Cultivating the perfect party playlist requires more than a little time and effort, but when there are kegs to be tapped and cheese plates to be arranged, the task can sadly fall by the wayside. That’s where a new iOS app called Anthm comes in — instead of putting the playlist together all on your lonesome, you can have your guests do it instead.

Think of Anthm as part Reddit, part playlist manager. Once you’ve created a party (which requires an Rdio account, more on that later) on an iDevice, connect it to a pair of speakers and you’re off to the races. Other users with iDevices can then jump into your party room and start fiddling with your music selections. If there’s a song a guest likes, they can upvote it to push it up the queue or bury it to… well, you know. In this respect it’s quite a bit like iTunes DJ, but where Anthm shines is the ability to request songs.

Since Rdio features something like 12 million tracks, there’s a fair bit of music put at your guest’s disposal. Hitting the request tab brings up a simple search bar from which they can dig though all the tunes in the Rdio catalog, and upvote accordingly. The music selection process works well, but Anthm’s reliance on Rdio may be a dealbreaker for users. Co-founder Ben Meyers tells that they hope to add support for other streaming services in the near future, so hosts can “simply log in to whatever service they subscribe to,” but MOG and Spotify users need not apply just yet.

If you are an Rdio user and you want to use Anthm at your next party, please note that it’s a breeze to set up a party password. Without one, any Anthm-using passerby could inject a lethal dose of Kenny G into an otherwise solid mix, though I guess even that could be a blessing if your guests are tonedeaf enough. Heck, you don’t even need to be a passerby to make your music crash the party — while Anthm displays the parties near your current location, a three finger swipe to the left from the party selection screen brings up all parties using Anthm.

From there, I took it upon myself to find a few unsecured shindigs where I repeatedly requested Sutton Foster’s jaunty rendition of I Get A Kick Out Of You. While I like to think everyone could stand to benefit from a bit of Broadway, I apologize if my zeal for showtunes put a damper on someone’s fun.

It’s still early days for Anthm, and while there are still a few hurdles to overcome, one of the most notable is that it’s currently an iOS exclusive. While speaking to Myers, he mentioned that the driving force behing creating Anthm stemmed from a run-in with a bartender who went a little overboard with Foo Fighters tunes one night. It wasn’t long before Myers, soon-to-be-fellow-co-founder Paul Baudry eventually fixated on what would soon become their mantra:

“Our phones know our location and our musical tastes, so why are we here, listening to music we don’t like?”

As it stands though, that’s exactly what users of other mobile platforms will have to deal with should they swing by an Anthm-powered party. Fortunately, Myers told me that getting the app onto other platforms is a big priority for the team.

“An Android version is at the top of our to-do list,” he said. “And we’re looking into making a web version that could be used on other platforms as well including Windows Phone and Blackberry.”

Until then though, iOS users who want to take Anthm for a spin can download it from Apple’s App Store here.

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/ehRu4YeNtrU/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Using your hands is so 2010. Voice-activated controls may be on the way for Google TV, according to a patent filed by the company last year that was recently discovered.

Patently Apple has found a filing by Google that lays out new ways for a person to control and communicate with their TV by speaking into a satellite computing device, such as a smartphone, tablet, or possibly a remote control. The document covers how Siri-like voice commands would be transmitted to a TV, describes a mobile-optimized TV interface for smartphones and tablets, and touts the advantages or teaming up multiple computing devices.

The patent describes a variety of possible communication set ups. You could speak a command into your Android smartphone (“record Nightline tonight”), then the audio would bounce to the Internet, be translated to text, and the text sent to your TV. (Many TVs aren’t likely to have speech-to-text features, so translation would have to take place before the command hits the set.) There is also a description of a direct device-to-TV communication over Wi-Fi, as well as a voice command being sent to remote servers to be translated, then returning to the smartphone and transmitted to the TV directly.

The technology would allow you to switch channels or control what your TV records from anywhere using an Android handset. One use described in the patent is being able to use a smartphone to turn on your TV or start playing music when you’re up to a quarter-mile away from the television, which seems neat and a fun way to pranking your family, if not terribly useful.

As with all patents, the actual execution could take any number of forms. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  Here are some more images from the patent application, complete with amusingly dates Seinfeld references.

from All My Feeds http://feeds.venturebeat.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/3-5SzzXdioc/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

comScore just released its monthly U.S. online video data, and while viewership dipped slightly in January 2012 (from December), long-form video content views are on the rise. According to comScore, 181 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 40 billion videos of online video content in January, compared to 182 million users who viewed 43.5 billion videos in December. And 84.4 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in January. The duration of the average online content video was 6.1 minutes (up from 5.8 minutes in December), while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

Once again, YouTube ranked as the top online video content property in January with 152 million unique viewers, followed by VEVO with 51.5 million, Yahoo Sites with 49.2 million, Viacom Digital with 48.1 million and Facebook.com with 45.1 million. Google Sites (YouTube) generated the highest number of views at 18.6 billion, followed by Hulu with 877 million and VEVO with 717 million. The average viewer watched 22.6 hours of online video content, with YouTube (7.5 hours) and Hulu (3.2 hours) seeing the highest average engagement.

Specifically on YouTube, video music channels VEVO (50.6 million viewers) and Warner Music (29.7 million viewers) were the most popular amongst viewers. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 23.8 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios with 12.5 million, FullScreen with 11.6 million and Big Frame with 8.2 million. Among the top 10 YouTube partners, VEVO demonstrated the highest engagement (62 minutes per viewer) and highest number of videos viewed (696 million), while Machinima exhibited the second highest engagement (60 minutes per viewer) and number of videos viewed (347 million).

Americans viewed 5.6 billion video ads in January, with Hulu delivering the highest number of video ad impressions at 1.4 billion. Adap.tv ranked second overall (and highest among video ad exchanges/networks) with 652 million ad views, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 598 million, Tremor Video with 580 million and Specific Media with 398 million.

Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 2.3 billion minutes during the month, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 540 million minutes. Video ads reached 47 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 38 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 43, while ESPN delivered an average of 20 ads per viewer. Video ads accounted for 12.2 percent of all videos viewed and 0.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/XQPIEOquNEA/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
The Pirate Bay could be blocked in UK  —  Filesharing site unlawfully shares copyrighted music, says the UK high court  —  The filesharing website The Pirate Bay has come a step closer to being blocked in the UK after the high court ruled that the site breaches copyright laws on a large scale.

from All My Feeds http://www.techmeme.com/120220/p13#a120220p13

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Social networking for career enrichment is on the rise. With online networking, you have access to more professionals — and will inevitably make faster connections — as your connections expand throughout your industry.

Online networking also gives you the opportunity to put your personal brand on display — a type of communication that may feel like bragging in face-to-face meetings. We’ve all heard of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and how to use these platforms to find a job, but it’s time to look beyond “the usual suspects.”

What other networking websites might be beneficial for your professional life? Here’s a roundup of 20 unsung Internet resources that could help you land your dream job. Some are general and others pertain to certain industries, but all are valuable options to boost your social networking (and your career prospects).

Niche Social Websites with Networking Potential

1. Elixio

Elixio is a private online community for professionals. This site is invite-only, but you can be sure if you get an invite, you will have the chance to make awesome connections. Because it’s a community of less than 14,000 (mostly business) professionals, Elixio hosts networking opportunities for the cream of the crop.

2. Stroome

Stroome is the foremost online video collaboration hub. Launched in April 2010, the site connects journalists, filmmakers, travelers and anyone else with a video camera — allowing them to upload their films to the Internet and then collaborate with other users to create new video, audio, and photo mashups from all corners of the world.

3. Ryze

Ryze is an online business network founded in 2001 and now operating with 80,000 members. You can make a free networking-oriented homepage and connect with professionals (or re-connect with old contacts). The site, which initially focused on the high-tech community, now appeals to CEOs, entrepreneurs and home-based businesses.

4. Ning

Ning’s industry connections span many categories, including politics, entertainment, consumer brands, small business, non-profits, education and more. It connects more than 74 million people around the globe with the topics they are passionate about, making it a great foundation for professional networking. You can use Ning to create and design your own free social network. For instance, there’s a social community for the band Linkin Park, the Peace Corps and Classroom 2.0.

5. Quora

Quora connects you to everything you want to know about, and gives you leverage to interact with high influencers in any industry. You can create your own profile, share content and ask questions. Also, the site itself is organized by people and their interests, so you can easily find like-minded individuals. One way you can think of it is as a cache for research: When you see a link to a question page on Quora, you can feel good that it will have information you need.

6. Ecademy

Ecademy is a membership organization aimed at business professionals.The site boasts an online network, blog and boardrooms for collaboration over the Internet. It’s for entrepreneurs and business owners who want to belong to a community that connects, supports and collaborates with each other to produce new ideas. Those who want to take a more passive approach to networking, however, may find less use for it.

7. Ziggs

Ziggs is a site that will allow you to create and manage your personal brand. You can also join groups and make contacts on the network. Ziggs is for the Internet user who proactively wants to market himself on the web — to be discovered by recruiters, to find a better job or just to be found. The platform is also for folks who want to develop or participate in private online communities with colleagues, friends, club members or charity teams.

8. Tweako

According to its website, Tweako is a “user-powered community website and social network, specializing in all aspects of computing, technology and the Internet.” Tweako.com is a place to learn and share information and knowledge about computer and technology topics. For those interested in keeping a pulse on cutting-edge technology and IT concepts, Tweako also keeps tabs on startups and company business to see who’s hot in the field — a great resource for those looking to get job leads.

9. Your Personal Blog

While a personal blog will be a networking opportunity on its own, you can use the blog to get your name out there. Post your blog’s URL when you comment on industry articles and share it with people on your networking profiles. You never know — someone might like what they see on your blog and start up a conversation that could be beneficial to your career or job search. There are many options available for creating a blog, but you can create a free one easily on WordPress.

10. Tumblr

Tumblr has several advantages over other blogging options for building your brand. If you are a recent graduate or in the younger job-seeking demographic, you’ll benefit from Tumblr’s youthful user base. Plus, you’ll find a breadth of business blogs that are hosted on the platform that can easily be followed, helping you stay knowledgeable about brands you might want to work for. However, while Tumblr will allow you to quickly and easily share your personal brand, the site doesn’t offer as many features or formatting options as other blogging platforms.

11. Brazen Careerist

This site was created for college students and young professionals to “meet new people, find a job and build relevant relationships” to advance their careers. A smart option for those entering the market for the first time, Brazen Careerist also offers a connection to Facebook — an easy way to see who in your current circle of friends is also using the service.

Communities Categorized by Industry and Interest

If you’re interested in a particular industry, you can find a hub in which you can meet like-minded individuals. Here are some examples:

• Academics: Academia.edu
• Activism and Environmentalism: Care2
• Art: deviantArt
• Human Resources: HR.com
• IT/Computers: Talentopoly
• Law: Legal OnRamp
• Music: ReverbNation.com
• Politics/Government: GovLoop
• Science: Epernicus & ResearchGate
• Writing: Writing.com

Do you have a favorite networking website that’s not listed? Share it in the comments below.

Social Media Job Listings

Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!

• Senior Web Developer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
• Social Media Metrics Specialist at Imagination in Chicago
• Product Manager – Local Business Products at Yelp in San Francisco

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl

More About: Brazen Careerist, care2, DeviantArt, job search series, jobs, multiply, professional networking, tumblr, Ziggs

from All My Feeds http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/iqSl1Z0i3Pc/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Editor’s note: Aileen Lee is a partner at venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where she focuses on investing in consumer internet ventures. You can read more about Lee at KPCB.com and follow her on Twitter at @aileenlee.

Good questions have been asked lately of tech companies without gender diversity on their boards of directors. While women comprise 51% of the population, they make up only 15.7% of Fortune 500 boards of directors, less than 10% of California tech company boards, and 9.1% of Silicon Valley boards.

Why should we care? For one, women are the power users of many products and it’s just smart business to have an understanding of key customers around the table. Could you imagine a game company without any gamers on the leadership team or board?

If you’re not aware, studies also show companies with gender diversity at the top drive better financial performance on multiple measures – for example, 36% better stock price growth and 46% better return on equity. And, studies show the more women, the better the results. This is likely because teams with more females demonstrate higher collective intelligence and better problem solving ability. So it’s probably not a coincidence the world’s most admired companies have more women on their boards than the average company.

There is a group of public companies that gets these insights – they are quietly adding some of the smartest women in Silicon Valley to their boards of directors. And most are not making much noise about it, perhaps they want to benefit from their savvy while their competitors are asleep at the wheel.

I was impressed by a move by AutoNation, the country’s largest auto retailer ($4.6Bn market cap). They did an extensive search and last year added Alison Rosenthal to their board – an off-the-F500-radar-screen, Brown and Stanford educated, early Facebook team member who led FB’s core BD activities for 5 years in social, growth, international and mobile.

Why add a 30-something female to a male board with an average age of 58? Mike Maroone, AutoNation’s President and COO explained, “We looked at our board [and realized] it’s male dominated, while women make over 50% of the purchasing decisions in our business. And, the travel, music and news industries have been transformed by digital. We’re trying to transform the auto business and connect with the thinking of the digital generation, and we need this level of insight at the board level.”

AutoNation is not alone in identifying next gen talent that adds diversity of gender, thought, age and experience to the boardroom, long the domain of (male) titans of big business, law and finance.

Linkedin ($9.1Bn) was ahead of the curve when they added longtime Netflix CMO Leslie Kilgore to the board in 2010. And in the past year, TripAdvisor ($4.1Bn market cap) added former Google International exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy to the board of directors; HomeAway ($2.1Bn) added Google Ads head Susan Wojcicki; LuluLemon ($9.3Bn) added FB local-and-mobile exec Emily White; Starbucks ($36.5Bn) added 29 year old Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social and author of The Facebook Era; and Scripps Networks Interactive ($6.9Bn) just announced the addition of Gina Bianchini, CEO/founder of Mighty Software.

Of this, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner says, “Some boards may look for candidates already on other boards, or CEOs of other companies. In the case of Leslie’s seat, we were looking to add someone with specific expertise, CEO or non-CEO, to complement our board – and the results from broadening our consideration set have been outstanding.”

Christine Day, CEO of LuluLemon, offered similar sentiments. “We wanted a board member who understands how our target guest thinks, is a leader in the world of digital innovation and social, and understands steep growth. Emily is part of a new generation that is going to change the game.”

Ebay ($45.1Bn market cap) also recently added Facebook product marketing exec Katie Mitic to their board. Of this, CEO John Donohoe told me, “We were looking to add people who understand the web of the future and our consumer (50% of whom are women), and who are product and tech savvy. Katie is a 12 out of 10 on these. And, we have a strong commitment to attracting, developing and retaining female leaders. There’s also a cultural impact outside of the board room – it’s inspiring to our team members and community to see someone like Katie on our board.”

By adding new blood to the boardroom, these companies are getting a four-fer, or more: 1) gender diversity, and in most cases, age diversity around the table 2) better understanding of core customers 3) Social-Mobile-Local expertise and insight into digital platforms like Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter, Path, Square, Flipboard and Pinterest that are fundamentally changing business and 4) hyper growth and rapid innovation DNA.

These factors are driving a trend to change board composition. And from what I’ve heard from CEOs, the smartest companies will continue to diversify their boards rather than “checking a box.” Initiatives like 20by2020 will also help.

There’s an opportunity to make your board, and your company, smarter by adding diversity, especially of gender. And if you’re at a smaller company, there’s a greater likelihood that your board lacks diversity – and that’s an opportunity to seize, especially if your company counts on females as key users. Savvy companies are quietly changing up their boards of directors and teams, and this is giving them better collective intelligence, more community admiration, and better financial results.

PS if your company would benefit from new DNA in the boardroom, there is great talent to consider. Here are just some examples of female leaders who are savvy about digital innovation, customer experience and hypergrowth. I’ve listed talent with experience from larger companies, as startups are generally less able to share their talent:

Allison Johnson, former VP Global Marketing Comm, Apple
Anne Raimondi, VP Marketing, SurveyMonkey
Amy Chang, Head of Global Product, Ads Measurement, Google
Barbara Messing, CMO, Tripadvisor
Caterina Fake, Founder, Pinwheel; cofounder, Flickr and Hunch
Carolyn Everson, VP, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook
Heather Harde, former CEO, TechCrunch
Jennifer Bailey, VP WW online stores, Apple
Jessica Herrin, CEO/founder, Stella & Dot
Jessica Steel, EVP of Business & Corporate Development, Pandora
Joanne Bradford, Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer, Demand Media
Julie Bornstein, SVP, Sephora Digital
Katie Jacobs Stanton, Head of International Strategy, Twitter
Kerry Wharton Cooper, CMO, Modcloth; ex VP eCommerce, Walmart.com
Lori Goler, VP of People and Recruiting, Facebook; ex marketing, eBay
Marissa Mayer, VP of Local, Maps and Location Services, Google
Raji Arasu, VP of Technology, eBay
Selina Tobaccowala, VP of Product and Engineering, SurveyMonkey
Stephanie Tilenius, Global Commerce Strategy, Google
Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President, BabyCenter

[image via Flickr/Bill McChesney]

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/4CrURglQeCU/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Like many other services, goods, and commodities, prescription drug prices can vary widely depending on location and what particular vendor is offering them. Launching last September at the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco was GoodRx, a service that’s aiming to bring some transparency back to prescription drug purchases by bringing some sophisticated price comparison technology to the everyday consumer.

GoodRx was co-founded by Scott Marlette and Doug Hirsch, both early employees of Facebook. Hirsch was VP of Product at Facebook back in 2005, and Marlette, one of the company’s first 20 employees, was an engineer who he worked on, among other things, Facebook’s photo application. The culture of transparency, openness, and focus on the big picture, Marlette says, had a lasting influence on him after Facebook, leading he and Hirsch to apply some of that psychology to building a better way to serve consumers with the latest pricing info from the prescription drug market.

Thus, with a web service and a free iPhone app, GoodRx is giving its users a simple prompt, where they can enter the name of a prescription drug and their zip code, whereupon the startup serves them with a list and map of prices by brand name and generic versions from both local and mail-order pharmacies.

Marlette says that the company’s database already contains over one million prices for more than 6,000 brand name and generic drugs and is growing quickly. On top of offering free, accurate price comparisons between local pharmacies, GoodRx allows customers to find discounts, free coupons, get savings tips, or set up refill reminders or get price alerts through email.

When it comes to prescription drugs, many are covered by health insurance policies, but there’s a chance that GoodRx can still save searchers money by finding prices below their co-pays, surfacing bargains in the same way Kayak does for airline tickets. While the White House has been attempting to extend healthcare coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, there are still many plans that cover only fractions of prescription drug costs, and furthermore, there are many out there who are without any coverage whatsoever. GoodRx could represent big savings for the millions of Americans who let their prescriptions go unfilled because they can’t spare the extra cash.

To boost the Los Angeles-based startup in its mission, it announced this week that it has raised over $1 million in seed capital from a host of top venture capital firms, including Founders Fund, GRP Partners, Highland Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, as well as angels like Former CEO of Drugstore.com Dawn Lepore, Mike Ovitz of Broad Beach Ventures, former President of Tribune Broadcasting Ed Wilson, among others. GoodRx is not yet sharing specific numbers, but we’ve learned from sources that the round was in fact over $1 million, which the startup will use to ramp up hiring, and continue to improve the product.

Bringing talent from Facebook, Yahoo, and others and applying time-tested consumer tech models to the prescription drug market, to give consumers an easy way to search for prices and discounts from a sizable pool (of what is intended to be every pharmacy nationwide) — could be a winning combination. It’s also great to see that GoodRx provides a Spanish-language version of its service, with access right at the top of the homepage.

One potential caveat, though, is that prescription drug prices tend to be in flux, and pharmacies are constantly changing them based on a host of criteria, meaning that it’s an enormous challenge to present prices that reflect the realtime prices offered at the actual stores.

If consumers find low prices, then call up the pharmacy only to find that the price for a specific medication is actually different from that being offered on GoodRx, well that starts to chip away at their reputation. That being said, when I searched for prescriptions I take or have taken, all were in line with what was being offered by the pharmacy, and that is music to my wallet.

GoodRx will next look to expand the site to better explain savings opportunities and cost for insured consumers, upping the educational factor, and giving users more insight into whether to choose brand name medications or generic, or how to seek out “therapeutic equivalents” to prescription drugs. Of course, in the end, consumers just want to know where they should go, and they want all the information easily accessible. That’s what GoodRx has been focusing on, and it will be interesting to see how the consumer reacts.

For more, check out GoodRx at home here. And let us know what you think.

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/mdaiQbOIjUc/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Whitney Houston's Funeral

NYT reporter Sarah Maslin Nir took this photo (used with permission) of a funeral guest holding the program.

Click here to view this gallery.

Actor Kevin Costner, music producer Clive Davis and musicians Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys were among the friends and family that gathered for the funeral of Whitney Houston on Saturday.

About 1,500 attended the nearly four-hour-long event, but many more paid their respects by watching a live stream online.

Mourners both at the funeral and those watching from afar shared their thoughts on Twitter. We’ve gathered some of them in the gallery above.

More About: Twitter, whitney houston

For more Entertainment coverage:

• Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Entertainment channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

from All My Feeds http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/lZgtFxKANfE/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

“We’ve all had that feeling coming about, staring at the wall and nothing comes out,” raps musician Paul The Trombonist in his latest YouTube music video.

The song’s subject matter is something Mashable‘s digitally minded readers can relate to, and summed up in its decidedly non-metaphorical title: “Playing With Your Phone While Sitting on the Toilet.”

“I was literally playing with my phone while sitting on the toilet and was like, ‘There has to be a song about this,’” Paul explained in an interview. “It’s a subject no one talks about but it’s something everyone does.”

And so the song and video were born. Paul (real last name Nowell) says it took him about a month to produce the track. He says he was going for a vibe that was a combination of the D12 and “cool, laid-back, West Coast-ish, because I live in LA.”

A freelance producer and professional musician who graduated from the elite Berklee College of Music, Paul also lends his own jazzy trombone improvisations to the track.

He shot the video in one day with help from some friends before pulling an all-night editing session on Saturday and posting it to YouTube Sunday morning. It’s been featured on the mobile news site AndroidCentral, although its view count hasn’t blown up. At least not yet.

The song reflects a universal truth. A recent study by the marketing agency 11mark found that about 75% of people have used their mobile phone while in the bathroom. Apparently 20% of men have participated in work-related calls from the loo, and 13% of women have as well. Android users are more likely to use their phones while in the bathroom than iPhone users are, at 87% to 77%.

Clearly folks agree with Paul when he intones during the video’s outro, “Man, this technology really helps it go dowwwn…Glad I live in this time period.”

Do you play with your phone while you’re sitting on the toilet? What do you think of the video? Let us know in the comments.

[As a side note, in the course of interviewing Paul we learned that he actually made a Mashable-themed music video last August. Check it out here!]

More About: Mobile, smartphones, Toilet, YouTube

For more Entertainment coverage:

• Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Entertainment channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

from All My Feeds http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/rOI-JEliy24/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Greg Sandoval / CNET:
Microsoft mulls plan for new music service (exclusive)  —  The software maker has discussed with some of the major record companies about creating a music service to serve Xbox as well as an upcoming Windows-based phone.  —  Microsoft is in talks with some of the major record companies …

from All My Feeds http://www.techmeme.com/120217/p48#a120217p48

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

So maybe there really is a sensible middle ground in the music business – somewhere between David Lowery’s pessimism and Bram Cohen’s blind faith in our digital future. That future may be the pop music band Pomplamoose. Its members are Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte, two young musician-entrepreneurs who are not only making a living marketing and selling their music online, but who even own a “nice house” with two recording studios. Nataly and Jack, I suspect (and hope), are the viable future of the music industry – one that will neither revolve around Platinum records nor completely free online content.

I met the talented and very charming Nataly and Jack earlier this week at SFMusicTech. Their business model is very simple, they explained to me. They create clever, scalable videos for YouTube which then feed their iTunes sales and their licensing deals. It’s a good business, they told me, with their 3 million monthly views on YouTube being directly correlated to their iTunes sales. Of course, they added, you still need to “make really good music” and have “excellent chemistry” – but the fact that Pomplamoose are making a decent living is great news for the thousands of other talented musicians trying to earn a living in today’s digital economy.

This is my third interview from SFMusicTech, following my encounters with Camper Van Beethoven’s David Lowery and BitTorrent’s Bram Cohen. Still to come are some conversations about what might turn out to be the most valuable player in today’s digital music business – the audience.

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/QLpuj1XSTP8/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

New Orleans Boogie-Woogie pianist Mitch Woods visit Israel as a "target of opportunity" artist for three master classes and a performance for Jewish and Arab music students in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Shfar'am. Woods amazed the students with his bursting energies and virtuosity. He explained the origins of Rock-n-Roll, the uniqueness of his American style and technique, and its connection to jazz music. He also taught the students several pieces and played with them in spontaneous jam sessions. The show in Shfar'am was especially moving due to the opening of a brand new jazz department in the Beit Almusica Conservatory only few months ago.

from All My Feeds http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-orleans-boogie-woogie-musician.html

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

MTV Music Meter 2.0 launched Wednesday with support for not only the web browser but also iOS and Android platforms.

The Music Meter is designed as an entry point for finding out more about bands and artists you don’t know yet. When you initially visit the app, you’ll get a list of the top 100 trending “Up & Coming” artists based on an algorithm developed by data partner the Echo Nest. Because the Music Meter wants to help surface emerging artists, you won’t see Kanye West and Adele — rather, a look at the top 5 today shows Gotye, Greyson Chance, Casper, Graffiti6, and Chelsea Grin.

One of the updated features of the new release is that you can now sort by genre. This lets you find the trending artists in rock, hip-hop, indie, electronic, and interestingly, mainstream. Again, the emphasis is on rising artists, so when you narrow by hip-hop, for example, you’ll find artists such as Tyga, Plies, and The Cool Kids as opposed to Jay-Z or Lil Wayne.

However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find Jay-Z or Lil Wayne. You just have to search for them. The app delivers 30-second song previews from music partner Rhapsody, as well as biographical information, news (aggregated from sources like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, MTV itself or even much smaller blogs), and photos.

Also specific to the 2.0 release is a partnership with Songkick, which allows you to find tour dates and purchase concert tickets directly from the app.

The goal of the service is to provide what senior director of product development Mark Mezrich called the “artist snacking experience,” which he defined as offering just enough for you to know if you want to dig deeper. Indeed, by offering just 30-seconds of each song you can only get a taste of the music. However, you can easily jump from the app to iTunes to make a quick song purchase.

Perhaps most impressive is MTV Music Meter’s database of music. It isn’t surprising to see acts like Gotye and Ellie Goulding, who have substantial backing from record labels. But when I search for one of my favorite local bands, Fort Lean, who self-released their EP last year, I find their music, including their new single and the dates for their upcoming tour.

For that reason, this app could be perfect for finding out about that opening band you saw and want to know more about.

In its current state, the Music Meter is somewhat limited. There’s no social integration, meaning you aren’t sharing and you aren’t getting what your friends are listening to. It would be interesting to be able to find artists on Twitter and Facebook directly from the app, which Mezrich said is in his team’s product road map.

Also of note is that Rhapsody is the sole music provider. “Our hope as the music streaming services evolve is to give our audience the option of what service they want to use in the app,” said Mezrich. One can imagine being able to preview a song in the app and then if you like it, choose to share to Twitter and then go directly to your Spotify account and listen to the whole thing.

MTV Music Meter isn’t quite there yet, but the early emphasis was on music discovery. Credit MTV for not trying to do too much. Even better, because of its partnership with 5 gum, the entire thing stays free. It will be interesting to see whether MTV turns this into a more social tool, but for now the interface is simple and effective.

More About: apps, mtv, Music, the-echo-nest

For more Entertainment coverage:

• Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Entertainment channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

from All My Feeds http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/zVVMmqEu6dY/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

With the end of February nearly in sight, the tech community is all abuzz with talk about Mobile World Congress, the huge mobile conference set to take place in beautiful Barcelona in just over a week. All the big players will be there (though some will be less conspicuous than before), and of course among them will be Taiwan-based phone giant HTC.

Though HTC kicked off the Android device movement with the venerable G1 in 2008, the company has recently fallen on some hard times. Stiffening competition in the mobile space led HTC to finally break their long growth streak this past quarter, which has led company brass to take a step back and reevaluate their strategy.

Now with a renewed focus on creating a smaller number of “hero” devices this year, we’re expecting HTC to show off some serious hardware at MWC. Fortunately for us, some of the folks inside HTC just can’t seem to keep quiet, which means rumors and leaks are flying around like crazy. We’ve taken the liberty of sifting through all of the information to give you an idea of what HTC will have on display this year at MWC.

The One X:

I like to think that the One X was what HTC had in mind when they started talking up their new hero phones. Formerly known as the HTC Edge or Endeavor, the Ice Cream Sandwich-powered One X is the company’s first quad-core smartphone thanks to the Tegra 3 chipset buried deep within it. It’s expected to have 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage — a smart choice, considering HTC seems to have omitted the memory card slot. Fortunately, the word is that mass storage support has been added, which should make shuffling episodes of Doctor Who between the device and a computer a breeze.

Though I’m usually not a fan of custom UIs, Sense 4.0 should look mighty nice on that 4.7-inch 720p S-LCD display, while 1.3 and 8-megapixel cameras grace its front and back respectively. Interestingly, its waistline doesn’t seem to be suffering much for it — the One X is expected to be under 10mm thick.

The One S:

Those looking for a device that’s just a bit more manageable in the hand should take note of the One S. This little guy has been spotted more than a few times carrying the “Ville” moniker, and opts for a smaller 4.3-inch display instead of the One X’s gargantuan screen. On the software front, both Ice Cream Sandwich and Sense 4.0 are present and accounted for.

The One S expected to sport a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a VGA front-facer. Most notably, the One S is said to be under 8mm thick — hopefully it retains that wonderful solid feel that HTC devices are known for.

The One V:

This Ice Cream Sandwich device is a relatively new addition to the rumor mill, and as such no spy shots have made their way out of HTC’s skunkworks yet — this is just a mockup. Sources have told Pocket-Lint that it’s a smaller, music-centric 3.7-inch screen display. The rest of spec sheet won’t set your world on fire: a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a 720p video capable 5-megapixel camera round out the package. If those specs sound familiar, it’s because the One V is rumored to be a Beats Audio-enhanced version of the underwhelming HTC Rhyme.

If real, then the One V is an interesting addition to the mix. It’s clearly more of a mid-range device than either the X or the Sdone, and almost seems to drag the One series down a bit. It could be that HTC and I are working with different definitions of “hero devices” here, but a moderately-specced phone geared toward music seems a odd when the Beats Audio feature is easily transplanted onto other devices.

The One XL:

HTC noted earlier this year that they would be reducing their presence in the tablet market, but their Quattro tablet seems to have been in development long before that change of heart. The One XL (as it’s now expected to be called) features the same Tegra 3 chipset as seen in the One X, along with a 10.1-inch display running 1024×768.

It’s expected to cram all that plus 16GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, and both Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi radios into a a chassis that’s under 9mm thick — seeing a trend here? The One XL should also have some solid streaming media services to work with, as an HD-capable version of the HTC Watch app and a potential HTC music service are reportedly in the works too.

So what’s up with these names?

Specs aside, one of the more notable things about these devices is the new naming scheme HTC seems to have gone with. HTC hasn’t officially announced their new branding efforts, although Pocket-Lint and Slashgear have both independently confirmed the new names with their respective sources.

At first glance, it seems like a smart move for HTC — aligning their products into a single series allows them to promote the line as a whole as well as individually, rather than trying to whip up a marketing strategy for a handful of devices with no discernible connection beyond the OS and the logo. Nokia has been doing something similar with their handsets — after announcing the change on their blog, Nokia gave all of their new devices a simple model number.

The idea was that the number would quickly give users a bit of context: a Lumia 710 is a higher-end model than the (rumored) Lumia 601. It seems to be working well so far, but going with letters as HTC seems to have done presents a new set of issues.

Context? There is none.

In fact, I could see the names causing a bit of confusion. If someone asked you to choose between a One S and a One V without explaining anything, you would have no godly idea which was the better device. Not that most phone names have terribly descriptive either, but while they can be lofty and ridiculous (and sometimes long-winded), they’re at least memorable. This new naming scheme is far simpler, but much drier to boot — there’s no personality to be had here.

Still, it has its upsides. Customers won’t bemoan the addition of a, let’s say, One G, because it isn’t immediately obvious which phone is meant to be the better model. We’ll have to see if the One name sticks as these devices begin trickling into other markets, but there’s a very good chance that the hardware will shine regardless of the name that’s slapped on it.

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/UWxUMPz6PRM/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Features:

• 5-inch (16:9), 960 x 544 OLED screen
• Front and rear capacitive touchscreens
• Dual joysticks
• WiFi and 3G Wireless Broadband support
• MSRP: $249 (Wi-Fi Only)/$299 (Wi-Fi/3G)

Pros:

• Beautiful, bright screen
• Surprisingly light but solid
• Amazing, console-quality graphics

Cons:

• Too wide for smaller hands
• Vita game selection is currently limited
• 3-5 hours of battery life

The Short Version

Like a line of hard-marching Lemmings (or a swarm of Patapons), Sony’s countless, niggling enemies would like nothing better than to distract and steal the company’s hard-won fan base. The Playstation has long been the gold standard in console gaming, despite the Xbox’s recent challenges to the throne. And Sony does a good job. Graphics are better, gameplay is or can be more immersive, and in the battle for RPG dominance the PS3′s library is peerless.

But now Sony is fighting against lots of great ways to waste your time. Stuck in a long line? Whip out the iPhone, RAZR, or Blackberry. Want to play something bigger and bolder? Pull out a tablet and rock a few hours of Civilization Revolution or Need For Speed. Want to watch a movie? Bring up Netflix on any device in the house save your kitchen blender. There’s not as much space for a dedicated gaming device out there as there used to be, and both Nintendo and Sony know it.

So what, then, is the Playstation Vita and should you care about it? The Vita is Sony’s latest handheld device. It’s a small game console that takes SD-Card like cartridges but depends more on customer downloads and local storage. It can play multi-gigabyte-sized games that would look more at home on a console or PC than on a handheld.

You should care about the Vita because its success will define the value of the dedicated handheld in the marketplace. In a world full of devices vying for our attention; how a $250 handheld console designed with games in mind does in terms of sales and popularity is very important for Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft (not to mention stealth game console manufacturers like Apple and Google). Sony said this console has to last for another eight years in the marketplace, a prospect that seems a little far-fetched. The more important question is whether it lasts just one year without a major price cut and whether it lasts out this decade as a handheld console of choice.

All of this doom and gloom is distracting, however. Before anything else, the real question is whether the Vita delivers a great gaming experience. The answer to that question is a resounding “Yes.”

PSP Reborn?

The first thing we need to understand is that the Vita is far more than a PSP successor. Although it looks quite a bit like the old PSP, gone are the hard edges and moving parts of Sony’s previous design generation. The aesthetic here is rounded, soft, and usable – perhaps a nod to the softer, curved designs found in newer phones.

There are two clickable analog sticks on the left and right sides of the screen along with a four way directional pad on the left and four action buttons on the right. There are a two shoulder buttons on top along with a Vita card slot and HDMI/audio port. On the bottom is a port for a MicroSD next to Sony’s proprietary charging and data cable. There are no USB ports on this thing. But there is, famously, a touchpad on the back.

The 3G version has a SIM card slot on the left side. There are built-in stereo speakers and a small microphone as well as VGA cameras on the front and back.

The Vita is surprisingly light. It looks like it should be a dense product of Japanese engineering. Instead it feels almost hollow (in a good way) which makes it much easier to hold for longer periods.

The 5-inch OLED screen is powered by a Sony-built quad-core ARM-based processor and is amazingly bright and clear. The Vita contains 512KB of RAM and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support. It also contains an accelerometer for sensing position changes and a GPS chip. iFixIt found the device to be well-made and surprisingly serviceable.

All told, the Vita is very usable. The UI is based on “lozenges” that display various apps, including every game that has ever run on the device. This makes for some odd situations when you tap the lozenge for a game that isn’t currently in the Vita’s card slot (although you can transfer games to the onboard memory to remedy this). These lozenges are sort of like pointers to various content, a sort of reminder that you own a game rather than access to the game itself. The distinction isn’t important enough to discuss further, but it’s a quirk that bore mentioning.

The UI also uses a unique sticker interface to handle multi-tasking. You can multi-task in any app by pressing the dedicated Playstation button. When you do this, you bring up the main screen. Then you access other screens by swiping left or right. When you’re ready to “close” an app or game, you swipe from the upper right corner down, essentially “peeling” it from the screen. The same UI trick happens when you unlock the Vita – you “peel” off the lock screen. This makes it easy to see what is currently running and coupled with a sort of mini dock at the top of non-clickable icons, the Vita OS becomes more like a mini computer than a games machine. Clicking the Playstation button twice brings up a stack of current apps running on the device, including a notifications list where your trophy wins and download status resides.

Other apps include Sony Music and a video player as well as a Google Maps-based mapping app. There are also apps for the PSN Store as well as a trophy case, a Friends list, and a system for multi-player chat called Party.

Would You Like To Play A Game?

Gaming on a Vita vs., say, an iPhone is a revelation. The games are responsive, crisp, and vibrant and compared to similar games on the iPhone and Android platforms. Uncharted: Golden Abyss, for example, is as good as any console game, with loads of textures and rich, high-poly environments that you would see on any PS3 or Xbox. Barring a few artifacts, you will be amazed at the quality. Because the Vita also plays some PSP games you’re able to experience last gen gaming running on the Vita’s superior processor. For example, Dungeon Hunter: Alliance, a 1GB PSP game that I downloaded, was on par with an iOS native version of Dungeon Hunter 2. However, the game was much easier to play on the Vita because of the dual joysticks and – oddly enough – the rear touchpad.

This is not to say all is wine and roses on the Vita gaming front. If you are not a fan of Sony’s brand of gaming, you’re not going to be happy with the initial crop of games. The Uncharted title, while graphically stunning, is a long movie interspersed with running while the more casual titles like Super Stardust Delta display superior graphics and dubiously enticing gameplay.

Assessments of game quality are highly subjective, however, so I’ll leave those to a minimum. Sony has a massive following and their games are often considered the epitome of the videogame arts (Final Fantasy and Metal Gear come to mind), at least by their fans. This device will do all of those titles justice.

Online play is very simple to set up with friends and/or strangers. Sadly, online play was mostly disabled for the titles I had access to simply because there weren’t many Vitas floating around on the network yet. However, the “friend discovery” system, called Near, is worth a deeper look.

Near

The most interesting part of the Vita UI is a system called Near. Near allows you to find people who are playing PS3 or Vita games and friend and/or challenge them. You can also chat and play with these nearby folks (once you’re connected) allowing you to create an ad hoc network of buddies who are within your general vicinity (say 2 kilometers or so).

While online play has been around for years, the PSP’s was historically abysmal and this means to rectify that. In fact, the “loose” nature of the networks created encourages game discovery as well as friend discovery, something that is slightly more difficult on the Xbox and considerably more difficult on the Wii.

In short, Near is the Vita’s way of going viral. If you can see others with Vitae nearby, you’ll be more inclined to consider other popular games and you’ll generally play more. It marries the best aspects of local discovery a la Foursquare with some of the better online gaming solutions.

The Bad

I write this last section with a bit of sadness. The Vita, while amazingly capable and very cool, may be the last of its breed, a bold experiment in its evolutionary stage waiting for the crash of a meteor to wipe it off the planet. Kotaku’s review is hits the nail on the head: while the Vita (and, arguably, the 3DS) offers a superior gaming experience to any tablet or smartphone, my money is on the non-dedicated gaming device rather than a system that does one or two things well.

You’ll note that I didn’t cover the browser or the music services on this device. They exist and they work, but they are far from perfect — to be honest, they aren’t great. For example, the browser doesn’t work while a game is running in the background. The primary reason I browse the web around any game is to pop over to the FAQs or Wikis for a particular title (I’m not a very good gamer and Skyrim is hard). To be forced to close out of a game in order to browse is quite nasty. The browser also doesn’t support Flash 9 out of the box.

A battery life of 3-5 hours is strong but not ideal and the device doesn’t play well with some devices so there is no promise that you will be able to charge over USB. I tried a number of ports, including powered USB ports, and the results were mixed. The console really shines with in-depth, graphics rich games but if you know it’s going to die in a few hours, the impetus to get into an RPG is reduced. That leaves casual gaming, a space in which many other devices excel.

I want to love this device and I suspect a dedicated gamer will find it far superior to any other device, the Nintendo 3DS included. But I feel this will be the last iteration of the “dedicated gaming” handheld we see.

To be clear, the Vita does purport to be a connected console. It does support 3G and wireless and we can assume that some sort of Skype app will appear sooner than later. Netflix is coming. It already has voice chat with friends so something similar for general chatting can’t be far off.

The Bottom Line

As a device, the Vita is stellar. It has all the right pieces in all the right places – the huge, bright screen, the dual analog sticks, the acceptable battery life, the size, shape, and weight. I wish all Sony products were like this – intelligently designed, handsome, and usable. Sony has finally figured out how to put all the puzzle pieces into the right spots and it is an example of what the company can do when it produces a device dedicated to its biggest fans – gamers.

Who should buy it? PS3 and SCEA fans, definitely, and general gaming fans secondarily. If there are any titles that catch your fancy, you won’t be disappointed when you play them on this thing. However, as it stands I can’t actively recommend any of the launch titles as “must haves” although, as I said before, they are technically impressive.

Not a gaming fan but interested in this as a media player? Pass. There isn’t enough here to replace a good tablet or phone. I would, as a parent, also recommend caution before picking this up for the kids. The titles are not there to warrant the investment.

Time will tell how the Vita shakes out in the gaming market and everyone I’ve spoken to agrees that it’s an impressive and compelling package that, in many ways, feels like the end of the line.

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/6zWgWFwrg-o/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

“Big data” is everywhere you look these days.

As digital information continues to expand exponentially, this affects everything — how much we pay for health insurance, how we predict the weather, how we play the stock market.

The music industry is no exception. Big data is making music a more meaningful and connected part of our lives.

That might sound insane at first. “Music” and “data” feel like polar opposites. Music is intimate, soulful, and organic. Data is cold and impersonal.

But where music and data come together is in understanding the vast and always-growing world of music: new artists, new influences, technology mashups, and discoveries. All of this music ultimately forges common connections between us all.

Big data, in a musical context, forms the backbone of the Music Hack Day series, where music is not only represented as literal data (good old ones and zeroes), but each song, artist, and album is also surrounded by all kinds of context and understanding that open up mind-blowing new ways for us to discover, interact with, and share music.

Music Hack Days bring together APIs from The Echo Nest, Spotify, SoundCloud, and other digital music platforms so that hundreds of software and hardware hackers can build functional music apps and demonstrate them to each other over the course of a single weekend, in cities around the world.

My company, The Echo Nest, has spent seven years building the world’s largest music database, which contains more than five billion individual data points about 30 million songs and more than 2 million artists.

Half of The Echo Nest’s “musical brain” is dedicated to understanding music content — analyzing audio with software to understand it the way a musician does (tempo, key, song structure, etc.). The other half parses what people are saying about music everywhere online (blogs, reviews, news, social media).

Together, this understanding of music allows independent developers to build scalable music apps with major labels and create all sorts of stuff they wouldn’t otherwise be able to build.

Imagine what you could make if you knew the tempo and song structure of every song in the world; if you knew what everyone on the Internet is saying about every artist in the world right now; if you knew the musical collaborations and influences of everyone to ever pick up a guitar.

At Music Hack Day, hundreds of developers have all of this data and millions of songs sitting right in front of them. At the San Francisco Music Hack Day just last week, more than two hundred participants built a total of 62 working music hacks. That is a ridiculous rate of productivity, and the apps show why big data matters to any music fan.

Here are some of the highlights from San Francisco Music Hack Day (in alphabetical order — and keep in mind, these are rough, time-limited hackathon projects that will likely be acquiring several layers of polish before a public release):

• Automello takes any group of audio samples and groups them by pitch so digital music makers can play them like a piano.
• Buddhafy lets you build a Spotify playlist with your brain, based on its mood.
• Coming to Town Rdio lists concerts coming to your area and lets you hear what those bands sound like.
• Echo Tunes takes a look at your iTunes library, then lets you build playlists with all sorts of smart sliders Apple never thought of including.
• Frankie’s Organ translates any song into a pipe organ version, played by a virtual Frankenstein.
• GenRedio makes radio stations based on a combination of moods and musical styles.
• Hide That Tune is a new twist on the familiar “name that tune” game. One player select an arcane section of a well-known song and challenges the others to identify it.
• Lyrics Cloud builds “word clouds” based on any song, so you can see which terms pop up most in the lyric.
• Make Up Recs lets non-techies import playlists from Pandora into the unfamiliar world of the powerful Tomahawk music app, without skipping a beat.
• Paul vs. Billboard predicted 6 of 13 Grammy Award winners with artificial intelligence.
• PlayHead plays customized radio stations based on the cities and bands you like.
• SideTrack, strictly for the geeks, is like a digital Rube Goldberg contraption whose point is to find music through incredibly circuitous routes.
• SocialSongQ lets people send tweets to the artificially-intelligent “DJ Fail Whale” creating a queue of songs to hear at any event.
• Sonos+Spotify++ adds smart playlisting and the ability to buy tickets to Sonos’ digital music system for the home.
• WetheDJ lets you invite friends to build party playlists together.

Music Hack Day is meant to be fun. It’s essentially a jam session for developers held over a weekend. The fact that these talented hackers can put together so many functional apps in 24 hours using The Echo Nest, Soundcloud, Last.fm, and dozens of other great music APIs has major implications for businesses and consumers, for how we will all discover, play, and share music in the future.

Jim Lucchese is CEO of The Echo Nest and has worked in digital music strategy and corporate development for about 10 years. Before The Echo Nest, Jim was a music lawyer at Greenberg Traurig, specializing in music and digital media deals. Jim holds a B.A. from Boston College and a J.D., Magna Cum Laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. When he’s not at the Nest, Jim plays drums and still represents a few indie artists pro bono for fun.

Image courtesy of Yuri Arcurs, Shutterstock

from All My Feeds http://feeds.venturebeat.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/6AOOc75nUmY/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

You’ll never forget your first time.

Huddled in a hallway three feet wide, arms reaching every which way for a cup or a beer or the microphone. It’s hot and it’s messy and it’s noisy and everyone is pushing against everyone else but it doesn’t matter because your best friend is at the front of it all belting Total Eclipse of the Heart (how did she just hit that note) — and the world outside is whirling by in a blur.

It’s incredible. And now the RVIP Karaoke RV is ready to take the country by storm.

Today, the people behind this legendary tradition are announcing that they’re turning their passion into a full-fledged company. The papers have been filed, they’re fully insured, and the RV fleet has doubled in size (to two — with more on the way).

For those that haven’t been fortunate enough to take part in one of these karaoke-infused voyages, here’s a little background.

The Karaoke RV first got its start in 2007, when Jonathan Grubb and Kestrin Pantera — a couple who, brought together through the power of karaoke, are now married — decided that they “wanted to have the awesomest party there was at SXSW… but it had to be cheaper than a hotel room.”

And so the Karaoke RV was born. They rented an RV, drove around downtown Austin during the festival, and opened their doors to anyone and everyone who wanted to sing their hearts out.

It was a hit, and the RV has been a SXSW staple ever since (veteran attendees like myself use GroupMe to keep tabs on its whereabouts at all times). For the next few years the team would also rent an RV for a handful of other appearances throughout the year, stopping by at occasional film and music festivals.

And then, thanks to the generosity of entrepreneur Tara Hunt, who heads Buyosphere, RVIP had an RV to call its own — Hunt literally gave them a 27′ Winnebago because “she liked what we were doing and wanted us to do it more.” And so they have.

The team has systematically demolished and rebuilt the interior of the vehicle to maximize its Karaokeing Capacity, and spent much of last year driving it to events across the country, making appearances at venues including TC Disrupt SF and the Sundance film festival. And they’ve recently purchased a second, much larger RV (a 37′ CAT Diesel A-Class), to expand their potential reach — and participants” shoulder room.

The idea to turn the Karaoke RV into a company, Pantera says, came about late last summer, when she realized that the core team that typically runs the show would be at Burning Man during an event that warranted an RV appearance. So she put together a team to test if the RV could function smoothly when the original founders weren’t onboard. It worked — and they realized that this could be bigger than a hobby.

Which brings us to today.

“We wanted to open a bar, but the rent, buildout, and liquor license costs are really high and it takes forever. So we thought about it like a software project and eliminated the hardest features–alcohol sales and a location–and started iterating. It’s a minimum viable bar,” Grubb says.

Pantera, an actress and musician by trade — who has worked with Weezer and Beck and has made appearances in films that debuted at Sundance and Cannes — is the company’s CEO.

Grubb, who cofounded Get Satisfaction and Rubyred Labs, just left his job as the head of Lookout Mobile Security’s product team to take the helm as the RV’s Chairman, Builder, and Driver. Grubb was also the lead product designer of Isis, the mobile industry’s NFC solution — he quips, “I feel like I’m leaving the hottest industry in the world to have parties all the time, which is awesome.”

Rounding out the executive team is CTO Scott Watson, the Senior Vice President and CTO of Imagineering at The Walt Disney Company (a position he’ll keep while he simultaneously works at RVIP), whose work includes designing Disneyland rides like Indiana Jones and California Aventure’s Soarin’ Over California. Grubb is responsible for converting the RVs into the best karaoke machines they can be — and some of the techniques developed for the RVs are being incorporated into Disney rides. Read that again. These people are awesome.

Finally, the company’s advisors include Nate Bolt (who runs SF design firm Bolt Peters); Mark Trammell, Design Researcher at Twitter; and Jon Snoddy, VP of R&D at Disney Imagineering, who has also been involved with big-name rides.

The company is being funded by its founders, but this isn’t just a benevolent force of awesome, — RVIP actually makes money. Venues and events are willing to pay to have the Karaoke RV make an appearance, and, aside from that appearance fee, these events also are responsible for covering the cost of alcohol, which gets freely distributed to any riders who wish to partake (you need to be over 21 to hop onboard).

In case it wasn’t clear, I love this: some of my favorite memories took place on the Karaoke RV. If you get a chance, don’t hesitate — jump on and sing the way you do in the shower when no one else is home. Even if you’re a little off-key, or you a miss a few lyrics, it doesn’t matter. Your friends probably won’t remember anyway. You won’t regret it.

I’ll close with a quote from Pantera:

“RVIP, for me, is an obsessive labor of love. I hope that the friendships forged here expand beyond the RV, beyond the karaoke, into someplace where people feel an exhilarating sense of love, creativity and liberation. “

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/LEki50VoaII/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Atlanta-based hip-hop mogul Jermaine Dupri is passionate about technology. He checks his BlackBerry and iPhone incessantly, pops in his Bose earbuds every chance he gets and is addicted to the popular video game NBA 2K12.

But Dupri — the Grammy-award songwriter, rapper and producer known for collaborating with artists from Jay-Z to Mariah Carey and for previously dating Janet Jackson for more than eight years — calls social media his biggest tech love.

Although he has nearly 400,000 followers on Twitter, he sought a deeper need to connect with fans and launched his own social network last year called Global 14. The platform, which now consists of more than 30,000 members, gives people with common interests — from art and fashion to hip-hop and R&B — a place to discuss projects and passions in over 1,100 groups.

Dupri appeared earlier this at the Social Media Week keynote panel in New York City to discuss how he built that community online with Global 14.

“I look at Global 14 members as my personal friends,” Dupri told Mashable. “I’m not trying to take on Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. I just created an environment where I can interact with my community and give people a place to chat about their passions. I have big plans for the site.”

The word “global’ in Global 14 refers to Dupri’s diverse tastes and aspirations to grow his community worldwide, while 14 refers to the letters in his name — “J” is the 10th letter in the alphabet and “D” is the fourth.

Dupri described Facebook as a reunion site for friends, while he believes Twitter is a stream-of-consciousness site for updates and news. Instead, he wanted to create a place where like-minded people could talk about their favorite interests.

“[Global 14] started as a blog, where I posted pictures of cars, fashion, girls, art — all the things that I liked,” Dupri said. “A group of people started following the site and a direct dialogue began between me and the consumer.”

The site evolved into what Dupri calls “one big ‘Like’ button,” where people can comment and inspire others. One of the most unique aspects of the site is its music publishing section called G Jamz.

“I found a gap in the Internet social media world for music publishing — most kids don’t believe that someone like me could listen to their music,” Dupri said. “I found one of my signed artists through YouTube and it took me two months to have conservation with her because she didn’t believe it was actually me calling at first.”

“YouTube doesn’t have a person that calls up its members to help them get started in music,” Dupri added. “I started a contest designed for independent artists to help them get signed. My background is music and I owe it to music and to my fans to get involved.”

Dupri traveled to 14 cities in 14 days to promote his social network last year, encouraging people from the site to get together and meet each other in real life. Most recently, Dupri turned to digital marketing agency iCrossing to help boost the site’s search marketing and branding strategy.

Under iCrossing’s guidance, Global 14 recently joined Google+ and is gearing up to create original video content that addresses topics such as the future of social media and how to be a killer creative executive.

“I heard Steve Jobs speak about putting his personal touch into the computer and that helped me understand why I love his products,” Dupri said. “You could feel that someone with such passion had gone over the products so many times before they came out. I make music not to make money, but because it’s in me. Things always work when I put my heart into it, and more brands need to do the same thing.”

More About: celebrities, Music, Social Media

For more Entertainment coverage:

• Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Entertainment channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

from All My Feeds http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/eyq1NcVsud0/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Short Version

The Droid 4 doesn’t look much like its other Droid siblings, but it does promise the same stellar keyboard and a solid construction. At $199 it won’t break your wallet, but it will offer most of the same specs we’re seeing go for $300, including a 4G LTE radio. If thin and light is important to you, the Droid 4 probably isn’t what you’re looking for, but keyboard purists should start getting excited… right… now.

Features:

• 4-inch 540×960 display
• Verizon 4G LTE
• Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread
• 1.2GHz dual-core processor
• 8MP rear camera (1080p video capture)
• 1.3MP front camera (720p video capture)
• Sliding 5-row QWERTY keyboard
• MSRP: $199.99 on-contract

Pros:

• The backlit QWERTY keyboard is solid and comfortable
• Much better design than old Droids
• Highly print resistant, comfortable rear surface

Cons:

• Low quality photos
• It chugs a bit if you push it
• Battery’s a bust

Long Version

Hardware/Design:

The Droid 4 feels great in the hand, and in my honest opinion it sports a far superior design than its predecessors. It actually looks quite a bit like the Razr, save for a textured plastic back panel and the obvious added heft. Still, the same black bezel and boxy metal edges remain.

I wish that both the lock button and the volume rocker had depressed a bit more when pushed, but Moto got it right where port placement is concerned — both the HDMI out and microUSB are on the lower left hand edge. That shouldn’t bother anyone who’s tooling around while plugged in (and trust me, you’ll be plugged in quite a bit (more on that later)).

The removable battery door has a nice feel to it and is surprisingly resistant to prints, though for some odd(/stupid) reason Moto won’t let us get at the battery itself.

The size of the phone didn’t bother me at all. Obviously if thin and light are important to you than you won’t enjoy this, but it felt nice and solid to me. I prefer the 4-inch screen to stuff like the Nexus and Note’s giant displays, and the .5-inch waist line wasn’t that much of a bother either. See, the phone’s weight actually lends itself to a more premium feel in the hand and I wouldn’t have even minded an extra .1 inch if it meant a removable battery (hint hint).

Keyboard:

The Droid 4 keyboard isn’t going to give you any problems on the durability front. It slides in and out nicely and doesn’t seem to bend or crack at all when pressured. There is a little friction there when you sliding it back and forth, but after a little getting used to I prefer that more than those ultra slippery sliders — feels a bit sturdier.

The buttons themselves lay nearly flush with the phone, which certainly looks nice, but I’d appreciate just a bit more of a hump or bump to help feel my way around. They’re non-slick keys which is nice on its own, but what’s even better is that they don’t seem to get all grubby and sticky either.

The buttons are placed well, with just enough space in between to at least feel a tiny groove (which is basically necessary since the buttons are so flat). They also offer a nice tapping noise and some solid tactile feedback when pressed, though textaholic teens may have some trouble going unnoticed in a classroom.

I still find the iOS virtual keyboard and Swype to be faster than this physical 5-row QWERTY (for me, at least), but keyboard purists likely won’t find anything better on the market.

Software:

The Droid 4 runs Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread along with some version of a Motorola overlay. It’s not MotoBlur exactly, but it’s certainly not pure Android.

The UI doesn’t seem terribly obtrusive, but it’s also not very useful either. The apps/widgets have this “flashy” effect when you swipe between home screens, which results in an annoyance at best and a headache at worst. There are social hubs and stuff, which is (how can I put it…) whatever, but the value proposition of the UI just isn’t good enough. Now that Googorola is almost in the bag we might start seeing a few more vanilla devices out of Moto, but that’s probably just a dream.

MotoCast is along for the ride here, which offers up a solid option for any cloud syncing/streaming you may want to do between phone and PC. You’ll also find Netflix, a lite version of Madden NFL 12, Kindle Reader, NFL Mobile, and Mog Music present and accounted for, along with a handful of bloatware apps from Verizon and Motorola.

Camera:

The camera on the Droid 4 didn’t live up to my expectations. The app itself is swell, on the other hand. There’s a little drop-down tab on the side that gives you access to plenty of settings, scenes, and modes. Not all of them are as useful as the others, but they’ll at least make for a good time playing around and taking pictures.

However, none of that really matters if the picture quality itself happens to blow. I tried to give it a few chances, switching between low-light and outdoor settings, but no matter what images just seemed to fall flat. I took the same shot with both my iPhone 4S and the Droid 4 and the difference in image quality is staggering.

Take a look:

Display:

The Droid 4 uses a TFT LCD qHD (960×540) display that measures 4 inches diagonally. Size-wise it feels just right. Since the phone itself is a bit thick a screen any larger might make one-handed actions more difficult. Serious mobile gamers might be a little peeved at the smaller display, but if you’re a serious mobile gamer the Droid 4 probably isn’t right for you anyway.

In terms of quality I’m not all that impressed. Everything seems a bit fuzzier than it should. On the other hand, the Droid 4 screen allows for a nice wide viewing angle, but with a screen so small it’s doubtful you’ll be gathering around the 4 to watch a flick with friends. Could come in handy for the occasional group visit to YouTube, though.

Performance:

Call quality on the Droid 4 was just fine, though I did have a few issues whenever I tried to use microphone-equipped headphones. The usual Android lag is present, and this custom overlay (albeit lighter than TouchWiz) doesn’t help anything. For example, swiping between home screens packed with widgets and even scrolling in a the browser is choppy most of the time.

On the other hand the Droid 4 handled its benchmark testing rather well. Quadrant, which tests just about everything, gave it a score of 2430 on average. It scored an average of 86,544 on Browsermark, which benchmarks browser performance based on hardware. For some perspective, the Galaxy Note scored an averages of 2703 and 48,610 on Quadrant and Browsermark respectively.

Battery:

Unfortunately, the Droid 4 falls short in the battery life department. We test battery life on phones by running them through a program that simply performs a Google Image search each time a page loads. At any time we can pop out of that program and do other things, but the phone is always in use without sleeping from 100 percent battery life until it dies.

The Droid 4 lasted just three hours and forty-five minutes. For some perspective, the Droid Razr gave me a solid four and a half hours, while the Razr Maxx lasted for an impressive eight hours and fifteen minutes. Now, the Droid 4 didn’t seem to have such awful battery life when I let it breathe every once in a while, and the Razr Maxx’s main feature is its massive battery, but this Droid 4 battery life just isn’t adequate.

Head-To-Head With The Droid 3 And iPhone 4S:

Check out our thoughts on this match-up here.

Hands-On Video: Initial Impressions

Conclusion

Here’s the deal.

If you absolutely, 100 percent, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt must have a physical keyboard on your phone, then yes, the Droid 4 is probably the best phone you’ll find. It’s far superior to any BlackBerry or QWERTY-sporting Android that I’ve ever come into contact with. But (and this is a big but)… I wouldn’t recommend the Droid 4 to just about anyone else.

The screen’s not all that impressive, the camera can’t hang, and the battery life won’t get you through the day. It’s pretty, that’s for sure, but simply not good enough unless your insistence on a keyboard is worth more than having a solid smartphone.

Remember, this is the next two years of your life. Who knows how awesome the virtual keyboards will be by then (or if we’ll even be typing with our fingers anymore)? Do you really want to be not one, but (probably) two steps behind everyone else?

Check out all of our Droid 4 review posts here.

from All My Feeds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/MD80BAQk3gg/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Apple is making a big deal about how its newly-announced Mountain Lion operating system comes with built-in iCloud syncing and storage. But if you cut through the deafening hype, iCloud is still a woefully limited solution that most consumers and businesses should not take seriously yet.

As much as I commend Apple for prioritizing the cloud by integrating iCloud into Mountain Lion, the company is only shining a bright spotlight on how it’s still way behind the competition when it comes to cloud services. Competitors such as Dropbox, Box, and SugarSync all have a serious edge on iCloud when it comes to file management, platform availability, and sharing files. Google is also likely to enter this fray soon with its own Drive cloud storage product, which we expect to become competitive, too.

iCloud background

Before we delve into just how iCloud is lacking, a little more background on the service: iCloud essentially helps complete Steve Jobs’ vision of a truly connected Apple ecosystem. iCloud users have an automated system for backing up photos, documents, bookmarks, and other files — as long as they stay within Apple hardware and software. To start an iCloud account, you can enable the service in iOS 5 on an iPhone or iPad or inside of Lion OS X. There is also an undercooked Windows-based control panel that works for Vista and Windows 7 OSes. More than 100 million Apple users have signed up for iCloud thus far.

Now, iCloud is getting more hype than before because it will be integrated inside Apple’s next OS. iCloud gets name-checked in the third sentence of Apple’s press release announcing the new Mountain Lion OS, saying, “Mountain Lion is the first OS X release built with iCloud in mind for easy setup and integration with apps.” The company also notes: “Mountain Lion uses your Apple ID to automatically set up Contacts, Mail, Calendar, Messages, FaceTime, and Find My Mac. The new iCloud Documents pushes any changes to all your devices so documents are always up to date, and a new API helps developers make document-based apps work with iCloud.”

Sounds pretty decent so far, right? Yes, until you realize the limitations. First, to get any serious benefit, you must have all Apple devices and not a mix like the majority of users. Those documents that sync across your Apple devices, at this point, have to be from Apple’s iWork suite, which not everyone has or wants to use. And, how long before the document creation or editing app you want to use will have iCloud support? Who knows.

Limited device support

In terms of helping consumers with devices, iCloud is wildly incomplete. Let’s compare iCloud to Dropbox for a moment, just for clarity’s sake. Dropbox, which was once a service Steve Jobs wanted to buy, installs its software on nearly any device (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, etc.) and keeps files available no matter where you access them. I’ll admit Dropbox isn’t perfect — having a “cloud” service taking physical storage space on my computer is a bit frustrating — but it is one of the best solutions available on the market.

But iCloud doesn’t work across platforms, generally keeping you locked inside Apple’s garden. If you have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus and a MacBook Air, for example, iCloud can’t help you stay in sync. If you have an iPhone and a Windows 7 desktop (an extremely common combination), you can’t reap the full benefits of the pairing, even though there is minor Windows access. Basically, to get the best iCloud experience, you best buy an iPhone and a Mac.

Dropbox was unable to provide anyone to talk in-depth about iCloud on short notice, but the company did at least tell me it appreciates what Apple has accomplished but feels its solution is much more complete. “iCloud is a step forward for Apple, but what our tens of millions of users love is that unlike iCloud, Dropbox keeps all your files in one place and lets you access and share them from anywhere,” the company said in a statement to VentureBeat. “Our users also love that Dropbox works with all kinds of devices and apps, not just those from Apple.”

Non-starter for enterprise

And if you delve into the enterprise realm, iCloud is a complete non-starter. Sitting next to enterprise-cloud-solution Box, for example, iCloud is lacking so severely that Box CEO Aaron Levie told me it is acting like a marketing platform to interest users in cloud solutions that it can’t deliver.

“On the enterprise side, iCloud has never been a threat,” Levie said. “Apple doesn’t deliberately go after businesses with this. 90 percent of computers in the enterprise are Windows, while maybe 5 percent of phones are running Windows. You fundamentally have to be open and device-agnostic.”

The often-outspoken Levie makes the case that iCloud is a personal solution only, which is fine for his Apple-loving mother. Levie said it is fine for backing up your photos and music, but when it comes to sharing files with a URL or passing a document back-and-forth, you’re out of luck.

“iCloud is remarkably unsophisticated for sharing and collaboration,” he said. “At this point, iCloud is just data floating between applications.”

Final thoughts

Unquestionably, iCloud is an important product for Apple the company and Apple the ecosystem. But until it gives users access to better file management, sharing tools, and multi-platform functionality, the solution is still short-sighted and over-praised.

I have no doubt the service will get better during the course of the next year. Apple is walking a fine line to meet the needs of novices and power users alike, and it will make steady improvements, as it does with all its software. It’s unlikely Apple will provide iCloud support for rival mobile OSes like Android or Windows Phone 7, but I do believe it will offer more powerful support for Windows 7 and maybe even Windows 8, mostly because it knows how hard it would be to get people to stop using PCs.

“When Tim Cook says this is a long-term bet for Apple, I believe him,” Levie said.

from All My Feeds http://feeds.venturebeat.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/9_1_GovduWE/

Permalink | Leave a comment  »