Filed under: Audio, Fun, Freeware, Social Software, Web
What key do you prefer to hear music played in? Most people aren’t aware of a preference in this regard, but you might be surprised to learn that there are some clear key-related patterns to your listening habits.
HacKey uses your Last.fm account to determine your favorite music based on a unique listing of your top 50 tracks by play count (both overall and for the last six months) and your last 50 “loved” tracks. It then queries the Echo Nest API to get the keys for each song, and presents it to you as a pie chart, along with the percentage split between songs that are in a major and minor key. Once the pie chart has completed populating, you can mouse over a given key to see song titles that are in that key.
Is HacKey particularly useful? Not really, but if you’re enough of music junkie to be scrobbling your listening habits to Last.fm, you’ll probably find HacKey at least as entertaining as I did. And if you happen to like rock music as I do, I’ll bet your favorite key is A Major like mine was.
HacKey determines what keys you prefer music to be in originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Business, News, Microsoft, Social Software
Microsoft and Facebook have worked together for two and a half years now, with Microsoft selling display ads on the social network. In a newly-announced deal Facebook will be taking over responsibility for selling their own display ads — which makes sense given that they’ve got their own ad network.
Microsoft’s Bing web search service will be extended to Facebook worldwide, and Microsoft will continue to provide search ads. Beyond the advertising changes, Facebook will now have access to Bing’s full set of features to implement as they see fit within Facebook, which could lead to some exciting new features.
Microsoft’s strategy of exposing Bing to the at least 350 million active Facebook users is an attempt to kick-start the service’s growth which is already recognized among web power-users as being comparable to Google in terms of quality.
Microsoft and Facebook renegotiate advertising and Bing integration originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Google, Social Software, web 2.0, Microblogging
Google is working on something mysterious that has to do with Gmail and social networking, but the details are still under wraps. The new product will be unveiled tomorrow, and it could be anything from integrating Gmail status updates with Twitter and Facebook to launching a full-scale Twitter-like service of its own.
Here’s what we’re hearing so far:
TechCrunch says the new product will “intregrate with at least two existing Google products. The general consensus in the tech blogosphere is that one of the two is Gmail. The Wall Street Journal says the new product will make it “easier and faster for user of Gmail to view media and status updates.” (Media, eh? Is the other Google product YouTube?)
Meanwhile, over at Mashable, they’re calling the pending announcement “HUGE” and saying Gmail will offer a Twitter-like timeline of your friends status updates, as well as integration (Twitpic and Yfrog-style, maybe?) of Picasa photos and YouTube videos. We won’t find out until 10 AM Tuesday what this new Google hotness is called, but we can start speculating! What do you think, DLS readers?
p.s.: I haven’t actually heard anyone call this thing “Google Stream,” but don’t you think it would make a catchy name?
Google Stream? Google will launch “huge” new social features tomorrow originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Social Software
If you hate the Facebook inbox as much as I do, this will come as welcome news; according to TechCrunch, Facebook will soon be launching a full webmail client.
Dubbed Project Titan it will be a full blown mail client similar to Gmail with full POP and IMAP support. According to Michael Arrington your address will be your current Vanity URL @facebook.com.
With 350 million active Facebook users automatically getting a new email address all other webmail services are about to get a monsterous new competitor.
Facebook working on a Gmail competitor originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: News, Blogging, Social Software
Pew Internet released a report yesterday called Social Media and Young Adults that shows teen blogging down by 50% over the past four years, even as blogging increased among those over 30 years old.
The report also shows that teens are not very likely to be Twitter users (only 8% of internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 report using the service), even though they are heavy users of almost all other online applications; in fact, 73% of “wired American teens” are social networking website users. Twitter seems to stick out as a service that younger people are not as interested in.
Interestingly, even as MySpace popularity wanes overall, young people are still almost double as likely to maintain a profile there as are older adults, who have moved on to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The report’s summary has a ton of other interesting statistics about social network and wireless usage, which as Mashable points out, seems to indicate that teens just don’t seem to be very interested in content creation, compared to adults. This seems somewhat counterintuitive, but you can’t argue with the numbers.
Social Media and Young Adults report shows teen blogging on the decline originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0
Facebook has made some minor alterations the layout of its home page, aimed at simplifying your social networking experience. As with the last 5 design changes Facebook has made, this one has riled up users and inspired “bring back the old Facebook” groups. What’s to get excited about, though? The changes seem mostly positive to me.
“News Feed” and “Live Feed” have been changed to the more descriptive “Top News” and “Most Recent,” notifications have been clustered in a compact space in the top left corner (next to the Facebook logo), and the horizontal navigation at the top of the screen is now in a sidebar on the left of the screen.
Facebook has posted an easy-to-grasp tour of the new layout, in case you’re having trouble finding certain features that have been relocated. The only one I find needlessly confusing is the logout button, which is now hiding under the “account” menu in the top right corner. What’s the matter, Facebook? Don’t want your users to log out?
Facebook simplifies home page layout, inevitable complaining begins originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging
If a tweet gets posted in a forest, and there’s no one around to read it, does it make a sound? When it comes to finding a big audience, Twitter’s so far ahead of other Twitter-like services that it seems almost impossible to catch up, even if you’re offering features that Twitter doesn’t. A new site called Whispurr is willing to try, though, with a focus on groups.
Instead of making you send each post to all of your followers, like Twitter does, Whispurr lets you sort your readers into an unlimited number of groups, and send each post exclusively to the groups you pick. Twitter sort of halfheartedly does this with Lists, but Lists are basically read-only at this point. If Twitter is a soapbox and a megaphone, Whispurr is a table at a café. Quieter, more refined …
… lonelier? You can set up all the groups in the world, but there won’t be very many people to put in them until Whispurr reaches critical mass. Twitter is finally pretty mainstream, but now Twitter fatigue is setting in, which means Whispurr’s got a tough sales job to do.
Whispurr: like Twitter with groups, and without so many people originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Social Software, Analysis, Mobile
A new mobile metrics company called GroundTruth has just posted a statistic on their blog showing that well over half (61%) of mobile online page views are to social networking sites. While anecdotally I’ve noticed that most of the people I see pecking away at their phone’s keyboard are doing so on Facebook or Twitter, GroundTruth is including a number of lesser-known social networking sites in this number.
The point of GroundTruth’s post seems to be that mobile users have distinctly different browsing habits than regular web users, but isn’t that fairly obvious? In a mobile context people are just snacking on info, or posting a quick update. You typically don’t do a lot of research on your mobile device.
Surely this information is interesting to advertisers, who need to find new and better ways to reach their target audiences. Mobile eyeballs are still eyeballs, so maybe this is a good sign for the longevity and financial viability of social networking sites.
[via Business Insider]
What are mobile web users doing? Social networking originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Security, Web services, Social Software, Web
In a new post on Twitter’s Status blog, Twitter points out that a sudden surge in followers on a few select accounts was due to a large number of insecure passwords being used by regular Twitter users. What’s happening is that users are re-using passwords that they’ve used on other sites, and some of those other sites turn out to have not been secure.
That’s the thing; as soon as any of the sites you log in to gets compromised, the email address or username and password associated with it can be tried by the bad guy on various other services. Since most people re-use passwords, there’s a high likelihood that they will gain access to your account. From there, who knows what kind of damage they might cause. If you’re lucky, you’ll notice something’s amiss.
This should be a wake-up call for all users who use the exact same password, or a predictable variant at each site they log in to. If you haven’t already, right now is as good a time as will ever be to make sure you’re using unique passwords for all of your online services. You never know when one of them might get compromised.
Twitter warns against using the same password on multiple sites originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Internet, Social Software
Yup, through the wonders of copyright law, the doppelgänger meme currently sweeping across Facebook is actually illegal and breaks the Facebook terms of service.
If you don’t use Facebook (??), or you haven’t logged in during the past week, the ‘doppelganger’ thing is all about replacing your profile photo with your celebrity look-alike. Harmless, you might think, but the Facebook TOS strictly forbids the uploading of copyrighted images and artwork that you don’t have permission to use.
Speaking to CNET, a spokeswoman from Facebook said: “Users are responsible for the content they post, but as always, Facebook will respond to requests for removal that it receives from copyright holders. In this case, we have received no such requests.” Curious — publishers and media outlets are usually all too zealous to stamp down on copyright infringement.
The copyright lords gave, and the copyright lords hath taken away…
Facebook ‘doppelganger’ craze is illegal originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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