SOMEWHAT FRANK

My iTunes Data Widgets Now Sharable

iTunes has been offering personalized recommendations within the iTunes application for quite sometime and I have found them to be very accurate and helpful. I have often discovered new songs that I like within the recommendations and downloading them quickly for instant gratification. iTunes has started to role out syndication of personalized music data as My iTunes Widgets, making it easy to share your music interests.

One Llama For 'Fun' Music Discovery

One Llama, a product of six employee Champaign, Illinois-based startup One Llama Media, leverages audio analysis, search and discovery systems to offer a place for music lovers to discover, listen, share and buy new music. Though in the music discovery category, One Llama differs from Last.fm, Pandora and MyStrands by focusing more on search result technology rather than community aspects of music discovery.

One Llama's users interface design is fun and light. Users can search for new music by song or artist and search results are returned in a flashy cluster experience (shown in the screen-shot below) that reminds me of Visual Thesaurus or Quintura.

Users can create playlists on their own or One Llama will create a playlist with recommended songs that are similar to a song or songs you have identified. One Llama created a quick list of recommended songs based off of one song I liked. I was then given the option to share, save or buy these tracks or the playlist. I have shared the list below as an embeddable widget but you can also share it directly to Facebook.

If you like a song you can purchase is on iTunes or Amazon. One Llama also offers an iTunes plug-in which links the web to your desktop music making it even easier to find and purchase the songs you just discovered on One Llama.

In talking with Director of Product Development, Amit Sudharshan, a recent graduate of University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, he explained that:

"One Llama believes finding music should be a 'fun' experience that people should be able to discover, enjoy and share."

As a music lover myself, I would have to agree. Currently, One Llama uses collaborative filtering to offer up song and playlist recommendations but Amit mentioned that audio signal extraction technology is coming very soon. This will enable One Llama to offer music search technology which uses collaborative filtering to recommend songs that people usually play together as well as signal extraction technology to recommend songs that sound alike. One Llama recently partnered with EMI and APM to power their search and find songs that "sound like" other songs within the APM library.

Sticking with it's 'fun' mission, One Llama shows its lighter side by allowing users the ability to personalize their llama avatar. My llama avatar is shown to the right.

Bottom-line: One Llama offers an innovative music search and discovery technology that is fun and easy to use. I had fun using One Llama and I think you will too.

Photobucket Sale, Facebook Classifieds, The Great Digg Revolt, iGoogle Communities & Last.fm Video Launched

Photo of the Week: While in Santa Monica, California this week for Twiistup I decided to get up early on Wednesday to go down to the beach and snap this shot.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits 05.13.07

Facebook to Launch Classifieds Service
Social network Facebook is set to launch a classified service to its users on Friday, according to the New York Times. The service will launch under the name 'Facebook Marketplace.' Makes sense, they are fishing where the fish are.

Are Search Engine Rankings are Dead?
With the advent of personalization and impending changes with the interface of search results, the notion of ranking seems to be on it’s way out. Lee Odden takes a closer look.

You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well
In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves -- or their offspring -- to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines or social networking searches.

iGoogle Community Modules
Want to put a little piece of yourself on your friends' and family's homepages? The iGoogle team seems to launch little updates every other week but this one caught my eye. it’s a new category called “my community." With cookie-cutter templates you can create your own modules. Creating and sharing these Google Gadgets is as easy as filling out a simple form.

Last.fm Launches Video - Aims To Be The MTV Of Web 2.0 Age
Online radio station Last.fm is adding a video section to its site this week, enabling users to create their own personalized video channels - similar to how users can already create radio stations based on their music tastes.

RSS Feeds for Tags at Amazon.com
The new functionality has been soft-launched and isn’t currently available on all Amazon pages. Support will become available across the board in the coming weeks. Woohoo!

MySpace/Photobucket: User Overlap Is Nearly 100%
NewsCorp plans to pay half as much for Photobucket as they did for MySpace. Photobucket is going for $300 million, and MySpace was acquired for $580 million, back in 2005. Interesting analysis by Mr. Arrington.

What Happened at Digg?
The firestorm that erupted at Digg earlier this week over a censored post has led to a lot of discussion about the nature of censorship in a world where everyone is a publisher. Some are calling it the "The Great Digg Revolt,"  as it illustrates just how much power the web 2.0 movement has given to its users.

Gmail Users are Younger & Richer?
The latest stats show that Gmail users skew younger and richer than other mail products. I guess I am old and poor cause I don't use Gmail.

Five Twitter Tools We Love
Getting sick of Twitter? Maybe these five add-ons may help convince you to the service for a bit longer.

LinkedIn lets you see who is viewing your profile — sort of
LinkedIn has created a new feature that lets you see who is viewing your profile. So now you can find out who is stalking looking for you in the business world.

What is your favorite web tech conference in 2007 so far?
Don't forget to vote for a conference you enjoyed the most so far this year!

Google Sued, Microsoft Buys TellMe, AOL Local, Last.fm Video, Attention Economy Overload & TECH cocktail 4 Coming Soon

Photo of the Week: This is a photo I took in my old neighborhood in Lincoln Park in Chicago prior to moving on to AOL in Virginia. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.18.07

Viacom Drops a $1 Billion Nuke on Google
Remember when Napster was a lawsuit target for helping to foster pirated music? When Google acquired YouTube everyone wondered who would be the first company to try and collect on video copyright infringement in a similar fashion. We now know, as Viacom was the first to step to the plate with a one billion dollar lawsuit against Google. Complete.com offers some interesting analysis on the situation.

AOL moves AOL Local Search into Beta - it's very slick
CenterNetworks reviewed the latest beta to come out of AOL. AOL Local refreshes the local options as a user moves around a map. So start in 10036 (Times Square) and move to 11235 (Brooklyn) and the options move.

Microsoft to Acquire Tellme Networks
Tellme Networks, Inc., a leading provider of voice services for everyday life, including nationwide directory assistance, enterprise customer service and voice-enabled mobile search. Microsoft and Tellme share a vision around the potential of speech as a way to enable access to information, locate other people and enhance business processes, any time and from any device.

Last.fm Adds Video Tracking
The Register reported earlier this week that social music play, Last.fm has added the ability to not only track the music you play on iTunes and other services but now is going to start doing the same with video.

Report: New Bloggers Flatlined in 2005, Reading Climbs
Steve Rubel reports that according to the latest State of the News Media report, the share of the online population that tried blogging peaked back in January 2005 at 10% and has hovered since at 8%. Blog readership, on the other hand is climbing.

The Attention Economy is Killing My Attention
Nick O'Neill explains how the attention economy may be producing information overload. He wonders how product like twitter along with blogs will be able to co-exisit as people piling on attention commitments.

Del.icio.us Adds Tag Descriptions
Del.icio.us, the popular social bookmarking site owned by Yahoo, has added a new feature which enables users to for the first time not only tag items but also add meta-data to title and describe each tag.

Goplan launches!
Webreakstuff has launched a new product called Goplan which offers a suite of online project management and collaboration tools that could draw comparisons to 37signals' product line.

TECH cocktail 4: Going, Going, Gone
TECH cocktail 4, the forth event in the event series I co-founded with Eric Olson back in July 2006, is now on its fourth event and we filled a 500 person guest list in 23 hours. Wowsers! TECH cocktail 4 will be on April 12, 2007 at John Barleycorn Wrigleyville in Chicago but due to the overwhelming response we have started a TECH cocktail 4 wait-list for anyone still interested in going. I hope to see you there.