How in the world are you supposed to remember what song that really is? And how are you supposed to figure out when you’ve got duplicate songs taking up space on your computer?

The answer to both those questions is one word (well, really two, but one in a Web 2.0 kind of way) ““ TidySongs.

TidySongs is a brand-new Adobe AIR app, for Windows and Mac OS X, that hooks into your iTunes and goes bananas all over your music library, helping you to finally organize your iTunes collection.

Before I go any further, a disclaimer: TidySongs isn’t free. It’s got a fully-functioning free trial, that’s perfect for a one-time cleanup of your songs. The Genre Renaming feature remains free, but to continue to use the rest costs $30. It’s a bit hefty, but I found the benefit of one use well worth the time to install. If you download like crazy, you might want to consider purchasing the app.

Once you’ve installed the app (it’s small, and requires Adobe AIR ““ which it will automatically install if you don’t have it already), open up iTunes and TidySongs. You’ll immediately get three options: Fix Your Songs, Find Duplicates, and Organize Genres.

Let’s start with the big kahuna first: Fix Your Songs. Select a playlist (If you pick ‘Music‘, TidySongs scans your whole library), and check a couple of options before you start. I recommend, at least for the first pass, making sure “Fix Songs Manually“ is selected ““ that means you review every change TidySongs makes before it makes them.

A nice medium, though, and one that worked for me, was to select “Automatically fix songs if confidence is greater than 80%.“ Every time TidySongs fixes a song, it gives a confidence level of how sure it is that it’s making the right change ““ my experience was that, when it’s over 80%, it’s actually right about 99% of the time. Once your options are set, click “Fix Songs“ and let TidySongs go to work!

TidySongs brings up the list of all the songs it wants to update for you, with all the info (it finds album art, track #, genre, and so much more) in the window. You either choose “Skip“ or “Fix,” and TidySongs takes its action, and moves you to the next one. Once it’s finished, you’ll find you’ve got tons of new album artwork, better organization and ordering of albums, and a much more information-packed iTunes. This is a good first step in organizing your entire iTunes collection.

Your next option is “Find Duplicates.” TidySongs checks the Name, Artist, and/or Album of the track to see if you’ve already got it ““ if so, it keeps either the longer one or the better quality one, and can either delete the duplicate or just mark it as a duplicate.

You can’t actually delete anything from TidySongs without paying, but that wasn’t a problem: the "Simulate" option worked fine, and manually deleting duplicates was super easy. In one pass of my library, TidySongs found no fewer than 225 duplicates (out of 8,000 songs, not so bad, but still). Of those, I ended up deleting about 200. That’s a great percentage, but I’d still recommend checking TidySongs’ findings. Once you run this, though, you might be surprised how much space it frees on your computer.

Organizing Genres is a more simple affair ““ it presents you with a list of all the genres you have in your iTunes library. Select one or more, and choose what you want to rename it to. This lets you consolidate your genres into a smaller number, based on a system you’ve devised, rather than the insanity that makes Pop Rock, Rock/Pop, and rock_pop three different genres.

As a serial music downloader, having TidySongs around to run once a week or so is a lifesaver ““ no manually hunting for album artwork, or renaming songs ““ TidySongs does it for you. Even incorrectly named songs get found, for the most part, and are updated properly. It’s an impressive app, and has kept the audio-OCDer in me happy.

iTunes users should also grab a free copy of our The Ultimate iTunes Manual. Lots of great tips there.

How do you keep your music organized?

Photo Credit : Mikey

Now, there are plenty of ways to do a song search by lyrics. Brad has already shared with you the Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online

For the most part, Google does wonders in trying to find songs online. If you type in the lyrics you know, in quotation marks, followed by the word lyrics (something like “mmbop bop bop doowop” lyrics), you’ll usually get what you’re looking for. But, you’ll also get pages loaded with popups, tons of advertisements, and lots and lots of incorrect lyrics.

If you’re looking for an easier, better song  search engine, check out LyricRat. LyricRat is a new application attempting to make sure you always find that song you heard and liked.

Let’s start with the coolest feature: LyricRat is on Twitter. You can send any lyrics snippet to @lyricrat, and you’ll get a reply back with the name of the song, as well as a link to more information about it. This, in itself, makes LyricRat a better way to do a song search by lyrics than a Google search ““ when you hear a song you want to know, just send the lyrics in a text message, and the answer will be waiting in your Twitter feed when you get back.

If you’re not a Twitter user, there’s still plenty to like about LyricRat. When it finds the song you’re looking for, you’re taken to a page about the song. There’s a link to preview the song (to make sure it’s actually the song you were looking for), a link to buy the song, and another link to more information about the song or band.

There’s even a list of possible alternatives (just in case the one you want is a cover, or you entered common lyrics, or something like that). They’re all Amazon links, but Amazon’s certainly the best source of information and products for most bands, so it’s a sensible integration.

If you’re not even right about the lyrics, LyricRat can often still figure it out. No idea what Sting’s saying in any song by the Police? Just guess what it sounds like ““ you’re probably wrong, but if you’re hearing the same wrong lyrics as most other people, you’ll be given the right one. I tried a bunch of commonly misheard lyrics, and LyricRat got the song right more than half of the time.

As I said before, Google usually handles these things quite well. If do a song search by lyrics a lot though, as I do, you’ll appreciate a simple, attractive site that’s not totally cluttered with ridiculous popups, malware, and “buy this ringtone!” ads. LyricRat, especially since it plays so nicely with Twitter, is a great way to quickly and easily find that song that will soon be forever stuck in your head.

How do you hunt for your favorite song?

Image Credit: Kevin Lawver

But how do you get a talk show? And how do you use it to make millions of dollars? Well, I can’t help with the second part (let me know if you figure it out), but I can help with the first. It’s called BlogTalkRadio, and is a fantastic Web app for becoming the host of your very own Internet talk show.

BlogTalkRadio is really two things: it’s a place to find talk and radio shows (sort of like a podcast library, really), as well as a way to create your own show. There’s tons of great stuff on BTR, but for now, we’ll just stick with creating your own show.

First things first: create an account with BTR (don’t worry, it’s both free and easy). The link’s a little hard to find at first, so I’ll help ““ it’s the “Register” link, at the top right of the home page screen.

Once you’ve created an account, you’ll see your Account central; it’s probably pretty empty at the moment. No worries, we’ll fix that. Click the “My Account” tab, and then select “Become a host now!” on the left side. Then, create your Host account ““ give it information like your Twitter account, Facebook account, show category, and all that jazz.

You get to personalize your show like crazy (though it’ll still be hosted by BlogTalkRadio) ““ add a logo, a link to a website, lots of links, and an audio clip to play at the beginnig; you can also change the link to the show (http://www.blogtalkradio/somethingorother) which lends to much more branding and personalization.

Show created, go back to the “My Account” page, and select “Add New Episode.” Add information about your soon-to-be-hit show’s first episode, as well as a time and date for the show. There are even a few ways to make some money with the episode, like showing related Amazon books. Once you’re done setting it up, you get a link to the show to share with the world.

When you’re ready to begin the show, the real beauty of BlogTalkRadio shines through. To get the show started literally couldn’t be any simpler. Every show has a phone number. You give out that number to one person, or a million, or make it public ““ totally up to you. During the show, people call the number to get connected to the show. You, as the host, can, with the press of a button, allow them to talk. Otherwise, they just sit in the queue, listening to the show and waiting for their turn. When you allow someone to talk, they’re connected with you as if you’re in a studio together – until you mute them again. Then they go away.

People can listen to the show either by calling in, subscribing by email or RSS, or just hunting you down and listening on your BTR page. After the show is completed, it gets archived on your page, where people can still listen to it or download the show.

BlogTalkRadio probably isn’t going to be your one-way ticket to super-stardom. But it’s a great place to create a show, talk about what your interested in, and get some real experience being a talk show host. And hey, who knows? Maybe you’ll be the first “straight from BTR to Late Night” story.

Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!

Are you already an Internet radio star? Have you tried anything like this before?

Photo: John Edwards 2008

Email can be a huge time-drain, particularly for those of us who get a lot of it ““ it can be overwhelming, difficult to deal with, and a huge pain in the you-know-what. Or, with the help of a few tips, tricks, and applications, it can be a productivity powerhouse.

Gmail seems to be the cool kid on the block, and it’s one of the best free email services that’s taking over a huge portion of the email market. So, in an effort to help this rapidly-growing crowd, here are seven tips, tricks, and tools for making Gmail into a productive, getting things done machine:

1. Use Quick Links

Quick Links, a little white box that lives in the sidebar of Gmail, can be hugely useful once you figure out how to use it. All it does is store links ““ these links can be to just about anything.

If you’re always referencing a particular page when you write emails, or always copy and paste a particular Web address, don’t put it in your bookmarks, put it in Gmail’s Quick Links; that way, it’s available to you anywhere Gmail is ““ which is pretty much everywhere.

The sky’s the limit with these links ““ I have a particular email I send often (resume attached, cover letter in body) set up in my links, and can open it, edit it, and send it with only a few seconds.

2. Use Tasks

Tasks just became a fully-fledged feature of Gmail, and with good reason – it’s a super-lightweight, simple way to manage the things you need to do, and it lives right within Gmail itself.

With Tasks, you can add an email right to the list, and get it out of your inbox. You can create subtasks, due dates, multiple lists, and more, all from within the Gmail window.

3. Use Your Own Task-Manager

Maybe you’ve already got a system you use for tasks, like Remember the Milk, or Todoist. Because so many people consider it to be the best free email service, more and more of these applications have ways of integrating with Gmail, whether by an extension for Firefox or a gadget within the Gmail sidebar (here are RTM’s and Todoist’s). A quick search with Google, or through your task manager’s site should find exactly what you’re looking for.

4. Make Gmail Better

There are three or four reasons I can’t stop using Firefox, and they’re all extensions. Number one on the list, by a country mile, is Better Gmail. This extension adds tons of useful things to Gmail that really ought to be there anyway ““ showing the number of unread emails first in the title (or even in the icon), automatically showing message details, creating hierarchy among your labels (they’re more like folders this way), and much, much more. It makes Gmail much more smooth and functional, not to mention more productive.

5. Close Gmail More Often

It’s easy to get sucked into the trap of keeping your Gmail window open all the time, constantly checking and checking to see if you have a new email. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, and I know how much of a waste of time that can really be.

Instead of playing that futile game, try downloading a notifier that tells you when you’ve got new emails, so you’re only checking Gmail when you actually need to. There’s one for Firefox called Gmail Notifier, one for the Mac Desktop called Gmail Notifier, and one for Windows called Gmail Notifier. They’re not clever namers, these developers, but they do good work.

6. Send it all to Gmail

One of my biggest pet peeves is when I click on an “email me” link, and then my computer tries to open Outlook Express, or Outlook, or Entourage to send the email ““ none of which I’ve ever used, so I have to exit out of three different setup windows just to get to where I wanted originally, which is Gmail.

Thankfully, there’s a solution in Firefox. Go to “Preferences,” and then click the “Applications” Tab. There, find “mailto” under “Content Type.” Using the dropdown, select “Use Gmail.” From then on, anytime you click on a linked email address, or something that says “Send me an email!” it’ll open directly within Gmail. (This works with Yahoo Mail too.)

7. Use Talk Productively

Everyone says IM clients are a waste of time and energy, and are just a huge distraction. I say nay! Google Talk, if used right, can actually be really helpful. First, try adding IMified as a friend ““ you’ll be able to add tasks, calendar events, send updates on Twitter, and more.

Or, try Ping.fm, which is a social networking powerhouse ““ you can update almost any network you can think of right from within Talk, once you’ve set up your account with Ping.fm. If you’ve got questions, you can ask and answer questions with real people over IM, thanks to Aardvark.

How do you turn Gmail from a time-sink into a lean, mean productive machine? Would you call it best free email service out there? Share your thoughts in comments.

Image Credit: KatieKrueger

Apparently, it’s not an easy thing to do, though ““ something about practice, and talent, and not making any money. I forget. Either way, most of us are probably doomed to forever listening, watching and reading brilliant comedy than creating it ourselves.

If you’re looking for some hilarious jokes and great stand up comedy, check out The Laugh Button. It’s a site, kind of like the Hype Machine or We Are Hunted, except for genius stand up comedy. It’s a huge database of stand-up performances, from hundreds of different comedians ““ from the most famous to the total unknowns.

The Laugh Button gives you three options ““ Listen, Watch, and Read. “Listen” brings you to a playlist of audio tracks that the Laugh Button recommends, varying in length, creator, and subject. “Watch” is mostly YouTube videos, in a similar format. “Read” is full of funny stories, as well as stories about and related to comedy.

Under “Listen”, you can see a Recommended Playlist from the Laugh Button, a Popular playlist full of what everyone else is listening to, and a list of My Favs (if you sign up for a free account, you can star certain tracks as favorites, and easily come back to them later).

Where all the material comes from is hard to figure out ““ the team behind the site isn’t exactly forthcoming with how they do it. It appears that there’s no algorithm or crawler, but that they actually go out and manually find the best stand-up comedy out there. That means that there’s less of a database (though it’s awfully big), but it means that what you find is almost always pretty darn funny.

To keep updated on the latest and greatest from The Laugh Button, check out their Twitter and Facebook pages. Those two are the places where the Laugh Button team posts new material, information about shows, and all sorts of other things about comedy and comedians. There’s new stuff coming from the Laugh Button all the time, and most of it gets posted in the statusphere; I love getting updates through Twitter.

The site itself doesn’t do a great job of helping you find a particular artist ““ it’s more focused on keeping you constantly finding new people to listen to. You can, however, search through the list of artists by clicking on any single artist. Once you get to the artist page, you’ll see a dropdown menu of all the comedians on the site ““ pick one, and you’ll be listening to them in no time! You’ll only see one track at a time on the artist’s page, but every time you refresh the page you’ll get a new one.

Since the search in The Laugh Button is awful (and by that I mean currently non-existent), you’ll have to rely on Google to find exactly who you’re looking for. In Google, enter this (without quotes): “site:thelaughbutton.com search term“. That’ll return a Laugh Button widgets page, with your comedian’s material on it.

There’s still a lot to come from the Laugh Machine ““ like search, for instance, as well as more community tools. But even now, it’s a great resource for some hilarious stand-up comedy. In particular, the “recommended” playlist under “Listen” is a great way to find new comedians, and new great listening material for when you need a laugh. And come on ““ we all need a laugh every once in a while.

Where do you go when you need a laugh online? A while ago Aibek recommended Youtube as the ultimate place to watch stand-up comedy online. What are your favorite sites to watch stand-ups?

Image Credit: henke

Increasingly, you’ll turn to Twitter. Twitter is rapidly becoming a place for people to share and discuss music, and is a great way to find new and interesting things to listen to. Lots of artists are active on Twitter, as are countless fans. But Twitter presents a new problem: how do you weed through that to find the good stuff?

Well, for a long time, according to The Hype Machine, a tracker of popular music around the Web, there was no good answer. There were answers, sure, but none did what they were supposed to do.

So The Hype Machine created the Twitter Music Chart, a brand-new way of tracking what is the most popular type of music in the Twitterverse. It’s the Billboard Hot 100 meets what you actually care about – a winning combination, in my book.

The Twitter Music Chart is created based on a very particular formula, simply described on the website: “Each tweet gets points based on the user’s influence, then we add them up to find what’s hot in the past 3 days.”

This is a novel, and smart, way of creating the charts. It’s not just measuring what people are talking about (though it’s certainly doing that) – it’s figuring out how many people are likely to be listening to a song that got tweeted. If Ashton Kutcher tweets a song, odds are some of his 2.5 million followers are going to listen to it – thus, it gets more points from The Hype Machine than if I tweeted it.

When you go to the Twitter Music Chart, you’ll see the most popular songs on Twitter over the last three days. You can see the title and artist of the song, who originally tweeted it, who else has tweeted it, the number of points it got (the number used by The Hype Machine to figure out where the song belongs), and even gives you a chance to listen to the song.

If you click on a song, it’ll take you to a page that lets you share the song on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, as well as see more of who’s talking about it and how to buy it. If you vote for the track on Twitter, it’ll immediately get added to the votes on the Twitter Music Chart.

The biggest problem is that the list is only pulled from, and The Hype Machine only cares about, links from Twitter to The Hype Machine. Because of that, the list tends to be very niche-heavy, but I’ll say I still loved a lot of the music that came up. Tons of remixes and mashups, as well as some old classics – the music really runs the gamut.

If you’ve got an account with The Hype Machine, you can log in to favorite a particular song to your account, for easy access later. Otherwise, pretty much everything on the page is available to you. Across the bottom of the screen lives the player, where you can play, pause, or even buy a track from a variety of sources.

If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow the Hype Machine Twitter Account for tweets of the latest popular songs – delivering the popular stuff right into your Twitter stream.

One other thing I enjoyed about the Twitter Music Chart was the link, on the right side of the page, to check how many points The Hype Machine would give you for a tweeted song. It’s another measure of your Twitter influence, but is fun to cross-check with all the other people promoting songs.

It’s not a perfect chart, and nothing will be until it deals with all the music around Twitter, but it’s a great step in the right direction, and a cool way to find new music online.

What other online music charts are out there?

Instapaper has, over the last several months, become my only source of bookmarks – I’ve ditched Diigo, which I loved; I’ve ditched Evernote, which I still use for everything else. Everything I find on the Web that I want for later now goes into Instapaper, which was made possible by some fantastic updates to the site, and more importantly, to the companion iPhone application.

Instapaper is a winner right from the sign-up. It can take all of two seconds to sign up – you don’t need to specify a password, or verify anything. Just pick a username, a password (only if you want one), and you’re set!

Then, drag a bookmarklet called “Read Later” from the Instapaper site to your bookmarks bar in any (did you hear me say any?) Web browser. From then on, any time you click the “Read Later” bookmarklet, the page you’re currently on gets saved by Instapaper. A little window pops up to tell you “Saved!” and then goes away – it’s simple, unobtrusive, and darned fast.

Once you’ve saved a few pages (or a few hundred, like me), go to the Instapaper website. From there, you can launch any of the pages you saved, read them in a text-only version, or send them to the Archive (better than deleting them, because they’re still available if you want them later – and with no storage limit, who cares?).

You can sort your pages into as many folders as you want (another new feature that makes having tons of bookmarks a whole lot easier), and then read through them one by one. For instance, I have three folders: one called “Multimedia,” for things like videos to watch and songs to download, one called “Mobile Reading” for text-only pages I can read anywhere, and “for Computer” for things like apps to try and sites to check out. Your folders can be anything you want, and sorting your pages into them is easy – just click the folder icon next to any given bookmark.

Instapaper allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds of websites, if you want to pull them directly into your reading list – it skips a step for you, if you tend to read everything a particular site has to say. You can also subscribe to the reading list of another Instapaper user, and anything they star (the universal symbol for “I like this,” which pulls it into a new menu within Instapaper) will be automatically synced to your account.

If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch owner, you can read directly from your iDevice. By downloading the free Instapaper app for iPhone (there’s also a $10 version that does cool things like remember your position in every page, preserve your folders, and let you tilt to scroll), you can sync your pages, and read them either online or off. Pages are downloaded text-only by default, but whole pages can be downloaded and read.

In short, Instapaper makes saving, syncing, and reading your bookmarks easier than any app I’ve ever seen. Having the ability to read on the go is crucial for me, and I couldn’t live without the iPhone app. Even without it, though, Instapaper’s features new and old make it the perfect, low-maintenance, way to make all your bookmarks online.

What do you use for all your bookmarks?

Photo: takomabibelot

The Twitter website is rapidly improving, but there are other applications, both Web-based and desktop-based, that come with more features, more usability, and more fun.

TweetDeck is definitely the most popular of these apps, and it’s the one that I’ve bee using for a long time. But not anymore – I’ve officially, once and for all, switched over to Seesmic Desktop. It’s a new product from Seesmic (a company that used to be known for its social video network) that is taking the Twitter world by storm.

Seesmic Desktop is a small application that runs on Adobe AIR, the ever-popular runtime environment for apps that could, and often are, Web apps converted to run more conveniently and powerfully on your desktop. It can manage multiple Twitter accounts, plus your Facebook account, all seamlessly within the same window.

Seesmic Desktop, at first glance, looks a lot like TweetDeck (or any of a number of other apps) – it’s got a bunch of columns with all your tweets in them. On the left side of the window is your navigation – one click opens up your Direct Messages, or your Replies, or even the tweets you’ve sent recently. Having these separated makes it easier to find everything directed at you, instead of weeding through the masses of tweets.

Nothing unique so far, but now it gets interesting. Seesmic Desktop lets you create “Userlists,” groups into which you can put various people on Twitter. For instance, I’ve got a “Personal Contacts” list that’s all the people I know personally, and their tweets all get filtered into their own column.

That way, instead of having to go through my whole timeline to find the people I’m interested in, I can sort them into their own space. The number of groups you can have is limited only by your imagination (and attention span). Setting up these lists takes a little time, as you have to do it manually, but they all get saved, and can be accessed or edited at any time.

There’s also a section for saving searches, if you want to track a particular phrase or topic. Every time someone tweets and matches your search, it shows up whether you’re following them or not. Searches can be overwhelming, but they’re a great way to track what’s happening on Twitter.

Seesmic Desktop, feature-wise, is a lot like TweetDeck. TweetDeck without the crashes, the massive resource hog, and with better multi-account management and tons of customization, gets pretty close to Seesmic.

But recently, Seesmic Desktop stopped being just Seesmic Desktop, with a Web-based version released. Now, you can get all the great columns and interface points of Seesmic, but on the Web, wherever you have an Internet connection. Even if you don’t have the desktop version, simply logging in to Seesmic through your Twitter account lets you immediately take advantage of the better application.

There’s also an iPhone app coming soon from Seesmic, which will do even more to make your Twitter information and contacts ubiquitously available, all through one application. There’s also the promise of a way to take pictures and videos straight from your webcam, and immediately upload them to the Twitter-sharing service of your choice.

Seesmic Desktop is already the best Twitter app I’ve ever used, and it seems to get better and better every week. If you’re following a lot of people, being followed a lot, and want to make the most of life as a Twitter power-user, make the switch to Seesmic. You’ll be glad you did.

What’s your Twitter app of choice?

We used to say that about the rest of the Internet, but social networking has lead many of us to talk as if the rest of the blogosphere and Web has become some antiquated dinosaur of information sharing.

The truth, however, is that the rest of the Web is still ridiculously fast as a source for information ““ if you know where to look. All those tweets and Facebook updates? They tend to come from stories or notices on the rest of the Web. But for breaking news in more than a couple of sentences, the Web is the dominant presence by far.

That’s what OneRiot, a real-time search for the whole Web, is taking advantage of. Instead of tracking what people are saying, as Twitter search engines like Scoopler do, it tracks what they’re talking about.

The OneRiot team describes what they’re trying to do quite well

When you search for a popular subject using other realtime search engines, your search results will show you a stream of chatter happening around that subject. Essentially, those search results are saying, “Your query is a hot term! Lots of people are talking about it!” However, what can be hard to find there is the actual source of the chatter – the news stories, blog posts or Web pages that started it all. If you were to search for that same popular subject using OneRiot, you’d find the actual content people are talking about – search results that say, “Check out this page, or blog, or video! Lots of people are talking about it!

OneRiot isn’t a traditional search engine, nor does it pretend to be. It’s not a place to find static information, or look up something interesting; it’s a place to find out who won the big game, or who got voted off of American Idol (not that I love that show or anything”¦). Information is sorted by timeliness as much as relevance, meaning newer material, even if it’s not the most complete source of information on a given topic, rises to the top.

You use OneRiot like you would any other search engine: go to the site and enter a search term. You can search either Web or Video (which is smart, because videos tend to be more viral than any other medium), and pick almost any topic. Underneath the search bar, there’s a list of “Trending Topics,” which tracks some of the most popular stories at the moment.

Once you’ve searched, you’ll see a list of results, formatted to help you figure out what to see. The results page gives you a headline, a snippet of the page, as well as a few useful “real-time” tips: who shared it first, when it was most recently shared, and how many people have shared it. OneRiot gets these numbers from Twitter and Digg, as well as a number of popular OneRiot apps, like the Shareaholic plugin for Firefox. You can see, at a glance, how many people are talking about a story, and even expand the window to see what they’re saying.

You can see the results truly in real-time, or choose to see the “Pulse,” which lends more importance to popular stories, by clicking at the right side of the top of the results. Either see things as they’re coming in, or see what’s hot (and still pretty brand-new). On the right side of the page is the “Most Shared Today” list, sort of like the Digg frontpage. It’s got five hot stories, and is itself a great way to figure out what’s going on.

As events unfold and stories develop, it can often be hard to track what people are talking about, and what is being said about important issues. OneRiot sifts through it for you, and lets you tap into the whole popular Web to see what’s really breaking news.

How do you find what’s popular and breaking on the Web?

Photo: Ben Sutherland

It’s called Aardvark, and is a brand-new application that just came out of the SXSW conference this year.

The site was in private beta for a while, then was invite-only. Recently, it’s become publicly available and is now open for questions. It’s available to anyone who logs in through Facebook Connect (If you have a Facebook account already, you’re all set. If not, Facebook accounts are free to everyone!). The Facebook implications of Aardvark are pretty impressive, but even logging in with Facebook is a great tool. If you haven’t had the privilege of owning a Facebook account, read on — we have exclusive invites and we’re giving them out to MakeUseOf readers!

Signing up for Aardvark is simple, as is getting it running ““ just add some information about where you are, the IM client and username of your choice (as long as it’s Google Talk, AIM, or Live Messenger ““ for now), and the types of questions you’d like to answer for other people. You can also use the service by email, but I’m going to focus on IM because it’s so much cooler.

Once you’re set up, Aardvark lives in your IM window, and anytime you want to ask a question, just IM Aardvark with your question. Aardvark parses the question to figure out what it’s about ““ which it does a remarkably good job with ““ and then sends it to someone who it thinks is able to answer your question. You’ll get an answer back quickly, and be able to have a brief chat with the person who answered your question.

From the other side (the answerer), Aardvark is even more ingenious. When you sign up, you choose how often you want Aardvark to ask you questions; I chose “a couple of times a day.” When that time comes up, Aardvark sends you an IM saying “So-and-so has a question about ‘Some Topic You Can Answer.’”

You can respond one of a few ways – “Sure” to see and answer the question, “face” to pass it on to a Facebook friend who might be able to answer, or “pass” to just make the question go away. If you pass, you can then mute a given topic to not get any more questions based on that topic.

The cool thing about Aardvark is that the questions are limitless. For instance, I’m listed as able to answer questions about New York City, where I live. I periodically get a question like, “Where should I go for dinner near Union Square?”, and I’m able to offer a recommendation. The questions I get rarely require factual answers, and that’s one of the fun things about Aardvark ““ it’s a great way to find out what other people are into that I might like as well.

One of Aardvark’s sample questions is, “Where’s the best place to buy running shoes in San Francisco?” It’s this kind of question, one that Google wouldn’t know but an actual local person might, that gives Aardvark awesome potential. Instead of services like ChaCha, which essentially just replaces a Google search when you can’t do one yourself, Aardvark goes beyond the capabilities, and sets you up with an expert in their field ““ even if that field is running shoes in San Francisco.

As you use Aardvark more, you get a sense of people who are able to answer certain questions for you ““ maybe you have a friend in Utah who you trust to answer such questions. You create these connections, and Aardvark uses them to narrow down your respondents even more, to try and get you the best possible answer. From the get-go though, Aardvark’s always done a good job of finding me the right person to answer my question.

Once you set it up, it’s incredibly simple to use. It’s unobtrusive, and lives right in your IM window; nothing to install or download, or remember to run. There was a lot of buzz around Aardvark as SXSW got underway, and a few minutes using the app makes it easy to see why.

As a MakeUseOf reader, you can now sign up to Aardark without using your Facebook account. Just hit this link and sign up! It’s now open for questions, but there are only 300 invites so grab one quickly!

Is there anything else like this out there? Can Twitter do this better? What do you think?