“Of course I believe in luck. How otherwise to explain the success of some people you detest?”
—Jean Cocteau

Pandora is an absolutely terrific Web site for anyone who loves music. So when Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, sends a letter like the one below, it’s worth taking notice:

Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora,

I’m writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: click here

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends – the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I’m no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster’s business potential.

I hope you’ll take just a few minutes to sign our petition – it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

Time suck alert: Original 8-bit Nintendo games, playable in your browser right now, right here. The sound of that Tetris music alone will make you feel 15 years younger.

It’s been reported that something in the range of 50 to 75,000 videos get uploaded to YouTube daily. I’ve never uploaded one, but I’m pretty jazzed to see not one, not two, but three commercials for kajeet, the company I work for, now up on YouTube.

If you really want to, you can view a 30-second spot here, one 15-second spot here, and another 15-second spot over here. It’s almost as much fun to see them online as it is to see them on Nickelodeon. And they’re getting some nice comments over on AdGabber, too (okay, I’m guilty of posting the spots there).

Want to convert a Word document to a PDF? Or a PDF to text? How about a photo on your hard drive to a favicon (that little image next to the URL in your browser address bar)?

Here’s a convenient blog post from Smashing Magazine that gives you a list of Web-based tools for doing all that and more. It’ll be of particular interest to you if you’re involved in the design and programming of Web sites. Even if you’re not, you’ll probably find a tool or two worth bookmarking for future use.