We were looking for a good way to listen to listen to Pandora without the need to keep our web browser open all day, and then we remembered an article we wrote a year and a half ago about Pandora's Box. This Windows-only application lets you login to your Pandora account and access the streaming music service without firing up your web browser.

Since we originally wrote about Pandora's Box, the program has been updated several times with support for Quick Mix, a right-click letting you give songs a thumbs up or down and perform other features from the system tray and some bug fixes.

The project suffered a major setback when Pandora began blocking access outside of the US. But the developer of Pandora's Box figured out a nifty method of getting the player to work using anonymous web browser Tor. So not only is Pandora's Box a great way to listen to music without opening your web browser. You can also use the program to listen to Pandora from outside of the US.

The application's not going to win any awards for memory efficiency. At times, we found it used close to 100MB of RAM. If you're looking for a Mac solution, you might want to check out PandoraBoy.