The latest from TechCrunch
- Frenzapp Takes On SoundTracking With A Social Music Discovery App For iOS
- Google Quietly Rolls Out WDYL.com: A Range Of Google Product Results On One Page
- Anonymous Declares War On The City Of Orlando
- The HP TouchPad Will Come With Its Own Facebook Tablet App (Leaked Pics)
| Frenzapp Takes On SoundTracking With A Social Music Discovery App For iOS | Top |
| Last winter, Singapore-based Bitsmedia launched a new app into the marketplace called Frenzapp that enables users to share their favorite iPhone apps with friends, joining a cluster of services taking on Apple’s Genius in the attempt to make app recommendations even better. Frenzapp approached this by cutting out manual search for apps, automatic discovery of apps you already are using, and by becoming friend-powered — integrating with Facebook, Twitter, Apple Game Center and offering native address book integration. It also offered a bunch of different ways to discover new apps, lists that aggregate what’s trending, most popular, recently added, on sale, and so on. Yet, with a competition from other app-recommendation startups, like Chomp, Appsfire, Discovr, Zwapp, Explor, and more, Bitsmedia made a smart strategic decision and decided to diversify by bringing Frenzapp to music with a new app called, you guessed it, Frenzapp Music. After all, as a Genius extension, expanding its discovery model into the music space is part of a seemingly natural progression. For starters, Frenzapp Music , which recently went live on iTunes, attacks the social aspect of music discovery by enabling its users to share their favorite music on Facebook and Twitter. Users can post status updates to social networks or scroll through a realtime feed of the music their friends are liking, listening to, and listing as “favorites”. Frenzapp Music also offers easy iTunes integration in which you can search the store’s full catalog of some 14 million songs, view top charts, and play 30-second clips of songs you’re interested in checking out. The app complements its social functionality with location-based features as well, in which the app takes advantage of the iPhone's location to enable users to scan your immediate vicinity to see what songs people in your hood are liking and listening to. Whether a user is viewing a song based on location, or directly in iTunes, or from a friend’s music stream, they have the option to take advantage of the 30-second preview feature. Then you can blast out your song choice on Facebook and Twitter, or go buy the song in iTunes. What’s more, Frenzapp Music gives users access to their library of songs stored on any iOS device, with the ability to use playback controls, and use Frenzapp Music as the default music player. The app also supports AirPlay so that users can stream music to Apple TV or any other AirPlay compatible device. Bitsmedia and Frenzapp are the brainchild of founder and app developer Erwan Macé, who was formerly the CTO of Soundbuzz , one of the pioneers in legal digital music platforms back in 2000 that was acquired by Motorola back in 2008. Mace was also a technical consultant for Akamai , which specializes in the delivery of digital media (including operating some of the infrastructure behind iTunes), as well as the CTO of Vivendi Mobile Entertainment. Through these connections, Mace has led Bitsmedia to become one of the developers of iPhone applications for Universal Music in Europe and Australia. Yet, as Mace recently told TechCrunch, some savvy readers may recognize that Frenzapp Music sounds an awful lot like the popular iOS app, SoundTracking . While the similarities are apparent, Mace said that he hopes the ability to preview music from friend and location streams, directly from the app, access to the entire iTunes catalog, AirPlay functionality, and the ability to use it as your default music player, will give Frenzapp Music a compelling example over its competitor. (Though it would be nice to see some Foursquare integration, which is available on SoundTracking.) As a crowdsourcing app, Frenzapp’s usability and success rely on user adoption to make the experience more robust. And though the app has its work cut out for it with the traction of SoundTracking, if it can stay a nose ahead, I think it has potential to become a part of your stable of apps — and maybe even a viable third-party competitor to Ping . Though I may be getting a bit ahead of myself on that one. Frenzapp Music is definitely worth checking out, which you can do here , and please jump into the comment section to let us know what you think. CrunchBase Information Bitsmedia Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Google Quietly Rolls Out WDYL.com: A Range Of Google Product Results On One Page | Top |
| This morning, we got tipped to check out wdyl.com. The tipster noted that it was apparently a new Google site attempting to “create a unified UI to search in multiple channels”. Sure enough, visiting the URL brought up a Google page — but it was a 404 page. Turns out it needs the “ www ” in order to work. Yes, wdyl.com is not quite ready for prime-time. But it is out there, live! The new service, which Google apparently did launch this morning, is called What do you love? (hence, wdyl.com). While it seems to be more of a cute gimmick at this time, the idea is to return users a single page of relevant results across many of Google’s products for whatever query is typed into the wdyl search box. The “search” button is even a heart. Cute. The best queries are for vague, broad terms like “ love “, for example. On the results page you’ll find pictures of love, patents about love, love on Google Trends, videos about love, how to say love in different languages, books about love, etc. It can be interesting. But the results showcasing Gmail, Calendar, Chrome, and a few others again show that this is meant to be more of a promotional tool for Google products rather than anything hugely useful. A button at the bottom of each widget takes you directly to the Google product showcased. The most striking thing about the new site is that it seems pretty well designed — not always a given with Google. [thanks Antonio ] CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Anonymous Declares War On The City Of Orlando | Top |
| The hacktivist group Anonymous may be setting its sights on the city of Orlando, Florida next, if an anonymous press release which has landed in our inbox is to be believed (see bellow). The group is threatening to take down a different city-related website every day, starting with Orlando Florida Guide , which doesn’t even appear to be owned by the city of Orlando (it is registered to an organization called Utopia, administered by a man named Steven Ridenour). So any random website extolling the virtues of Orlando could be targeted. The DDOS attacks are justified in the press release as retaliation for the repeated arrests of members of a non-profit group called Food Not Bombs , which feeds homeless people in a park without a permit. The leader of the group, Keith McHenry, was also recently arrested . “This is a declaration of war,” writes Anonymous in its press release describing “Operation Orlando.” It warns the entire city that “Anonymous will now begin a massive campaign against you and your city web assets. Everyday we will launch a new DDoS attack on a different Target.” Its first target will be Orlando Florida Guide, which it threatens to take down between 10 AM and 6 PM tomorrow. No reason is given as to what the site or its owner did to incur the wrath of Anonymous, other than its local boosterism. It’s not even the City of Orlando ‘s official website. Follow @OpOrlando2011 @OpOrlando2011 Commander X We have a Target, there will be an assault and take down at 10:00 AM ET tomorrow. Media should watch for a Press Release tonight. #OpOrlando about 4 hours ago via web Reply Retweet Favorite Anonymous Press Release – Operation Orlando June 27, 2011 The City of Orlando has ignored our warnings, and our generous offer of a cease fire. On Wednesday last you not only arrested two more people for feeding but you arrested the worldwide President of Food Not Bombs Keith Mchenry. This is a declaration of war. Henceforth there will be no more cease fires, no more attempts to get you to resolve this issue with human decency. We will now treat you like the human rights abusers that you are. Anonymous will now begin a massive campaign against you and your city web assets. Everyday we will launch a new DDoS attack on a different Target. We will continue to E-Mail millions of people in 50 countries with the Boycott Orlando campiagn [sic] message. In our experience a government that acts this way is also corrupt. We therefore call on any government or police employee who has evidence of any kind of wrongdoing to consider disclosing it to http://www.LocalLeaks.tk an organization that specializes in dealing with local disclosures. We have said what we have to say. The media has many press releases and communiques from us. From now on we will DO not talk. Journalists should follow the Twitter for that days targeted take down or other un-planned assaults. Tomorrow morning at exactly 10:00 AM ET Anonymous will remove from the world wide web www.orlandofloridaguide.com and it shall remain down until 6:00 PM ET. We will also E-Mail Bomb and Black Fax the owners of this site, identified as one Utopia, Inc. We Are Anonymous – We Are Everywhere – We Are Legion – We Never Forget – We Never Forgive FREE Keith McHenry EXPECT US — Anonymous | |
| The HP TouchPad Will Come With Its Own Facebook Tablet App (Leaked Pics) | Top |
| The world has been waiting for an official Facebook tablet app, and waiting , and waiting . But that app may not appear on the iPad first (although Facebook is working on an iPad app for sure ). Instead, Facebook’s first tablet app will appear on the HP TouchPad, which comes out this Friday and runs the WebOS it bought with Palm . Unless the iPad app also launches this week, the TouchPad will become the first tablet with an official Facebook app. Given the tension between Apple and Facebook, a concurrent launch on the iPad seems unlikely. Update: Facebook has reached out to clarify that “this app was not built by Facebook but by HP.” Much like RIM built the Facebook app for the Blackberry Playbook using Facebook platform. I’ve changed the headline to make it more accurate. How do I know? I got my hands on some screenshots of the Facebook app for the TouchPad. You can see them here. But what I wonder is if this is also what the app will look like on the iPad. All I can say for sure is that these pics are from Facebook’s tablet app running on WebOS. A few features stick out. Along the left rail, which pops in and out, you’ve got your main navigation: Newsfeed, Messages, Events, Places, Friends, and Photos. The Newsfeed can be viewed in both a stream view or a more tablet-friendly tile view. The tiles make better use of typography and images. Also notice the addition of Places and Photos to the left rail navigation. Places opens up a map with nearby activity and the ability to check in. Photos displays your Facebook photos in a tiled album view. Profiles also highlight people’s photos. You can toggle between their wall, info, and photos. Judging from these images and others I’ve seen, the app really takes advantage of the extra screen real estate to good effect. Photos and Places especially shine. I really hope the iPad app looks similar. CrunchBase Information Facebook HP TouchPad Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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