Soundflavor has relaunched as a consumer-friendly database of song information that will provide users with a one-stop-shop for song information, videos, and recommendations. The site sports a clean interface and offers a slew of search options that make it simple to find a particular song or artist. Users can browse and filter their searches by […]
Soundflavor has relaunched as a consumer-friendly database of song information that will provide users with a one-stop-shop for song information, videos, and recommendations.
The site sports a clean interface and offers a slew of search options that make it easy to find a particular song or artist. Users can browse and filter their searches by genre, decade, or even by the subject of the lyrics. After choosing a song, the user is presented with a mashup of related information, including artist bios from Wikipedia, current news headlines, store links to buy the song, and flickr photos. Some independent songs are available for free, while the rest can be bought on iTunes or Amazon.
Each page also features a “One-Click Playlist” that generates a list of 25 songs based on a song’s “flavors” (which are basically pre-defined tags). The system seemed to work well - a quick test didn’t give me any songs that seemed obviously out of place. The site also allows users to compile playlists of music videos that can be embedded on social media sites or blogs (see below). One neat feature of these widgets is the “Any Requests?” button which lets users generate their own playlist while they’re browsing your site.
Unfortunately, there do seem to be a few hiccups. The site uses YouTube for its music videos, and some songs don’t appear to be correctly matched with their corresponding videos. For example, after entering AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”, I was treated to a man playing the song… with his hands. Update:Soundflavor has pushed a database update and the song works properly now.
Over the last five years Soundflavor has compiled a comprehensive database of metadata on over one million songs, but up until this point the information was primarily used by other companies that license music. The company brought on Dave Pell, who was previously just an investor, as its VP of Product Design to make the site more accessible to the consumer audience. Pell is known for his past work on sites including Rollyo and Addictomatic. Soundflavor has raised a total of $5.8 million since it was founded in 2003.
There are a number of other players in the music space, including Last.fm, allmusic, and PluggedIn.
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Web measurement firm comScore is going mobile. The company is buying M:Metrics for $44.3 million plus 50,000 options of comScore stock. M:Metrics measures mobile Web usage, and will give comScore the capability to track mobile visitors, pageviews, and ads clicked. Its three major products are (from the press release): MobiLensTM, a syndicated monthly on the web […]
Web measurement firm comScore is going mobile. The company is buying M:Metrics for $44.3 million plus 50,000 options of comScore stock. M:Metrics measures mobile Web usage, and will give comScore the ability to track mobile visitors, pageviews, and ads clicked. Its three major products are (from the press release):
MobiLensTM, a syndicated monthly on the web survey that captures overall mobile phone usage, including device information, data usage, media consumption and demographic characteristics of a representative sample of more than 40,000 mobile device users. MobiLens is available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.
MeterDirectTM, the industry’s first on-device meter that passively measures the mobile World wide web behavior and media consumption of more than 4,000 existing Smartphone panelists. The M:Metrics metering technology is compatible with more than 280 device models. MeterDirect is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.
M:AdTM, the first competitive tracking service for mobile advertising that continuously monitors clickable display advertising from a broad representative set of mobile Web destinations to reveal leading advertisers across a variety of market segments. M:Ad is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.
ComScore is a publicly traded company with $87 million in revenues last year. It expects the M:Metrics business to be profitable by the end of 2008 on an EBITDA basis. M:Metrics reveneus are forecasted to reach $11 to $12 million this year, and are expected to contribute $6.5 million to $7 million towards comScore’s revenues for the full year. Founders Will Hodgman and Seamus McAtee will join comScore.
M:Metrics, which is based in Seattle, was founded in 2004. It has raised $18 million from Prism Venture Partners, i-Hatch Ventures, and WPP.
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At the Google I/O conference today, VP Engineering Vic Gundotra stressed the supremacy of the browser among all internet-enabled platforms. So it should come as no surprise that the Google Earth team has announced on the same day that it has ported the Google Earth desktop client’s 3D mapping technology into the browser. Website developers are now […]
At the Google I/O conference today, VP Engineering Vic Gundotra stressed the supremacy of the browser among all internet-enabled platforms.
So it should come as no surprise that the Google Earth team has announced on the same day that it has ported the Google Earth desktop client’s 3D mapping technology into the browser.
Website developers are now able to embed 3D maps, which can be modified using Google’s JavaScript API to add KML data, draw 3D buildings, attach callbacks, and more. The entire embed is powered by a special Google Earth Browser Plugin that end users must install. Unfortunately, it’s only available for Internet Explorer and Firefox users on Windows.
Peter Birch from the Google Earth team stressed to me at Google I/O the convenience of porting KML-based applications from 2D maps to 3D ones within the browser. Existing Maps API developers need only to add a single line of JavaScript to their initialization code. Developers who’ve created KML extensions for the Google Earth desktop client can bring those into the browser as well.
Peculiarly, Google isn’t offering the equivalent of a default installation of Google Earth in the browser. If you want to search the globe from square one, you still need to visit the 2D Google Maps website. Therefore, this release is mainly a developer one - not really a new product launch. Hopefully we’ll see a “3D Globe” option in Google Maps soon.
Update: As commenters point out, Microsoft has been 3D mapping within the browser for over a year, also only on Windows and with certain browsers.
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By Andrew Liszewski You can think of the DigiWall as a gigantic version of the WiiFit. But instead of doing physical activities like pushups or skiing, you actually climb it like any other indoor climbing wall. The grips are equipped with individual sensors for hands and feet that allow a personal system running in the background […]
By Andrew Liszewski
You can think of the DigiWall as a gigantic version of the WiiFit. But instead of doing physical activities like pushups or skiing, you actually climb it like any other indoor climbing wall. The grips are equipped with individual sensors for hands and feet that allow a computer system running in the background to track the movements of various climbers on the wall. And like with the WiiFit, the DigiWall is designed to make physical activities more pleasing by disguising them as interactive games. On the DigiWall these include ‘Catch the grip’ where you try to touch as many climbing grips as possible in one minute, or even a giant version of Pong where your whole body is used as a paddle as you compete with a player on the other side of the wall.
The DigiWall doesn’t have a traditional video display like a computer monitor, but instead uses the light-up climbing grips to form a massive but low-resolution monochrome display. It also relies on a seven channel speaker system for audio feedback, and can even be turned into a giant musical instrument if you wanted to let your creative juices flow. The DigiWall was originally developed at the Interactive Institute’s Sonic Studio in Sweden, but is now a real product that’s available for sale. It comes in 6 meter wide by 2.6 meter high sections that can be combined to create a larger wall, but if you want pricing info you’ll have to request a specific quote.
Los Angeles based law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP has filed a class action lawsuit against Citysearch, accusing it of promoting click fraud. The suit was filed on behalf of plaintiff Tom Lambotte, who has charged that Citysearch has failed to recognize or reimburse him for the clickfraud that took place on an ad […]
Los Angeles based law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP has filed a class action lawsuit against Citysearch, accusing it of promoting click fraud. The suit was filed on behalf of plaintiff Tom Lambotte, who has charged that Citysearch has failed to recognize or reimburse him for the clickfraud that took place on an ad he put between December 11 and 31, 2007. The suit also applies to anyone who has used the click-based Citysearch ad program.
The lawsuit states that Citysearch promotes click fraud by paying its salespeople a commission based on the number of clicks their customers’ ads generate. It also states the Citysearch fails to take any steps to prevent click fraud, and does nothing to help victims.
The plaintiff’s claim is as follows:
“Lambotte’s Citysearch ad received a total of 7 clicks (plus two more that he generated) between December 11 and 25, 2007. On December 26 he received a response from Citysearch to his December 22 request to cancel his ad. Suddenly, his ad began receiving 12 to 16 clicks a day, for a total of 69 clicks between December 26 and December 31, when his ad was finally canceled. He received in these five days 10 times as many clicks as he’d received in the previous two weeks. Despite this, Citysearch refused his repeated requests to reverse these charges.”
Basically there was an increase from less than one click per day to around 10 per day. The increase is significant percentage-wise, but the click rate was very low to start with - any increase would represent a large gain. On the other hand, if the plaintiff can identify a trend of neglect in Citysearch’s actions, then the class action suit could have some merit.
Kabateck Brown Kellner recently won multi-million dollar settlements involving advertisements on Google and Yahoo, and has recently filed a class-action lawsuit against Google’s AdWords program. With that kind of history it’s clear that the firm knows what it’s doing, but the case might be perceived as just another cash grab.
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The Prague CrunchNetwork Meet-up was a roaring success, the kind of drunken brodeo full of tech geeks and one or two of the women who love them we in the Valley and New York take for allowed. Ideal of all I got to see a few nascent start-ups in the Prague tech scene and even […]
The Prague CrunchNetwork Meet-up was a roaring success, the kind of drunken brodeo full of tech geeks and one or two of the women who love them we in the Valley and New York take for allowed. Best of all I got to see a few nascent start-ups in the Prague tech scene and even a few well-established products that we might have overlooked in our cultural myopia. That stated, here’s a “best-of” rundown of some of the things I saw at our meet-up. Expect more coverage of this space as some of the sites go beta, but until then here are some of the best.
Jan Horna of Live Concerts participated in our Elevator Pitch-Off and won the MacBook based on his Live Concerts web service:
Live Concerts web service helps people to like live music. Based on individual preferences, the easy-to-use web widget lets users know when their favorite artist or band is coming to town. It also facilitates the interaction with user’s friends in the real world. Users can invite their friends, the same way they get valuable suggestions and reviews from their friends. Music fans can use the widget as a concert ticket search engine as well. They can purchase tickets from various ticket sellers and thus get the most affordable offer. The Live Concerts widget is going to work on all major social networking site, e.g. MySpace, Facebook and other OpenSocial based social networks. It will be available as a standalone application too.
Best of all? He equated a heroin to a web widget on his site.
LearnItLists is a new way to learn a language. Originally from the UK, Nicola and her husband built this widget to help instruct themselves Czech. The couple actually lives in and is restoring an old farmhouse outside of the city and they spend their mornings coding and their evenings digging up unexploded ordnance in the Czech country-side. They also took part in the Elevator Pitch-off.
Sponsor Wirenode service allows you to build mobile versions of your site in seconds.
Wirenode is a mobile marketing platform. It contains simple-to-use tools for creating mobile websites (with multiple pages, images, colors, mobile surveys, feedback mechanism, etc), so even the non technical person can create them. Created websites can be displayed on all mobile phones. The platform optimizes the output to fit particular phone screen on the fly. Free version of the service is used by individuals, for their personal mobile websites. Premium version is used by marketing agencies and mobile operators for creating landing pages and mobile portals for mobile marketing purposes.
Here’s an example of the product at work. This mobile site took one minute to make. We’ve been watching these guys since the last TC40 and their product makes it amazingly simple to grab mobile eyeballs.
This service is particularly hard to describe but is actually quite cool. Newstin.com, another sponsor, is a news aggregator that searches for top stories in multiple languages and then offers a social aspect by allowing anyone in nearly any language to comment and vote up the news. For example, news from Russian can appear in the English-language news section and comments by Russian commenters will appear in English. Most of the cool stuff happens behind the scenes, but as a news site it’s quite full-featured.
Newstin aspires to connect people through news and create global communities of interest. Newstin is a Global Social News Platform, where topics and ideas are identified within the news, acquiring a social aspect by initiating communication between people, no matter their nation or language. Newstin’s interface belies a powerful systems engine organizing news into 700,000+ categories from over 150,000+ sources. The patented Cross Language Information Retrieval technology allows readers to choose from 10 foreign languages for their global news sources. Newstin is dedicated to those individuals seeking a global perspective and the ability to exchange thoughts and ideas across nationalities and cultures.
Then there’s Geewa. Geewa, another sponsor, showed a cross platform gaming system that can run simultaneously on a cellphone and a Computer. This means you could feasibly play Mau Mau against a live player anywhere in the world. And who doesn’t love Mau Mau?
Geewa develops and operates multiplayer casual games within a one-of-a-kind community environment. Geewa also operates its games on social networks and start-pages such as MySpace and iGoogle. Geewa games can be played across multiple platforms including Computer, mobile phones, IPTV and generally any Internet connected device. Geewa develops both original games such as Word Soccer and Climbers as well as the “usual suspects”, i.e. Poker, Pool, Sudoku, Tic-tac-toe, chess and many others. All of these games can be easily embedded into any blog or web page. Geewa has cca. 1 million unique users per month who spend an average 55 minutes per day on their sites.
Finally, we learned that Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon is alive and well and apparently living in Prague.
All told, I’d state the even was a rousing success. It’s great to get out of the old U.S. of A. and meet folks who might be making the next YouTube. Plus the beer was great.
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By Andrew Liszewski I hate the look of my camera’s pop-up flash, and would rather carry a tripod around for use with long exposures in low-light conditions than have to use it. The other option of course is to carry a dedicated external flash, but that can be inconvenient and expensive. But it seems a Professor […]
By Andrew Liszewski
I hate the look of my camera’s pop-up flash, and would prefer carry a tripod around for use with long exposures in low-light conditions than have to use it. The other option of course is to carry a dedicated external flash, but that can be inconvenient and expensive. But it seems a Professor Kobré has created a cheap and simple substitute. The Lightscoop slides onto your camera’s hot shoe and fits over the pop-up flash, bouncing the light towards a ceiling or wall using just a mirror. As a result your subject is illuminated by diffuse light which produces more natural results and even eliminates red eye or the ‘cave effect’ where the background ends up being underexposed.
The Lightscoop can’t be used outdoors or in big venues like a church or stadium since it relies on a light-colored ceiling or wall to effectively bounce the light. But at just $34.95 it’s a ridiculously cheap way to vastly improve the quality of your photos. The Universal version of the Lightscoop is designed to fit SLRs from Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sigma and Fuji, but you’ll want to make sure your particular model is supported before you order one.
By Andrew Liszewski They say if you build a superior mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. But given the variety of alarm clocks available on the market, I think the real money is in finding new and unique ways to wake people up in the morning. Like this hanging alarm clock for […]
By Andrew Liszewski
They say if you build a superior mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. But given the variety of alarm clocks available on the market, I think the real money is in finding new and one-of-a-kind ways to wake people up in the morning. Like this hanging alarm clock for example. You attach the clock to your ceiling with the supplied cable so that it hangs just above your bed. Not so close that you’re going to hit it every time you roll over, but close enough to hit the buttons without having to reach too far.
When the alarm goes off in the morning (playing the theme from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind) you can simply reach up and hit the snooze button for some more shut eye. But that’ll also cause the alarm to climb up the cable 30cm each minute. So each time you hit the snooze button, that’s 30cm farther you’ll have to reach. Eventually the alarm will be so far that you’ve no choice but to physically get up to reach it, and at that point you’ll probably be wide awake.
Google’s third developer conference, and the first to be called Google I/O, kicks off on Wednesday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco with a keynote presentation by Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering. Here’s what to expect: A focus on the ecosystem comprised of the browser as an operating system + ubiquitous connectivity + emerging cloud […]
Google’s third developer conference, and the first to be called Google I/O, kicks off on Wednesday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco with a keynote presentation by Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering.
Here’s what to expect:
A focus on the ecosystem comprised of the browser as an operating system + ubiquitous connectivity + emerging cloud computing.
Lifting of the restrictions around Google App Engine, their hosted computing environment.
The large announcement will be around Google App Engine - anticipate the 160,000 or so developers on the waiting list to be let in tomorrow (75,000 have been given access already). Google will also lift the hard ceiling on resource usage. Currently applications are cut off when resource usage goes over a certain point (the cap equates to about 5 million page views per month for an average app). That cap will continue to apply until later this year, but they will announce the following usage fees tomorrow:
Free quota to get started: 500MB storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million pageviews per month $0.10 - $0.12 per CPU core-hour $0.15 - $0.18 per GB-month of storage $0.11 - $0.13 per GB outgoing bandwidth $0.09 - $0.11 per GB incoming bandwidth
This pricing puts Google App Engine storage and bandwidth costs competitive with Amazon S3 (plus Google doesn’t have a per-request fee).
Google is also announcing two new tools for Google App Engine developers: an image-manipulation API and memcache. The image-manipulation API will allow developers to scale, rotate, and crop images on the server. The memcache API gives developers access to a distributed, high-performance in-memory key-value caching system. Memcache would have been useful for our own App Engine app (see it live here) to help us unload common queries from Google’s datastore. Also to note: no additional languages will be supported.
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By Luke Anderson I don’t dabble in the fine art of soldering. I’ve tried once or twice, but usually end up making a big mess and very little actual progress. I’ve thought about picking up a DIY kit for some practice, but I can’t really make up my mind on which one. I think I’ve finally […]
By Luke Anderson
I don’t dabble in the fine art of soldering. I’ve tried once or twice, but usually end up making a big mess and very little actual progress. I’ve thought about picking up a DIY kit for some practice, but I can’t really make up my mind on which one. I think I’ve finally found the answer: A DIY Decision Maker. Sure, it’s about as cheesy as my last two sentences, but it sure beats flipping a coin. If you ever do make up your mind, you can grab one for just $7.
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