Archive for September, 2008Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Social Software, Googleholic, Search, web 2.0 
Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google.
In this edition:
Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, Social Software  After months of planning, MySpace has rolled out MySpace Music, a new advertising-supported streaming audio service backed by the four major music labels. There are a few things that make MySpace Music worth checking out. You can stream all the songs for free. And you can add songs to a custom playlist and post that list to your MySpace profile, making it simple for people to find new music. And finally, if you find a song you like, but you want to play it on a portable device or when your computer isn’t connected to the internet, you can click the Buy button in the player to purchase the a DRM-free copy of the track from Amazon MP3. But I’m still not particularly impressed. I was able to find MySpace pages for most of the artists I searched for. But not each song was available for purchase from Amazon. And for many artists you could find one or two albums, but not every album, and certainly not each song. Since MySpace Music is basically a streaming audio website, it’s hard not to compare it to similar services like Last.fm or even SeeqPod. And I have to say, while the audio player is nice, and the social aspect could be useful, the music selection isn’t very impressive. Filed under: World wide web, Windows, Freeware, Social Software  There’s a new version of the free Windows chat/social messaging client Digsby today. Probably the biggest change in this release is a dramatic reduction in memory use. Like a 75% reduction. One of the biggest complaints early Digsby users had was that the application was a memory hog. And while it still certainly uses a bit more memory than some IM clients, that’s to be expected since Digsby isn’t just an IM client. The program also provides email notifications and updates from social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. The latest release also adds LinkedIn support. Once you register your LinkedIn account you’ll be able to see the number of unattended alerts at a glance by looking at the icon in your system tray. You can also click on the icon to see the latest updates from your LinkedIn contacts. There have also been some performance updates that should make the program more responsive. And each IM protocol will try several connection methods for getting around firewalls and proxy servers before giving up. If you’ve been avoiding Digsby because of its high memory footprint, it might be time to give it another look. In my tests, I’ve found that it uses between 25MB and 40MB of memory. Now if only the Digsby team would hurry up and release Mac and Linux versions they’ve been promising. Filed under: Web services, Social Software, web 2.0
The company blog explains: “Utterz has outgrown its original identity. The cow puns, mascot, etc., are loved by some of our earliest customers and employees. … However, the Utterz identity was limited in scope and appeal, inhibited some new customer adoption and interfered with some key business discussions.” I would guess that their growing user base landed them some potential investors who were ok with cows, but not with the mental image of milking one. On the new feature front, Utterli is now going to be organizing things around groups, as well as rolling out with partnerships with device manufacturers and other web services. They’re not saying what these are, for now, but they do claim to be “quickly gaining on Twitter.” Looks like we’ll find out over the next few months whether the cow was really holding Utterz back. That infamous whale doesn’t seem to be hurting Twitter’s dominance of the microblogging world, though. Filed under: Fun, Internet, Social Software
Adding symbols to Tweets used to involve remembering a whole bunch of keystroke combinations but thanks to TwitterKeys, created by the folks at The Next Web Blog, all you’ve to do now is cut and paste. Just drag the TwitterKeys bookmarklet to your toolbar and next time you’re looking for a symbol, just click the link to open the directory. Find the symbol you like, copy it (Control + C), then paste it (Control + V) into your Tweet. Pretty sweet. Two things to note: TweetDeck users will need to change the apps defult font setting to international/utf8 in order to use TweetKeys. Also, Mac users will recognize many of these symbols from the Special Characters set found on OS X. While not all of those characters will work cleanly in Twitter, the ones selected for TwitterKeys will. Filed under: Fun, Internet, Social Software
Free membership on the site gets you your own home page, and access to Hasselhoff’s media collection of photos and videos (though I’m guessing not this one.) You’ll also be able to read Hasselhoff’s blog, shop for personalized gifts, and chat with his adoring fans worldwide. There’s even a page filled with ringtones and wallpapers for your mobile phone. I know you’re probably thinking this has to be the oddest social networking site ever created. Probably not. Filed under: Fun, Pic, Social Software
That’s what this new app, the accurately-named Get My Tagged Pics, can do for you. It displays all your tagged pics in rows of 10, and lets you download each row as a zip. This is good, because it’s halfway between the one-at-a-time method and the other extreme of grabbing hundreds (or maybe thousands!) of photos in one large file. Sure, it could let you choose 10 at a time, but clicking to choose wouldn’t be any faster than clicking to download. One click is all you need, here. Filed under: Audio, Fun, Photo, Social Software  Postcard.fm is a brilliantly simple idea: choose a photo, select a song, and send them to a friend as a “postcard.” The interface is totally free of frills and junk, making it incredibly easy to use. There’s no way anybody could confuse this with the absolutely obnoxious animated postcards your mom or grandma email you. Plus, it’s all hosted at Postcard.fm, so you won’t be filling up your friend’s inbox with files.
A few obvious uses for postcard.fm spring to mind: it’s more thoughtful than a Facebook wall message for a friend’s birthday, and it might even go over well as a surprise for a significant other. In a pinch, you can use it to share a song with a friend, if you don’t have somewhere else to upload. There are some limitations, but they’re not a big deal: it’s mp3-only and just streaming, no downloads. The best part is that postcard.fm isn’t at all unsightly or tacky, so it’s as considerate a way as we’ve seen to quickly show someone you’re thinking of them via the Internet. Filed under: Fun, Productivity, Social Software
I started to get the picture a tiny more clearly after checking out a video on the Sleep.fm FAQ page. In this little demo, a woman who had missed her Japanese studies the day before wakes up to a teasing message from a friend, in Japanese. I think that says a lot about what Sleep.fm is trying to do: turn the wake-up alarm into another useful way to communicate. I wouldn’t object to waking up to a message that all of my meetings for the day were cancelled, for example, or finding out about a change of lunch plans with a friend. Isn’t that what we’ve voicemail, email, text messages and Twitter for, though? I agree with the Sleep.fm theory that waking up is personal, but for me that means just wanting to be left alone. If you’re the kind of person who likes to jump right into the day with new information, someone who checks email and rss feeds before even getting out of bed, this might be a good new tool in your arsenal. The site is taking signups now for its upcoming relaunch. Filed under: Audio, Fun, Internet, Social Software, Search  Since I posted 35 Places To Download Free, Legal MP3s, I now fully understand just how much everyone on the damn world wide web wants free music. Well, here’s another place to feed your addiction. I wandered over to Tagoo anticipating to find another piece of hastily assembled Google search garbage. Man, was I in for a surprise. Tagoo finds direct links to MP3 files, and it lets you stream them or build playlists right on their site. It’ll recommend while you type: “prote,” offered me Protest The Hero. Well done, Tagoo! When results appear, click the play button immediately to the right of the track to listen to it immediately. The track’s artist, title, genre, bitrate, filesize, and length are all displayed. It’s even nice enough to warn you about potentially slow download sites, marking them with a red dot. Continue reading Tagoo Finds MP3s for You to Stream or Download |
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Alana Taylor
