Applications

Since the dawn of our species we’ve looked at the stars to determine our future. Now it seems that everyone is more interested in clouds; not least of all our friends at Google. A lot of record label bigwigs and iTunes stalwarts are sure to be wringing their hands and exhaling comically oversized sighs over the debut of Google Music but the question is whether or not they actually have anything to worry about. Music lovers and industry observers alike have been waiting a long, long time for the release of Music and now, with the launch of a beta iteration, we’re able to make better predictions about the future trajectory of the much anticipated service than ever before.

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One of the best aspects of social music is that it’s able to help listeners find new artists that they may never have discovered otherwise. And while most of the best apps and software choices have incorporated recommendation features, many of them haven’t been able to do so in a truly useful way (except for, in a more abstract sense, my beloved 8tracks).

Enter Rexly, an app specially designed with music tastemaking as its focus.

Rexly uses recommendation algorithms similar to those found in Facebook and iTunes to make discovering new tunes easy. Normal digital listening patterns culled from iTunes actions (like when I play MOP’s Ante Up seventeen times in a row each morning) are gathered and used as a suggestion barometre that can then be passed on to others that are “following” your musical activities.

Where Rexly differs from its competitiors is in its designer’s understanding that too much content can diminish a service’s usefulness, drowning out good suggestions by offering up too many all at once. Rexly combats this by making its users choose only six people who are able to provide recommendations.

By receiving new suggestions from only those the user trusts most, Rexly hopes to refine the process and offer up content advice in a more palatable form. There’s no chance of hurt feelings either since the app makes this list invisible, a feature that is part of Rexly’s overall decision to emphasis user privacy with their service.

Check out (or sign up for) Rexly through by using the technological miracle of this hyperlink.

Pioneer has introduced AppRadio, an in-car entertainment system capable of integrating and displaying iPhone apps on its screen. AppRadio is basically a 6.1-inch multi-touch display with WVGA (800×480) resolution designed to be mounted and completely integrated to your car. It can be viewed as a secondary peripheral display for the iPhone 4 apps. Before the apps could run on the AppRadio they need to be adjusted to be rendered on the secondary screen. This is normally a simple task that many developers could probably finish in a couple of days.

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In a recent article on the status of the could music battle between Amazon, Google and Apple, I tendered my opinion that victory wouldn’t be based on chronological order, but on a litany of factors. I also touched on the fact that Apple has a storied history of entering the market later than competitors with a superior product and almost immediately leaving said competitors to fight for a very distant second place. Well I’m not one who revels in saying ‘I told you so’ (that’s an absolute lie, I love it) but a recently unearthed patent application strongly suggests that Apple’s cloud-based music service could be a game changer.

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TuneWiki understands that to survive in the highly competitive world of social media it’s essential to evolve. That’s why the free music app — already doing quite well for itself on Android-based devices — is looking to expand even further through its new update.

The initial gimmick behind TuneWiki was its ability to supply kareoke-style lyrics as a song plays, something that worked to enrich the usual listening experience. BlackBerry users heavily supported the app, turning it into one of the most prominent music downloads available on App World and providing plenty of incentive for the recent interface revamp and multi-platform service expansion.

TuneWiki isn’t dropping any of the features that made it such a hit; rather it’s looking to add additional perks that bolsters the existing experience. Alongside the announcement of a desktop TuneWiki Beta, listeners can now use the mobile app to access three sections (My Music, Discover and Connected) that provide new ways to interact with others through the app.

The new Discover section is, perhaps, the most exciting aspect of the overhaul. It offers users the ability to perform creepy/cool tasks like accessing the Song Map (a geographic view with pinpoints highlighting what global TuneWiki users are listening to), friending others and managing a list of Muses (users with similar tastes that can automatically recommend their favorite songs and artists). Connected adds streaming radio support (complete with lyrics) while My Music is simply the new name for the traditional, pre-update listening experience.

Want to learn more about TuneWiki or download the free app? Check out its official page or give it a download here (its also available through iTunes and BlackBerry App World).

Third party applications are getting more and more creative, helping us use our social media tools in more effective and widespread ways. Twitter lends itself really well to third party apps, since the micro-blogging site is so versatile and relevant to so many other functions on the internet. Just last week, Twitter made its third party security controls stronger, so we can feel better than ever about making use of these third party apps — and here are the 5 best ways to do so. Read more

The 1939-1940 World’s Fair is the topic of the first issue of a digital collection that is being offered free on the iPad from the New York Public Library.  Biblion: The Boundless Library, an app that will feature access to stacks upon stacks of stories and collections kept within the iconic doors of the famed 5^th Avenue locale, was launched this week as part of the library’s centennial celebration. Read more

I don’t care if you’re a war buff or what sport you’re into, you’re going to be hard pressed to find a more back and forth battle than that for supremacy of the cloud music market right now. Increasing definitive headlines all proved to be premature: “Amazon wins cloud war”, “Google and Apple will acquire licensing before releasing music lockers” and “Apple to beat Google on cloud music.” Now that the dust is somewhat beginning to settle, the only thing that can be said with complete surety is that the enormous number of variables involved promises a very interesting future for the business of cloud computing.

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Have you ever stood dumbfounded in the liquor store or grocery store wine aisle, trying to decide which wine to take home for dinner? A new app for wine lovers aims to simplify the question of choosing the perfect wine, letting you instantly scan up to 150,000 wine labels and returns wine tasting notes, reviews, scored, prices, food pairings and more.

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Highly ambitious lyrics database, musiXmatch, has just received a major windfall in the form of $3.7 million in series A funding — an amount that will no doubt help the company in reaching its goal of creating an “IMDB for music metadata”.

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