TheiLife.com is proud to formally announce that we will be liveblogging from the WWDC 2008 Keynote. This time around, we have refined our AJAX app from Macworld to be less server heavy so we can serve more users. The AJAX updater is still being tweaked, so it should be available by the end of the week. However, the SMS Updater is now live, so if you want to sign up to be updated with the latest urgent updates from the Keynote via SMS (expect about 10-20 messages), click here or the big shiny button below. Stay tuned for the latest information about WWDC here at theiLife.com.

It is already the second day of June and WWDC is fast approaching. TheiLife.com will be attending this year’s World Wide Developers’ Conference and providing pictures, videos and live coverage, as we did for Macworld 2008. Our ultimate goal is to run another AJAX-based liveblog from the Keynote on June 9th. However, because our hosting provider threatened to terminate us after the heavy load from Macworld, we need to make sure the new AJAX app will be able to handle a large number of users without seriously compromising the server. We have also hooked up with theDigitalLifestyle.tv to provide video updates throughout WWDC. We would, of course, love to hear from you — what do you think? Are you going to WWDC and would like to help provide coverage for theiLife? We want to hear from you — please contact us!

Sorry for the site related troubles, over the past few hours we were seeing outrageous amounts of traffic thanks to our coverage of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store temporarily closing yesterday. Thankfully the traffic has slowed and has given us (and our servers) time to recover. You can see our coverage on a number of high profile sites, listed below:

MacRumors
AppleInsider

Sidney San Martin online at Macworld 2008 for theiLife.

This year, over 5000 developers are attending WWDC and Apple has announced that for the first time ever that they have sold out of tickets. As usual, Steve Jobs will be kicking off the conference with a Keynote, taking place on Monday June 9th. We at theiLife.com are proud to announce that Sidney San Martin, theiLife regular, will be in attendance. This means coverage similar to Macworld 2008- which included videos, pictures, liveblogging (from the Keynote and Expo) as well as regular blog coverage. Regarding the liveblogging there will be more details coming soon- we are not sure if it will be AJAX based, due to the heavy load it puts on our servers. Stay tuned for more details coming soon, and certinally if you would like to offer any suggestions, please contact us or leave a comment below!

This week is yet another normal week for me, so you should see the site full of content all week. My school is ending on Friday- this means I will be officially done with school for the summer. In Apple related news, last week, Apple officially ran out of iPhones online (and in most retail stores). This should certainly foretell future events with the second generation iPhone and it’s upcoming release. Finally, last Friday, I received an invitation to try out Schmaps for the iPhone. After playing around with the private beta, I recommend you check out the now public beta here. Schamp is a great service and the implementation on the iPhone is slick. Have a great day!

This week is another normal week for me, with little interuptions to keep content from coming- you should expect articles everyday this week. Now that I am getting more time to spend on the site, The Daily iLife is getting needed attention, among other things on the site. Once Sidney works out his schedule at his new job, podcasting (both video and audio) should resume as well. WWDC looks like it is going to be focused around the iPhone, at least according to the rumors over the past few weeks. Have a great week, and Happy Cinco De Mayo!

This week, it is all back to normal for me. As my robotics season is now over, I have no more trips, and will be spending a considerable ammount of time on the site. Because Sidney recently got a job at a computer consulting company in New York, he is tied up at work and we have been unable to do any podcasts recently. Hopefully that will change soon as he becomes more accustomed to his new schedule. As for Apple, the iPhone rumors continue to grow and we will hopefully get more insight to how WWDC 2008 will look. Have a great week.

Last week I was away in Atlanta, at the 2008 FIRST Championship. This week I am on Spring Break, and may not have the time to write articles everyday. Never-the-less, the site will have content on it throughout the week. Next week, it is back to normal for me; and with my robotics season drawing to a close, things should be smooth from then on. As for Apple news, we continue to hear about the 3G iPhone- and this should remain a focus of Apple related rumors and news in the coming weeks. Have a great day!!

I had the pleasure of seeing a lecture at Columbia University by Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora.com and current Chief Strategy Officer. Pandora.com started in January of 2000 as The Music Genome Project, in an effort to characterize all music by attributing hundreds of musical ‘genes’ to songs. These include things like type of vocalist, guitar sound, rhythm structures, etc. A typical rock song has around 150 ‘genes’, while jazz songs mainly have upwards of 350 tags associated with them. Pandora.com was created to use this system and an additional algorithm to provide its users with a personal radio station.

Basically, a radio station is created when a user searches for a certain song or artist, and Pandora cues up a playlist that is made up of songs that match the musical ‘genes’ of the original query. Then, every time a song comes up, a user has options to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down to tell the algorithm whether he/she wants to listen to the song or songs like it. This type of recommendation system has done the company well, with over 7 million users and over $22 million in venture capital and debt financing. Also according to Compete.com, Pandora has increased the total number of people visiting their website by 126.2%. The lecture was primarily about the business tactics of the company, and how they struggled and fought to finally make it profitable(for two years most employees didn’t even work for a salary). It solidified my ideas that traditional radio and satellite are both dead. My reasoning after the jump!

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Last week was probably the last normal week for me- over the next two weeks, my schedule is shaping out to be quite hectic. For starters, this Wednesday, I am traveling with my robotics team to Atlanta for the FIRST Championship Event until Sunday. Then, the next week begins my Spring Break; which means that I will not have dedicated periods of time to come up with articles everyday- I will be traveling various places throughout the week. Either way, I’m going to figure out some ways to keep the site busy even during my absence. Have a great day!