious opportunity for Danger to create a 1st-party app that does just that
• Video - As much as I am not a fan of poor quality cellphone video, the ability to playback video was quite nicely done, and gives the Ocean a near-YouTube esque feel by being able to quickly stream viral videos, movie trailers, etc. I have a feeling that the iPhone is going to be a clear winner in this space in the near future
• Album Art in Music Player - There’s no reason SK3’s player can’t support this, even with an OTA software update this could be reality
• 1st party webmail application - The availability of having actual Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail/Live Mail on a phone is really appealing to me because I have never used my Tmail accounts, ever. I always use the POP function to send my Gmail to my SK3. However, the Ocean is unable to do a push of the mail to the phone. I had to manually tell it to “send/receive” to find out if there was no mail. That’s unacceptable.

Now for all of the things that convinced me immediately that the Sidekick 3 is a superior phone:

• The first thing was a defect with the device - the ear speaker/receiver didn’t function, thus rendering making calls with the phone impossible without turning the speakerphone option on - I’m sure a new unit would have solved this, but it was the nail in the coffin
• Interface/UI - With the SK3, it’s a breeze to get right to what you want - either using the scrollwheel, or a key combo. With the Ocean, it’s cumbersome and awkward. They have the options grouped well enough, but even though it’s in a circle, when you press down, it doesn’t always go down. As soon as you let up for a second, down suddenly means go backwards. Same thing with hitting up. You hit up a few times, wait, and now pressing up goes the opposite way. Terrible usability. It’s also difficult to find where you want to go. With the SK3, it seems much more intuitive and well defined; more like a Windows/Mac interface and less like a normal cell phone interface. The Ocean definitely still feels just like a souped up RAZR or some other “normal” phone. Nothing “smart” about it.
• No Multitasking - I had no idea how truly important this feature of the SK3 really was until today. You can’t do two things at once. Playing an mp3? Can’t go and read an email. Checking a website? Forget going to check an IM someone sent you. It’s infuriating as a longtime SK user to give that up.
• Keyboard - The slide out keyboard is decent, but it pales in comparison to the SK3’s. No dedicated number keys. No equals sign!? No backslash? and the form factor of it makes it very strange to have to hit the keys on the outer most portions of the keyboard. And the spacebar. It’s tiny. And I hated it.
• Web Browser - Although the browser had a well defined start page with an excellent list of well-designed mobile versions of popular sites (MySpace, Digg, NY Times, etc.), the rest of the web ended up being slow, and either with scrollbars appearing (Horrible!) or just as a mess. The SK3 has plenty of room to improve in their rendering of the web, but it really has a serious leg up on the Ocean’s implementation. I’ve said before, the #1 thing that I think the iPhone has going for it, is the browser. The demo of their solution for mobile browsing makes anything else seem primitive, including Danger’s current methods.

There are plenty of other smaller features that I liked and disliked - but the above sums up the things that really made my decision for me the most. The Sidekick 3’s trackball still is the best interface on a phone, hands-down. And it will remain to be seen if the multitouch iPhone really surpasses real physical buttons as the ultimate interface. You can rest assured that when the iPhone does hit stores, I will be visiting my local Apple store to kick the tires on it.

After a fairly decent continental breakfast, we ventured down to Seattle Center.

Our first stop was the EMP (Experience Music Project). Now from reviews on TripAdvisor.com, we weren’t sure if it was going to be a so-so experience as many people found it boring (absolutely not) and overpriced (it was worth the $$). There was an excellent gallery showcasing the birth of rock as it related to the Northwest, and showcased very exclusive memorabilia from the 50’s all the way up to modern rock. An entire wall was devoted to the “grunge” scene.

Other highlights included an wing devoted to the birth of hip-hop in the 70’s, a gallery of show posters from all eras, an incredible wing devoted to Hendrix, and a huge room that held many of history’s most important and most peculiar guitars. It was awesome to see some of the earliest known guitars, the first Martin, first Les Paul, first Strat… a really amazing collection. The most awesome piece of the entire museum was a sculpture comprised of over 700 different guitars, basses and a few random drums, keyboards, and computer-controlled guitars that performed a live music soundtrack using MIDI. It was at least 2 stories high and really amazing to view and listen to.

We ate lunch at the brand new Revolution Bar & Grill (it was the their 2nd day open). Krissy after scraping off a few fish eggs, she enjoyed her “Seattle Rolls” sushi and a very flower-tasting iced tea. I had a Prime Rib and Cheddar with au jus. Yum!

We then strolled over to the Science Fiction Museum located in the same building. This place was excellent! All kinds of weapons and aliens and books and videos and movie memorabilia. The best stuff for me were the “Alien/Aliens” egg, facehugger, Alien Queen (she was HUGE!) and Power Loader. Really surreal to see them up close.

After about 3 hours spent meandering through the museum we walked across the street and Rode The Ducks. They took some WWII tankboats and converted them to tourist-carrying tour buses that took us all around Seattle and right into the water for a lap around Elliot Bay. The guide had plenty of lame jokes and unique tidbits about the city.

We headed back to the hotel via our great complimentary hotel shuttle and decided what we wanted to tackle next. We chose to stick to the Seattle Center area and drove over to the Space Needle area and ate a cool little pizza place called Zeek’s. We did the usual - half veggie, half meat. It was a little light on sauce, but fresh and tasty with hardly any grease.

Now that the sun had gone down we walked over to the Needle. It was a fast 45 seconds to the top. It had been a light rain all day so we figured a night view would be better than a cloudy day view. Walked around the observation deck and looked at some of the inside descriptions of the history and construction. It’s something you’d only ever need to do once, but still interesting and a great view of the city.

Our last event of the day was at the Pacific Science Center Laser Dome. When we were at the hotel I was looking up info about the center and noticed they had a new show playing that night. A TOOL show! Krissy and I are big fans, and we wanted to do something cool to end the night, so it was just the ticket. We stood in line with about 50 other young hipsters and then once inside, sat in the reclined seats and waited. The new single, “Vicarious” started the show. It was LOUD. The visuals were trippy and an epileptic’s nightmare. The show had songs from all throughout Tool’s discography and had some really cool fog and light effects that created swirling clouds of light and made what appeared to be 3D blocks and lines all throughout the dome. The music lended itself so well to the format since Tool’s rhythm is clearly defined. I talked for a bit with the laser operator and was surprised to find that he not only created all the animations, but most of the show was performed live, on the fly. He must have been a real fan himself because it was so well timed to the music.

We drove back to the hotel, took a quick dip in the indoor hot tub, and then went to bed. So now it’s Sunday morning. Our plan is now to check out the Pike Place Market and some more of the waterfront, and possibly hook up with Krissy’s friend’s sister, Amber, who lives out here in Fremont.