businessweek.com article

Forbidden Starbucks:

Starbucks has been banished from Beijing's Forbidden City. China says its cultural history and American coffee chains shouldn't mix

Actually, i agree with that initial statement, but there's NO WAY this isn't additionally some kind of political, protectionist, conservative minded operation; after all: 'the company was given the option of continuing its coffee business in the same location, albeit not under the Starbucks name. "We would have had to use the Forbidden City as our brand. The other choice was to shake hands and part ways," explains Eden Woon, Starbucks' vice-president for Greater China. "We decided we can't operate a store that on the marquee says Forbidden City Coffee."'

more on my post-pandora recovery tools

Listening Post - Wired Blogs:

(Y)ou can search for any artist and play their songs within seconds, for free. SeeqPod doesn't transcode the music as it streams, so you hear it in its original form as scraped from MP3 blogs, personal web pages, and anywhere else on the internet that hosts MP3s.

Or, you can use SeeqPod on an iPhone to browse the internet's music pretty much as you would the music on an iPod. Choose a letter, then an artist, and boom -- you see a list of songs by that artist that are playable right then and there (thus the tagline: "playable search").

"it's no use, peter; i'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought!"

(via imlac)