The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘playlist’

If you head over to YouTube right now, you may find that the videos on the homepage are significantly better than usual. Well, maybe not — but at least it’ll have a strong bias for startups, Silicon Valley, and the tech industry in general. That’s because YouTube has invited us to be part of their ‘Curator of the Month’ program, which means we got to submit a playlist of our favorite videos, which will be shown on the homepage throughout the day. You can find our full list of choices right here.

To build the playlist, we polled the whole TechCrunch crew for their favorite clips, which range from JESS3’s State of the Internet to a Jeff Bezos talk on minimizing regret. There are a few oddballs in there too, like this bizarrely catchy song about Excavator Trucks (a favorite of TC co-editor Erick Schonfeld’s kids).

Hope you like our choices, and feel free to share your favorites (hopefully tech related) in the comments!

It’s no secret that VeriFone hopes to eliminate mobile startup Square before it even officially launches. Not only did they unveil their PAYware Mobile credit card-reading device just a week after Square made headlines with its unveiling, but they almost immediately started a major advertising push in places such as New York City cabs. And now they have perhaps their strongest weapon yet in the fight: placement in Apple stores.

Starting this month, Apple retails stores around the country will begin selling the PAYware Mobile reader (which is required for the accompanying app to work). It will also be sold through Apple’s online store. VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron disclosed this information during VeriFone’s conference call yesterday afternoon.

Obviously, this placement could potentially mean a lot for VeriFone. It’s one thing to advertise your product, and say you can buy it online, it’s another to say you can go to an Apple Store and pick up the entire package in one fell-swoop (iPhone + PAYware Mobile reader). Bergeron also noted that the company plans to introduce PAYware mobile editions for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. While Square is also currently iPhone (or iPod touch)-only, the card reader itself was made to plug into a headphone jack so it should work on a variety of mobile platforms eventually.

Square, while yet to formally launch, is currently being tested by a number of partners. We’ve used it a few times to accept donations, and have been very pleased with the results. PAYware Mobile also seems pretty solid. This should be an interesting battle.

Here’s the key parts from Bergeron’s comments:

Let’s move on now to our PAYware mobile initiative. The iPhone version of this complete end-to-end payment solution comprise of a VeriShield Protect-enabled card encryption sleeve, an Apple-certified software app, and payment gateway service, commenced shipment in the last week of January. Channel development is key to this initiative’s success. To better reach individual and small business end users, we have launched a highly-effective marketing campaign that has garnered the attention of the national press, including Newsweek, CNN Money, and Fox Business news. We have also made progress in working with our traditional processor and financial institution partners to support this initiative and we will be making key announcement shortly.

In addition, we have established PAYware mobile gateway processing relationships with over 70 ISOs to-date, allowing them to assist existing or new (inaudible) customers in processing payment via the iPhone. Finally, and importantly, customers will also be able to purchase our PAYware mobile solution through our paywaremobile.comdirect sales site, which provide – which forwards transactions to one of five blue-chip processors. And starting in March, at Apple Retail Stores in the United States and the Apple Business Store online.

At the same time, we are also targeting large national, international party and in-home direct sales enterprises who may have already been outfitted with iPhones. Integrating secure, card present payments into these existing applications across hundreds of thousands of users is the next logical step. Later this year, we intend to deliver an EMV pin based version of PAYware mobile for the iPhone, allowing us to meet payment need for iPhone users worldwide. We are also planning to introduce PAYware mobile edition for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

Music discovery site thesixtyone unveiled a radical—and gorgeous—redesign a couple days ago. The redesign presents a single, lush full-screen photograph as each song plays, while smaller snapshots fade in and out screensaver-style. The controls are minimized to rollover menus on the upper right, an account-info strip along the lower left, and green arrows to skip to the next or previous songs. You are supposed to just select a type of playlist (top songs, hot, moods) and let it play. Thesixtyone adds Digg-like voting and gaming elements to surface the best indie music.

Users hate it. Or at least the vocal ones complaining about the change on the startup’s Facebook wall, organizing a boycott, and sending us tips. This backlash is predictable and always happens whenever a site goes through a radical change. But some of the complaints are valid. For instance, the biggest change is that you can no longer see the playlist of songs you are listening to or skip around willy-nilly. You can see the old design here or in the screenshot below. The old design was more conventional, but it was certainly easier to navigate.

I asked founder James Miao about the backlash, and he responds:

We’ve had an interesting history with change. The reality is that we’re doing some very experimental things and I feel it’s important to have the freedom to explore new directions. Nearly every change we’ve done since releasing in 2008 has been met with a very similar reaction.

He also notes that “we find that lists aren’t very effective for browsing music you don’t already recognize,” but agrees that it should be easier to navigate the site, and more changes are coming which will improve the experience.

There is another issue. Thesixtyone was able to build a small but loyal community of artists and music lovers. The biggest complaint is that many of the community features have been stripped out. Esteban, one “pissed off t61 user,” writes us:

Not sure if you guys cover this sort of thing, but there’s a lot of angry users over at thesixtyone over the big website overhaul. As you may or may not know, thesixtyone is a music discovery website where many indie artists could easily find listeners. The community aspect and fun features of the site were what drove users to be so passionate, when the redesign (most likely design whores) did away with the greatest features, and killed usability it left a big hole in all the hearts of the users and artists alike.

Miao says that there were problems with the old community features. Specifically, some artists were abusing the system, trying to game the ratings or spamming users with mass messages. The new site is designed to create conversations between fans and artists around songs, and more features in this area are also going to be introduced in the future.

I personally like the new design and the way music just plays with minimal fuss. Many of the navigation and discovery issues can be solved simply by bringing back a playlist view as an option for when you want to dive deeper into the playlist or skip around.

Which design do you think is better?

Could IBM be prepping more of its own location-aware technology and devices? According to a recent patent filing, it looks like it. On Thursday, Big Blue filed for a patent for a “method and system for location-aware authorization.” The inventors appear to be IBM engineers based in Rome, Italy.

According to the filing, the technology would provide a method and technology to control access to a device based on the location of that device. IBM gave the example of a company that only wanted employees to use a particular device in the office or their home and believe that their technology would allow the employer to control where the particular device can be accessed.

Here’s an excerpt from the filing:

The invention provides a method and system for location-aware authorization such as for electronic devices (e.g., mobile electronic devices). One embodiment involves authorizing access to a standalone system such as a mobile device, by collecting user credentials on the device for authentication, obtaining location information (e.g., geographical position) for the device from a locating module such as a satellite navigation module attached to the device, accessing profile authorization information for authenticating the user based on the user credentials and device location information (localization), authorizing access to the device by the user if the profiled authorization settings match the credentials and the position of the device.

Talk about GPS-lockdown.  In an age of mobile workers and telecommuters, such a product might be more of a hindrance than a help for most organizations.  But I could see putting something like that on servers or machines with super-sensitive data that are not supposed to leave the premises.  The big question looms: what will Big Blue, which reported strong earnings for 2009 this past week, do with this technology?

Thanks for the tip Anand S.

As companies mature from fledgling startups into small and medium-sized businesses, it becomes harder to capture and analyze ideas coming from within an organization. Email and spreadsheets are the usual tools used to deal with internal collaboration, but these modes have no way of bringing the best ideas to the top: many times they are lost in the shuffle. Spigit, creators of an enterprise collaboration platform, has come out with a new SaaS product, WE by Spigit, aimed at addressing the collaboration problems small businesses face.

Often times when an enterprise software company moves downstream, they simply strip down many core functions of their enterprise product in order to make it affordable for SMB’s. WE by Spigit has additional features in their enterprise model, such as prediction and idea trading markets, but the main functions at the heart of their service remain unchanged.

When a company purchases WE by Spigit, they are able to create an “innovation community” where their employees (up to 500), are able to contribute and collaborate on projects immediately. Spigit employs constantly evolving algorithms in their system, which, when added to a thumbs up/down feedback system, creates a reputation value for a user. These values are useful because administrators will see topics and ideas which have the highest reputation rise to the top. Each community is hosted on Spigit’s servers.

Another feature is the inclusion of incentives and rewards in order to increase contribution from the communities. Users gain both points and virtual currency for the parts they play in the community; which can then be redeemed for real goods. Spigit hopes that by providing rewards, users will collaborate more, and thus more ideas from within companies can come to fruition.

BrightIdea offers services which are similar to those of Spigit, but they, like most other collaboration platforms, cater to larger enterprises.

WE by Spigit is pay-as-you-go. The product starts at $500 per month for 50 users, and reaches $2500 a month for 500 users. Spigit received $10M in funding from Warburg Pincus in October of 2009, bringing their total funding amount to $14M since their launch in 2007. They have been cash-flow positive for the past 10 months.

Jelli, which launched last year, is a user-controlled online streaming service – sort of a Digg for streaming music, or a group-controlled Pandora. Listeners vote songs up or down to create and alter the playlist.

Today they’re announcing an important business development deal – an actual radio station, Live 105 in San Francisco, will be using Jelli to set their playlists every weekday. Starting this Monday, every weekday from 8 pm to midnight, Jelli takes over.

Users don’t just vote songs up and down. They also get a limited number of Rockets and Bombs to move music more definitively up and down the list. And the chat area gets lively.

Bad news for those radio DJs.

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The OhMiBod Freestyle Vibrator lets you DJ your own orgasm – literally. The vibrator wirelessly connects with your iPod or iPhone and vibrates along with the beat. Perfect for those of you who get turned on by the hot new Jay-Z song (or Ricky Martin, it’s cool, he’s on my playlist too), whatever your music of choice may be, this vibrator will redefine the way you look at your iPod.

Read the rest here:
69Gadget’s OhMiBod Freestyle Review

RadioWeave, a startup that’s launching today at DEMO fall, is looking to bring radio into the 21st century. The company has built a platform for customizing an online streaming radio station that extends beyond just podcasts, music, and news.

In some senses RadioWeave reminds me of Stitcher, which lets you build your own custom radio stations out of your favorite content sources. But RadioWave includes a number of features that Stitcher doesn’t, like the ability to follow a Twitter account and have its tweets read aloud to you (albeit by a very robotic-sounding voice). You can also import feeds of your local weather and traffic.

The site’s playlist creation features seem convoluted, but its initial setup flow (which is reminiscent of Twitter’s suggested users lists) will get you up and running within a few minutes. There are some social elements that let you share your audio content with other users. You can also share your playlist of ‘tags’ with others, so they can tune in to a RadioWeave station that’s similar to yours. Along with RadioWave’s web interface, the service also offers an iPhone application that you can download here.

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Michael Sheridan has resigned as CFO of music startup Project Playlist, we’ve confirmed. This comes just a couple of weeks after CEO Owen Van Natta resigned to take the top spot at MySpace.

Sheridan is a former News Corp. executive and was also previously the CFO of Facebook. One source says he walked out yesterday after a dispute over the acquisition of Total Music. Another source says the departure isn’t nearly as dramatic, and that Sheridan was simply part of the restructuring announced as part of that acquisition. This source says that new CEO John Sykes, who took over after Van Natta’s abrupt departure, is simply putting his own exec team in place. “Sheridan was one of Van Natta’s guys” says the source.

Playlist has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Whatever the true story is, Sheridan is yet another casualty of Van Natta’s abrupt departure from Playlist, a company he ran for just five months. He left Playlist in a shambles, and Skyes is left to clean up the mess.

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Hot on the heels of the announcement that Owen Van Natta is unceremoniously leaving Project Playlist to run MySpace, Project Playlist has announced that John Sykes will be stepping in as CEO. Sykes is a co-founder of MTV, former president of VH1, and former president of Infinity Broadcasting, one of the largest radio broadcasting companies in the US. Sykes has been a boardmember at Playlist up until this point.

Project Playlist is a decidedly troubled company. After showing very impressive traffic numbers late last year, Playlist saw its traffic plummet after its embeddable playlists were removed from both MySpace and Facebook, which were threatened with lawsuits by the major music labels. Under the guidance of Van Natta, who only joined the company in November, the company had been making some headway with music industry. With his extensive background in the music industry Sykes may be able to keep Playlist on the right track, but Van Natta’s abrupt departure isn’t exactly a vote of confidence in the company.

Full press release below:

Palo Alto, Calif., April 24, 2009 – Playlist, the leading social media network where over 43 million music fans discover, create and share playlists, announced today that Board Member and industry veteran John Sykes has joined the company as Chief Executive Officer. As a Co-founder of MTV, President of VH1, and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting, Sykes brings extensive operating experience and industry relationships to the company as it partners with the music industry to provide advertising, subscription and e-commerce services to music consumers.

Owen Van Natta will serve as an Advisor to Playlist.

“John was a pioneer of the MTV revolution that forever changed the music industry landscape by giving fans a whole new way to discover and enjoy music,” said Bob Zangrillo, Chairman of Playlist. “Playlist looks forward to leveraging John’s tremendous track record operating media businesses and deep relationships in the music industry as it builds out the world’s premier social media service.”

“Creating and sharing playlists has become a phenomenon in our culture. With over 43 million registered users, Playlist is the number one site where fans go to discover, share and enjoy their favorite music,” said John Sykes, CEO of Playlist. “Leveraging our newly forged partnerships with the music community, we can now offer consumers deep access to their music and provide the industry with powerful new revenue streams.”

Playlist, one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet, continues to establish partnerships with the entertainment industry in an effort to offer a comprehensive collection of content that can be discovered, shared and monetized at www.playlist.com.

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