Upcoming Town Halls in Denver and Atlanta

Hey all -

We're having Pandora town-halls in Denver and Atlanta next week. If you're in one of those cities and haven't gotten your email invite, send a note to 'tour@pandora.com' and we'll put you on the list.

Town halls are a big part of what Pandora is about. They continue to be wonderful opportunities for us meet and communicate directly with listeners.

We love feedback and people at Pandora events often weigh in on how Pandora should look in the future. In addition, I talk a bit about some company history, as well as a look under the hood of the music genome, and our latest thinking about the future. The questions and discussions always cover a wide range of topics - from how the music genome project works, to licensing, to the latest device updates. Everything is fair game!

So if you're in Denver or Atlanta next week I hope you'll come and hang and chat for an hour and a bit, that's usually how long the town halls last. And if you're in another city and think it is time we had a town hall there, let us know by emailing 'tour@pandora.com,' and we'll add it to the list!

Details below about Denver and Atlanta. See you soon!

-Tim (Founder)

Denver
When: Monday, June 21st, 6:30 p.m. (Note: the Denver Art Museum is closed for general admission on Mondays but the Sharp Auditorium will be open for this event.)
Where: Denver Art Museum's Fredric C. Hamilton Building at 100 West 13th Avenue. The event will be held in the Lewis I. Sharp Auditorium.
RSVP: Send email to tour@pandora.com with number of guests
Directions: http://www.denverartmuseum.org/visit_us/plan_your_visit/location_and_hours

Atlanta
When: Tuesday, June 22nd, 6 p.m.
Where: Tabernacle @ 152 Luckie Street NW (1 block from Centennial Olympic Park, Philips Arena, The Georgia World Congress Center and The Georgia Dome)
RSVP: Send email to tour@pandora.com with number of guests
Directions: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=152+luckie+st,+30303&ie=UTF8&om=1&hq=&hnear=152+Luckie+St+NW,+Atlanta,+Fulton,+Georgia+30303&ll=33.758527,-84.390965&spn=0.012916,0.015278&z=16
*The venue is surrounded by paid parking lots; the MARTA stop is Dome/GWCC/Philips/CNN.

Milla Jovovich Maggie Grace Luján Fernández Charli Baltimore Denise Richards

Brittany Murphy's Home Auction Put on Hold

Looking to sell off her daughter?s former mansion before it goes to auction, Sharon Murphy is in the process of trying to find a buyer for late actress Brittany Murphy's Hollywood Hills home.

The abode currently has a first mortgage of just over $4 million, and second mortgage for about $500,000, while lined up to be auctioned today - but that has been delayed until February 14th at the bank's request.

The house had previously been put on the market in March 2010 - shortly after Brittany died - with an asking price of $7.5 million, but was taken off the market a month later.

Spokesman Roger Neal said that Murphy has been quietly working with a lawyer and realtor to find new buyers and added that it is a regular sale, not a short sale, and that it is hoped to be done in normal fashion.

If Sharon can't find a buyer, she'll have to settle for whatever's left over after the bank tries to pawn off the property come Valentine's Day.

Amber Brkich Gretha Cavazzoni Marla Sokoloff Jennifer Love Hewitt Tina Fey

Profiles

Dear Listeners,

We've just updated our site to make it easier for you to find and adjust your privacy settings. We thought it was important to make this adjustment to better reflect the realities of the internet today. If you're a returning listener you've probably already seen a reminder about your Pandora profile page, something we've offered since we launched.

This reminder provides you with the immediate opportunity to see your profile, make it public, private, or learn more. If you click on 'Learn More,' you'll be taken to some FAQs.

New listeners will see a similar message when they register and we're in the process of sending emails to the folks who listen to Pandora exclusively on mobile devices, encouraging them to access their Pandora account on a computer to check out our new privacy features.

All profile pages on Pandora now have a prominent 'Privacy Settings' link on the upper right. These settings let you specify how public you want your profile to be and, if you're a Facebook user - whether or not you'd like to import your information from Facebook to Pandora.

We're big believers in the social aspect of music discovery and sharing and want to make it as easy as possible, but we also want to make sure we respect each listeners' personal comfort when it comes to this. It is our sincere hope that this new format does just that!

As always - we welcome your feedback about this. It's a very important issue to us and we want to get it right.

Thanks for taking the time to read this through - and keep on listening!

- Tim (Founder)

Garcelle Beauvais Kristy Swanson Ali Campoverdi Giuliana DePandi Pamela Anderson

Devils We Don't Know

by Patrick Appel Leslie Gelb fears the Muslim Brotherhood: The [Muslim Brotherhood (MB)] supports Hamas and other terrorist groups, makes friendly noises to Iranian dictators and torturers, would be uncertain landlords of the critical Suez Canal, and opposes the Egyptian-Israeli...

Bijou Phillips Marika Dominczyk Dita Von Teese Rachel Nichols Dido

Skype 5 for Mac intentionally blocks Flash and other programs from using your webcam

It seems that Skype 5 for Mac, by design, blocks any other application from using your webcam while it's installed. A commenter on the bug report suggests that it also affects Windows machines, but we were unable to replicate the bug with Windows 7.

The crazy thing is that you have to uninstall Skype 5 before using your webcam with other programs, including Flash applets on websites. It almost makes sense that Skype would reserve your webcam when it's running -- but even when it isn't? As the commenters on Hacker News note, the Skype for Mac support forum isn't the happiest place on the interwebs at the moment.

To top things off, Skype has known about the issue since the Skype 5 for Mac beta in November. Skype developer Beom Soo Park even admits that it's a feature, not a bug. There's no explanation for the very, very odd functionality, and no ETA for a fix.

[Just as this post published, the Skype bug tracker has gone offline. Hopefully it's just temporary.]

Skype 5 for Mac intentionally blocks Flash and other programs from using your webcam originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dania Ramirez Lucy Liu LeAnn Rimes Adrianne Curry Jennifer Gimenez

Dissent Of The Day, Ctd

by Patrick Appel A reader writes: I study political narrative for a living (for instance in books like this), and while I agree with the reader who saw The King's Speech that narratives obviously do take hold and drive coverage...

Jennifer Scholle Tatiana Zavialova Tila Tequila Tamie Sheffield Kelly Monaco

The Birther Plan To Block Obama's Reelection

The birthers have a plan to end Barack Obama's presidency—and in Arizona, they're making progress.

Last week, Arizona state Rep. Judy Burges, a Republican, introduced a bill that would bar presidential candidates who do not prove they were born in the United States from appearing on the ballot in the Grand Canyon state. And state Rep. Chad Campbell, the top Democrat in the GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives, tells Mother Jones that the bill is likely to pass. It was introduced with 25 co-sponsors in the House and 16 co-sponsors in the state Senate; the measure needs 31 votes in the House and 16 in the Senate for approval. "Will it matter?" asks Campbell. "We've started a tradition here of passing legislation that is political grandstanding or that sets up litigation."

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Five privacy protection Firefox add-ons for Data Privacy Day

Happy Data Privacy Day! While Lee already published one roundup showing a multitude of various tools, this post is all about Firefox!

If you're reading Download Squad, you already know all of these classics. Kudos to you! Now go ahead and let your less computer-savvy coworkers or family members read this list, and make sure they install at least one of these if they use Firefox at all.

• HTTPS Everywhere is an add-on by the beardies over at the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). It forces Firefox to communicate using HTTPS (secure HTTP) with a number of major websites, such as Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, PayPal and others.
• Ghostery focuses on those corporations and institutions bent on tracking your movements around the Web (or on their own websites). It detects when you're being tracked by Google Analytics, Facebook and over 400 other ad networks, and provides an easy way to block those tracking mechanisms while leaving all other JavaScript functionality intact.
• Web of Trust provides a clear "traffic light" indication showing which sites you can trust with your credit card details, and which sites you should be leery of. The ratings are user-generated, and you don't have to access the actual website in question to view them - they show up right on the search results page when you use Google, Yahoo!, Bing and even Wikipedia.
• NoScript is somewhat similar to Ghostery mentioned above, in that it also blocks JavaScript. But it's a more extreme solution: Rather than just block trackers, it implements a "white list", blocking all JavaScript except for scripts running on domains you trust. One of its many advantages is that it protects against cross-site scripting attacks.
• BetterPrivacy protects you against a different kind of cookie - one that you can't flush just by clearing your browser history. These cookies are called Local Storage Objects, or Flash cookies, and are put on your computer using the Flash plug-in. BetterPrivacy scrubs these cookies off your system every time your exit your browser.

Did I miss any of the must-have privacy add-ons for Firefox? Share your recommendations in the comments!

[Image credit: dcJohn]

Five privacy protection Firefox add-ons for Data Privacy Day originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jennifer Gimenez Katie Cassidy Estella Warren Cinthia Moura Monica Potter