Spotify held an event in New York this week to make a "special announcement," and unfortunately, it wasn't about anything having to do with the streaming music service's long awaited iPad app. It was, instead, about some deal that they're making with Coke , which will start off as some sort of branded apps. Anyway, nobody really cares about all of that (or at least, it's up to Spotify and Coke to make people care -- the marketing budget probably has plenty of money slated in it for just that reason)

Kickstarter is filled with some brilliant, some not-so-brilliant

While Spotify offers a native iPhone app, the company still doesn’t offer one for Apple’s iPad.

Spotify on Friday sent out press invites for a special announcement in New York City on April 18th. It’s not entirely clear what the event might cover, although recent reports have indicated the music streaming service may allow app and playlist recommendations from various brands in an effort to make the platform more attractive to advertisers.

Microsoft’s wildly popular Kinect controller for the Xbox 360 brought motion-based controls to the masses when it launched in late 2010 . While similar technology will be built into a variety of consumer electronics moving forward — especially HDTVs — Mac users now have access to a free app that will add gesture controls to their current OS X computers. Currently compatible with just two programs, iTunes and Spotify, the Flutter app for Mac allows users to control music and video playback by making hand gestures that are recorded and relayed by the PC’s built-in iSight camera.

TUAW readers have spoken, and Spotify has grabbed the last iPhone award in the TUAW Best of 2011 voting. The free app (there is a charge for premium access) provides access to over 15 million tracks of music. Considering that Spotify has only been available in the US for six months , the fact that the app pulled in over 56 percent of the votes shows just how popular it is with TUAW readers.

The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software.

Spotify already has proven itself a formidable competitor for Rdio , and the all-you-can-stream music service even matches up against iTunes with a subscription model versus iTunes' track-at-a-time sales approach.