Everyone's favourite music-genome-powered web radio service Pandora is now officially available on everyone's favourite ambiguous-use plush-paneled Linux appliance, the Chumby. Fitting of their strategy to be on every hardware platform possible, Pandora can now provide soothing wakeup tunes (major key tonality, mild rhythmic syncopation, a good dose of acoustic guitar pickin') via Chumby's own alarm clock before you smash its vulnerable soft parts and go back to sleep. Full release following.

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Pandora, the muscled-up Nintendo DS frankenmonster with Linux OS, will be finally available for the holidays shopping season. With only 3,000 units planned, the $US350 game console has no commercial games and is aimed at the homebrew market. Obviously, it's not going to be a hit but its final feature list looks impressive nonetheless.

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Today the otherwise preoccupied Senate quickly passed the Webcaster Settlement Act many of you petitioned for, granting Pandora and other net radio services the right to negotiate royalties with the record industry's SoundExchange coalition for the years 2006 to 2015. OK, that's a mouthful—what it means is, they will likely not be driven to bankruptcy due to unreasonable royalty rates. I say "likely" because they still need to dot i's and cross t's on the royalty deal itself, but here, Congress approved their ability to do that, and just in the nick of time. Anyway, the world itself may be collapsing, but at least you know our legislators listened to your pleas to keep your favourite web radio broadcasters in business. [Digital Media Association]

CNet earlier today broke a story about how the National Association of Broadcasters—traditional broadcasting conglomerates and others who think HD Radio is more vital than the internet—is trying to kill a brand new bill that could save Pandora and other web radio services. We've done some reporting of our own, and the situation does indeed seem dire. If you love your Pandora, here's what's going on, and how you can help save its very existence:

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The Gadget: Slacker G2, a slimmer, updated version of the original Slacker portable internet radio player.

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Pandora, the internet radio station built around your tastes, will probably be going out of business soon. After getting slapped by the CRB with exorbitantly high royalty rates to continue playing music, founder Tim Westergren says the company is facing a "pull-the-plug" situation. There's one congressman trying to help Pandora and it's million plus users, but the service is bleeding money in the meantime and its future looks grim. I'll be very sad to see it go, since being reintroduced to it recently through their excellent iPhone app. What great idea do you have for us next, RIAA? [ReadWriteWeb]

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The Pandora app for iPhone got an upgrade today and now streams music to your earbuds in stereo over Wi-Fi. A few other things are updated as well, including auto-complete and station resume if you pause. If you're a user, you can download the 1.1 update now. [Pandora Blog, via iPhoneBuzz]

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Pandora for the iPhone is as easy to use as the website. Just type an artist you want to hear, it will build a radio station of similar songs and broadcast them in FMish-quality. The picks are usually accurate, but the science behind picking them is hilarious: The app explained that I have a soft spot for "boastin' lyrics" and "headnodic beats". Pandora works well over Wi-Fi, 3G, and even EDGE.

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The Pandora handheld has serious retro gaming in mind, and with a Linux OS, an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, WiFi connectivity, dual SDHC card slots, QWERTY keypad, dual joystick controls, D-pad, TV output, USB mass storage mode and a 16.7M colour touchscreen display, it's shaping up as quite a promising platform.

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Logitech has been dying to get into wireless whole-house audio like Sonos and not a whole lot of others. Now that CNet has favourably reviewed the US$400 Squeezebox Duet we told you about at CES, it may well have a shot.

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