Archive for the 'web 2.0' CategoryPage 3 of 4

Flock!

published
on March 13, 2008
by
ACtual
in culture and web 2.0
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

If ever there was a web browser for the Web 2.0 crowd that loves the idea of mixing and matching everything, Flock is it. I’ve been an avid Firefox user for about a year and a half now after finding it following numerous problems using Safari. Flock took my Firefox and pumped it with steroids. It also took all the new and socially connected web ideas and put them in one place. For starters, it imported all my saved bookmarks and passwords from Firefox, making the transition easy and painless. But all browsers are pretty good at this, right? What does Flock do for you?

Social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter are getting larger by the day. More and more people are intent on finding out what other people are up to. On Flock, you sign into your various social websites and it automatically keeps a sidebar of your friends’ updates. No more need to head to the site for the news feeds.

People love sharing pictures and video on the internet. Sign into YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, Piczo or Picasa, add friends, and open the streaming media sidebar that allows you to easily email or share links, pictures and videos without leaving the page you’re on.

Obviously, when you bring in the videos, pictures and friends, there’s usually going to be some blogging involved. Flock remembers all of your blogging accounts on Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, WordPress and Xanga, and lets you post to any of them from a simple pop up window on the side. It’s rough pulling together all the photos, links and articles for a blog post some times, which means that the WebClipboard sidebar where you can drag and drop things before adding them to blog posts makes things easy.

Don’t worry, Flock will handle your del.icio.us, Magnolia and Gmail and Yahoo Mail, allowing you to email webstyle or through your default mail application on your computer. Then, it compiles all of this into a “My World” tab that has all of your feeds, friends, blogs, and media streams at a glance. Don’t worry about finding things…in addition to the Google search bar, you can type in and search automatically to Ask, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Facebook and Amazon.

Below, you can see a picture of the window I’m working in right now. It’s got my facebook/youtube feed to the right, a media feed above (with Flickr search engine), tabs and bookmarks. Above the people sidebar, you can see where you click into the news feeds, media streams, blog posts and web clipboard. The ease of use is incredible…before, I would have had to upload this picture to the blog site and link it in. I took this screenshot on the computer, uploaded it in Flock and dropped it into the web clipboard. From there, I just dropped it into this blog box and here it is.

DRM War Update: QTrax

published
on January 30, 2008
by
ACtual
in genres, music, startups, web 2.0, and website
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

It should come as no surprise that people are still trying to get free music on the internet. Piracy and file swapping happens daily on massive levels that would probably turn a record executive green if they were fully aware of at least 50% of the volume. Luckily for the rest of the new and frontiersman-like recording industry, record executives are like mushrooms…they eat shit and grow in the dark, and in the end, you’re never sure which one is going to poison you or take you on a funky and psychedelic expedition. Similarly of good fortune for all of us…eating mushrooms isn’t mandatory or necessary anymore.

While the ultimate fate of DRM in general and player/company identified DRM specifically is still up in the air, there are a number of companies out there attempting to torpedo the industry by offering free mp3 downloads. Through deals with the major labels that tie-in to ad revenue generated by the site, these sites are offering songs, sometimes DRM protected, sometimes not. One of the big players that was geared to take the internet music download scene by storm this week was QTrax, a French based company that held a gala event this past weekend as a launch party. Apparently, they didn’t get the memo that the Warner group has not authorized the site to provide music from its label. Universal and EMI have also announced that they had no licensing deal ready yet and were still working on it. Not sure how a “free” music download site got to the point of throwing a launch party before it had wrapped up licensing and distribution sales with the major labels, but somehow they did. Guess it speaks to the necessity of having a solid business plan in place.

What I find more interesting is that not only is this site trying to provide music for free with the labels’ consent, but they’re allegedly trying to take a bite out of Apple, claiming that their music files will play on iPods. This would indeed be a big step as the only current music files that can play on the pod is either DRM-free or Apple FairPlay DRM tracks. How QTrax figures their DRM songs will make it onto the iPod is beyond me, but it will certainly be worth watching if and when the company starts allowing downloads.

Beta Testers, Musicians: Uncle MixMatch Wants You!

published
on January 13, 2008
by
ACtual
in music, startups, technology, web 2.0, and website
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Uncle SamFor months now, you, the devoted and kind, have followed this blog with a sense of excitement and expectation. Ok, maybe you haven’t, but that’s certainly how I would have followed it if I were you! And in all these months of posts, you’ve probably noticed both my subtle and blatant references to MMM, mixmatch, MixMatchers, mix match music and the art of mixing and matching. And for all these months, those terms have been, for the most part, largely theoretical, as they spoke to a mindset and practice that had yet to be launched. While I am merely a voice among voices here on a blog about evolving websites and hence evolving music, sponsored by the folks at MMM, I have no direct interaction with the process they have been going through to bring you the product that I so clandestinely promote.

Well “the time has come,” the rabbit said, “to talk of many things!” No longer is the idea of MixMatchMusic theoretical. No longer is the soul and thought behind such a great task and opportunity some shiftless, vaporous entity floating somewhere in the ether of cyberspace. No, my friends, the time has come when we can truly, without reservation or hesitation, throw our hands to the sky in exultant triumph and scream those magic works, “¡Viva La MixMatch!” Now you can create a profile and start right in using the innovative MixMatch sequencer and 1,000s of mBits to make your own music on your home computer.

Mixmatchmusic.com has finally opened its doors for beta testers. While it cannot yet take the full force of users that it will one day soon support, it can be opened to you now by request. If you’re a friend of the makers of MixMatch or a musician that is looking to get involved early and help out with the process of cleaning it up before a full scale public launch to assault all conventional musicians and label executives everywhere, we’re looking for you! So if you’re one of these people, and the MixMatch project is calling your name, shoot me an email here and we’ll get you set-up for the beta test and your first steps into the new and exciting world of MixMatchMusic.

Web 2.0 Bubble A Cappella Style

published
on January 2, 2008
by
Sandra
in music, startups, technology, video, and web 2.0
. Closed Tags: , , , .

This YouTube video was made by another local a cappella group, The Richter Scales (who are, well, slightly more established than the one I sing in). Not only does it feature the lovely voices of its talented members (many of whom work in high-tech), it but also pretty much sums up startup culture (as experienced by the lucky few and dreamt of by many more). To get an idea of how savvy you are when it comes to what’s going on in web 2.0 these days, see how many of the references you understand.

Sure, You Can MixMatch…But Can You Mix?

published
on October 22, 2007
by
ACtual
in music, technology, and web 2.0
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

In what can only be called an avalanche, the world wide web is being buried under the stampeding snow of social networking sites. Myspace, facebook, hi5, friendster, linkedin…all of these seek in one way or another to organize your many relationships, quantify and qualify them, then help you make more by spying on the profiles of all the people you know or would like to know through a friend of yours. This way, you can not only be friends with the people you know, but you can stalk them effectively too!

As we’ve been over numerous times, MixMatchMusic carries the goal of introducing musicians to each other through the site, and then allowing them to share, swap, compose, compound and create new music using not just the power of collaboration between musicians, but also harnessing sequencing abilities to use all the music on the site to make what you want to hear. The primary and important goals of MixMatch revolve around introducing people to new sounds and musicians and allowing them to create new music and ideas using 2.0 infrastructure and the power of new sounds and ideas.

Also coming out of the Bay Area is the new start-up, Fuzz.com. Luckily for all involved, Fuzz’s goals do not conflict with MixMatch, but rather supplement them. I bring you Fuzz.com today because they have a very interesting new tool that could be a lot of fun to use…the virtual mixtape. Remember when we all used to make mixtapes for each other? Then it was mix CDs, and now it’s like, “here, try my playlist!”…well, the good folks at Fuzz.com have created a way for you to upload your mp3s, make a mix tape (complete with customizable mixtape artwork!) and then send it to friends who can also download your music. For someone who was a huge mixtape maker back in the day, this tool is not only very neat, but also, in my mind, a wonderful juxtaposition of old school style with new school techmology.

The idea behind Fuzz is a site that allows musicians and friends of musicians to interact in a social network atmosphere through uploading music, blogging, reading and writing reviews, talking about upcoming shows and sharing music. It’s basically Myspace for music lovers, whereas MixMatch is like an online collaborative GarageBand. I see a beautiful future where artists from all over the globe come to MixMatch to find other like minded musicians, creating new and interesting collaborations of genre and sound. Following the release of their MixMatchMusic based CD, they trot happily off to make a profile on Fuzz.com as a full and complete band, spreading the word of their release and upcoming concert tour through the musical social network. Of course, by that time, MMM will have most of the same components in place AND allow you to create music online, but they’re great people for trying, and just the type of website that the MixMatchers see working with in the future.