Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Pandora Hits the Desktop With AIR

TechCrunch writes about social music site Pandora:


Personalized radio service Pandora has taken the plunge and released an AIR application into beta that allows users to play music from Pandora without opening the browser.
When I first heard of this development, I thought it was such a cool idea. Music playback is one of those things that really doesn’t need a full browser experience; just give me a simple control panel to enter songs, play and pause, and fast forward.


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Last.fm in a Box: Listen to Last.fm on Live Nation, iGoogle, and More…

Mashable writes about the social music site Last.fm:


Last.fm, a Web-based music service that’s been in the news frequently as of late with its introduction of virtually limitless on-demand playback support and its partnerships with international divisions of AOL and so forth, is arriving with another update today, this one in the form of a program called “Last.fm in a Box.”


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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Muxtape on AIR

Go2Web2.0 writes about social music site Muxtape:


Though the site is so simple to use, it's not so easy to find songs you may like. But I found this great AIR application today, that enables you to browse through random playlist, or search by Muxtape name.


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Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Travel startup UpTake set to launch opinions super-site

VentureBeat writes about social travel site UpTake:


With so many online travel sites crowding the market, you’d think we were nearing a Web 2.0 travel bubble. But according to travel information search engine UpTake, which is launching May 14, there’s still an untapped niche in the market: a travel-opinions supersite.


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Fora.TV Squeezes Another $2 Million Out of Hearst and Adobe, But Still Comes Up Short

TechCrunch writes about social tv site Fora.tv:


Web video for intellectuals is a hard sell. The videos on Fora.TV come from speeches given by intellectuals and business people. It competes with Big Think, which has a slightly different format.


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Saturday, May 3, 2008

More Free Music at your Fingertips

Go2Web2.0 writes about social music site Streamzy:


New service Streamzy, offers users the ability to search for media then stream it live on the web. In addition to offering the ability to play or listen, users can also register for a free Streamzy account where they can save playlists and retrieve them on any computer with internet access.


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SSMunch: Ajax-based Music Search Engine

Go2Web2.0 writes about social music sites ssmünch and Droble:


SSMunch is a simple search engine that helps you find the music you like on the web, then allows you to listen and download your favorite songs to your computer. None of the songs on site are hosted on SSMunch servers. SSMunch system crawls the internet for audio tracks and then provides the information for the users.


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Wolpy - a simple socnet for travellers

TechCrunch UK writes about social travel site Wolpy:


Coming out of Europe, Wolpy is a new social network for travellers to share their travel experiences. The basic idea is to create a map of the places you have visited and preview the places mentioned. You can share these places with your friends view their trips. You can view the map in full screen mode.


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Tripwolf Beta: 200 Free Invites For TechCrunch Readers

TechCrunch writes about social travel site Tripwolf:


The site offers advice and recommendations by locals and experienced travelers, and users get highly personalized travel recommendations from friends, peers and like-minded travelers. Users can create new locations, upload and edit content, then share their favorite places from around the world with friends.


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Recommendation Ventures And IceTV Team For TV Suggestions

TechCrunch writes about social tv site IceTV:


The new service, IceTV Recommendations will be provided to IceTV users as part of the IceTV EPG service. The service allows users to receive personalized suggestions and an opportunity to discover and record new TV shows. Suggested TV shows are displayed as an IceTV Recommendation using a separate icon within the IceTV electronic program guide, allowing IceTV users to easily locate and then select them for more information. From there users can set the recommended TV show to remotely record onto their compatible digital recording device at home within a few clicks.


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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Record Labels Strategically Invest $2.8M in MOG

TechCrunch writes about social music site MOG:


MOG has announced that it received a $2.8M strategic investment from Universal Music Group and The Angels’ Forum. We’ve also heard that Sony BMG was also part of the round, which means two major record labels have come together to invest in the same online music venture.


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Monday, April 28, 2008

My Life of Travel is Now a “Real” Site

Mashable writes about social travel site My Life of Travel:


My Life of Travel started out as a personal side project for Calan Horsman back in 2005, but has demanded more as the site began to grow organically. Nearly three years later, My Life of Travel has gained almost 20,000 users, with tens of thousands of entries created, and half a million images uploaded. As a result, Horsman has needed to put a bit more effort into his growing site, and has relaunched its as an officially public offering today.


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The ROI Council and the Future of Online Video [podcast]

Mashable writes about social tv:


Break Media has been at the leading edge of online video entertainment in terms of both content development as well as monetization and producer rewards for a good while now - longer than a lot of the other players that see a lot of press in the Web 2.0 game. They’re leading again, as last week they announced the formation of the Online Video Advertising ROI Council.


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ILike (and its apps) show results: It really is helping musicians reach fans across the web

VentureBeat writes about social music site iLike:


ILike is an emerging leader in this competitive but still relatively young marketplace of “music discovery” services that help musicians build fan bases. We’ve been tracking the Seattle, Wash. company for years, and at this point it appears to have become a significant component of how music will be shared in the future. Both new and existing acts are using it to help advertise album releases, and iLike is starting to have a big impact.


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Saturday, April 26, 2008

Madonna Embraces The Future Of Music

Mashable writes about how Madonna embraces social music:


Madonna has never failed to reinvent herself with the times, somehow always managing to stay relevant, and her 11th studio album, Hard Candy, seems no different. Showing she is still with the times, you can catch her new album streaming on her MySpace page four days before it’s official release.


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Friday, April 25, 2008

Majority Stake In MyPlayList Free To A Good Home

TechCrunch writes about social music site MyPlayList:


Bootstrapped service MyPlayList, the free music/ Flickr mashup service we wrote about earlier this month, is on the market, but with a twist: a majority stake (51%) is being offered free to a good home.


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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Is Stage6 Making a Comeback Next Week?

Mashable writes about social tv site Stage6:


We brought you word a couple of months ago about DivX’s closure of the Stage 6 video portal, which, in all its time of activity, never managed to become a lossless or a profitable platform. According to Martin of gHacks.net, evidently “bandwidth and server costs accumulated to more than a million dollars each month.” It was certainly popular, but it’s financial legitimacy was very much in question, so it ceased to operate.


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Chilirec Is Like TiVo for Internet Radio

Techcrunch writes about the social music site Chilirec:


You start with Chilirec by choosing from a preselected set of a few hundred channels. Two downsides: you can’t load your own channels and you can’t listen to them normally before choosing to record. But once you to start recording, Chilirec will begin loading the songs into its Flash-based player so you can play them back at your convenience (somehow it knows just when songs begin and end, and which ones they are).


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Monday, April 21, 2008

Sonific Heading To The Deadpool: Record Labels Blamed

TechCrunch writes about social music site Sonific:


Sonific, an online music playing servuce similar to Pandora and Seeqpod, is to close May 1 as the company was unable to obtain licensed music rights in a way that made the service viable.


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Thursday, April 17, 2008

Odeo Beta Gets Social (That’s Good for Search)

Mashable writes about the social music site Odeo


Odeo is vastly improving its search capabilities, and is layering in some interactive social capabilities as well. Odeo is actually hoping to veer into the social networking realm, not for the sake of creating a social network, but for the enhanced ability to collect feedback from users and offer a communication tool where content creators can communicate easily with their audiences.


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Microsoft Acquires Farecast For $115M

Techcrunch writes about social travel site Farecast:


Farecast is an airfare pricing comparision tool that also uses a predictive algorithm to recommend when you buy your ticket. So the idea is to show the user not just who has the cheapest ticket, but whether or not waiting might make sense as well. The site has also guarantees tickets at its predicted prices for an extra charge.


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TripIt Raises $5.1 Million in Series B Funding

TechCrunch writes about social travel site TripIt:

TripIt’s main goal is to simplify travel. Users need only forward email confirmations from airlines, hotels, and other travel services, and TripIt generates a simplified comprehensive list of travel plans. TripIt recently launched a mobile version of the site, and also features Closeness Matches, which notify users when they are in the same region as a friend.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Imeem Secures More Funding

Mashable writes about the social music site Imeem:


Imeem, the popular music social network, has secured a new round of funding from Sequoia Capital. According to Paul Bonanos at TheDeal, the amount of funding remains undisclosed, and it is unclear if their previous investor, Morgenthaler Ventures, was involved.


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MyPlayList Combines Flickr And Online Music

Techcrunch writes about the social music site MyPlayList:

MyPlayList, a bootstrapped startup from Agentbleu, a Englishman living in France, combines streamed music and Flickr for a free music service that delivers visual as well as musical abundance.

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PluggedIn Wants to be Hulu For Music Videos

Techcrunch writes about the social music site PuggedIn:

It’s time to make room for one more, and it has the potential to be big. Pluggedin, a music video and community site that sees itself as a Hulu for music, has just launched in public beta. The site’s biggest selling point is its high quality video content, featuring music videos from labels including EMI, Sony BMG, and Universal Music Group, along with a number of independent labels. Pluggedin is hoping to add the last of the ‘big four’ labels, Warner Music, in the near future.


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