Come to think of it, iTunes is just a slice of the pie. I don’t have the figures for the number of musical sites on the web but I am sure it must be crossing over to the thousands. If one closes down, a few more will pop up in its place. We are spoilt of choice and at times, it’s even difficult to pick one.

Now, here’s a web service on the horizon that’s like a track marker as we wade through the internet listening to one tune after the other. It’s still in alpha but Twones promises much to the average music lover.

Twones is not a web player or an online playlist. It is more like an automatic device for discovering music that’s spread around in various sites on the web. Songs can be found on online streaming services as well as blogs and other websites.

It started off by allowing users to bookmark and share music and songs from 25 of the leading online music streaming services, but since then it has opened up to blogs and other sites too. Twones finds out these sites and spontaneously discovers it for our ears.

Think of it as the StumbleUpon for songs. And just like StumbleUpon, the power of Twones is located in its toolbar. Also, just like the browsing service, you need to create a free account to keep all the information in one online location.

The Music Bar is where it all is

The Twones Music Bar is the vehicle which helps us traipse across the web, across music services and blogs and locate songs to listen too. The Twones Music Bar can be installed as an addon for Firefox (support for other browsers are planned).

The songs can be played and paused from the music bar. The Music Bar also has four tools for four uses –

Bookmark tracks

While listening to a track, you can click on the star icon and add the track to your playlist.

Get more Intel on the track

The little ‘i’ icon stands for Band Buzz…it gives you some details on the artist and the track that’s currently playing.

Share music

Tell the world what you are listening too with Twitter and Facebook to share music and songs you like.

Discover music

Click the Random Track button and you will be taken spontaneously to a site which plays host to music of any kind. The songs are played on the site itself, as intended originally. Twones just ‘discovers’ the site for you.

It’s quite easy to lose our way in the jungle of music if we don’t have a good tracking device. Twones has its own which can be opened up as a sidebar within the browser (Click on My Music).

The Bookmark button does the job. The process is one touch – as soon as the track loads and starts playing, click the bookmark star and the box for the playlist opens up. You can define a new playlist or let existing playlists auto-complete in the field by typing the first few characters.

Tracks can be auto-posted to Twitter or Facebook and even scrobbled to your Last.fm playlist.

The sidebar keeps you in the know with your own activities and those of your friends. Keep tabs on your playlists. The little search box is useful for searching tracks among your favorites. You can also check out public downloads, other users and sites to browse from the sidebar.

Twones goes very well with ‘tunes’. It’s just as fun as the novelty of StumbleUpon was (and is).

Twones is still in Alpha, so some quirks are expected, commonly some songs refused to load in the Music Bar. It also just might take you down a few blind alleys where there aren’t songs to be found.  A way to search for songs should be a definite plus when the site rolls out completely.

But hey, when it’s free music and an alpha service why quibble in the first place. In the end, if you are a music lover, you wouldn’t mind the misses. With more development, the hits will come to the fore.

Try it out…stumble a few times and let us know what you discover.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Developed by Dominik Grolimund and Luzius Meisser, the technology behind Wuala is truly amazing. By using a ‘grid’ algorithm, Wuala can take advantage of unused disk space across its network of users in addition to data-centre storage. This keeps Wuala’s costs down, because there is no need to buy space in data-centres and it also makes their service incredibly attractive to newcomers who need online file storage.

Instead of paying a fixed rate for a certain amount of space, users can choose to allocate a part of their free hard drive space to share with the Wuala community. If you share 50GB and leave your computer online, you get 50GB of online file storage in return. There is however no obligation to participate in sharing – you get 1 GB free forever from the Wuala team and up to 6GB for inviting your friends. There are also payed plans for more demanding users.

Wuala encrypts all your files before sending them to the ‘grid’, and also ensures that it is distributed among many machines. Unlike other services, the password to your data never leaves your computer and the redundancy in the algorithm allows for machines to be taken offline while still maintaining data integrity. Wuala runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and even in your browser thanks to the portability of the Java programming framework. Unlike most other Java applications, you can expect to run Wuala without crashes or poor performance.

Another benefit of the Wuala P2P ‘grid‘ is the virtually unlimited bandwidth for both upload and download – basically the same benefits bit-torrent downloads have over traditional CDNs, with up to 100 peers in parallel for each file. I’ve noticed a sizeable increase in speed over Microsoft’s Live Mesh, Dropbox and Mozy. I’ve had sustained upload speed of over 900Kb/s, the highest I’ve personally seen in an online file storage service.

With Wuala you can keep private files only you can access, share folders with friends or publish them to the world, much like Dropbox.  Thanks to the user friendly interface, using the app is a breeze. Adding files is as simple as drag and drop, backup as simple as selecting a folder and the desired sync frequency.

You can also create groups for sharing files with your family, co-workers, projects and keep track of them thanks to the integrated file revisioning.

For those of you who prefer to use the local language Wuala is available in English, German, French, Brazilian, Russian, Swedish, Chinese, and Polish.

Caleido – the company behind Wuala – has been bought by LaCie, the renowned hard drive manufacturer, in March of 2009. In addition to that, more than 100 million files are reported to be stored on the Wuala grid. There’s no need to worry that the service might go down in the foreseeable future so why not go to wuala.com and sign up for a free account.

If you’re not convinced, why not go check out the demo account? Visit Wuala, click on the red START button, and login with the username John and password asdasd. Let us know your impressions in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Note – this music sharing site is US-only, but perhaps as membership builds, the site’s reach will expand.

The LaLa Music Player Menu & Recommendations

First off, learn and take advantage of the blue player menu bar at the top of the Lala member page. This feature allows you to play music while also browsing through the site. So you can play, change, and stop songs no matter what page you’re visiting on the site.

You’ll also notice, as you’re browsing, that you can add songs to a queue. All you have to do is click the hotlink word “Queue“ under the play button, and the song will be added to the queue list. And remember, you can listen to an entire song once for free on Lala, and then after the first listen, you can play it again for 30 seconds. I sample about three or four albums per week for free this way.

This is somewhat obvious, but be sure to notice that you can star/rate currently selected music. This is a great way to build playlists of favorite songs.

Finally, in terms of the player menu, notice also that you can share/recommend and post titles of songs to your Twitter and Facebook accounts and to other Lala members.

Song recommendations are one of Lala’s most useful attractions. Since I rarely listen to music radio stations anymore, recommendations from other Lala members are the way I learn about music I haven’t heard. So after you sign up and start hanging around Lala, you will want build a good contact list. Search for members who share your musical tastes, and you’ll be rewarded with some great recommendations. Also, of course, be sure to share your own recommendations.

View Recently Explored

Right under the player menu there’s another set of menu features. Clicking the little clock icon will reveal a pop-up window of the songs and albums that you have recently listened to and explored. This feature is really useful because when you’re browsing the site, you can revisit your browsing history. However, it would be useful if Lala made a way for members to create a wish list of songs on their account.

Collections

You don’t have to purchase a single song to be a member of Lala.com. You can actually upload existing songs on your computer to your Lala account for free. All your songs get added to your Collections. When you do purchase websongs and MP3s on the site, they too get added to your collections. You can easily click the My Collection button to get a linear view of your library, but I personally recommend using the album view of your collection. You do this by linking to your profile page and clicking on Collections. This album view will reveal only songs you’ve uploaded or purchased, not that the ones you have recently sampled.

Build Playlists

As you browse and listen to songs, you have several options for building playlists. This feature makes the online Lala music player almost like iTunes. Clicking on the Playlist button, you get a drop down menu where you can click, “Add to new playlist.”

When you use Lala‘s Music Mover to copy songs on your computer to your Lala account, it will automatically create a playlist of those copied songs. You can also click on the My Collection>Add Songs button in the menu bar, and create new playlists, as well as add and remove songs to and from lists, as you do in iTunes. Though you can’t create smart albums like in iTunes, your Collections does include a few smart playlists of your recent adds and uploads.

Videos & Blurbs

Like other advanced websites, Lala.com includes a multimedia feature. Songs you listen to may include a related video, typically coming from YouTube.

Blurb Feature

Lala also features a Blurbs section, similar to Facebook. This is where you and your contacts can post messages to one another, and you also get to see the listening activity of your contacts. You can of course select to make your activity private by linking to the Privacy Settings of your account. The one option missing from this feature is that you can’t star favorite blurbs and link comments to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Nevertheless, the Blurbs feature makes Lala.com more than a simple music listening site. It’s great way to share and talk about music.

Lala.com doesn’t fit the needs of many music listeners, but if your computer is your main music player, Lala.com is a great option.

Let me know, if you’re a Lala.com listener, how you like the site.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Other times you just want to share with yourself. If you ever needed to transfer your files to another computer to read, carry, or print them — you know what I mean. And when that sharing has to be done wirelessly, you’re in for a lot of trouble.

Initiating the sharing (whether by email, uploading, or enabling a P2P connection) is the biggest bother, simply because you have to do it time and time again.

The most simple solution would be to put all of your files online, or at least those you’re thinking about sharing. This sounds strange, a bit scary even, but if you do it right, it can spare you a ton of trouble.

Orb 2.0

Orb is an free file sharing program that allows you to share all of your stuff over the internet. All that needs to be done on your home computer is install the program and a simple indexing of your files. It’s evident you’ll want to monitor the latter – you don’t want all of your personal stuff to wind up on the internet. Once that’s done, you can access the data from any computer or other device with an internet connection.

The application uses P2P to share your data. This means your home computer must remain turned on if you need to access the data. When you’re at home, this poses no problem, but if you want to keep accessing your files over long-distance, you better prepare for a seriously large electricity bill.

All Types of Media

After you’ve spent some time indexing your computer, the amount of media you can share with this free file sharing program is close to limitless. Apart from the conventional file sharing, like music, video and – very importantly – documents; Orb offers a ton of additional sharing functionality.

If you’ve got a TV tuner installed on your computer, you can even broadcast live and recorded TV programs. You can read more about this aspect of Orb in Dave’s article about Total Media Domination – Your TV, Video and Audio on any Device.

Sharing Possibilities

Once you’ve decided what to share, there are a few different ways to do so; email, hyperlink, flash widget and Orb’s public page. They all have one thing in common – the recipient needs nothing more than an internet connection and a web browser!

A simple hyperlink is one of the easiest ways to share your data — text it to a friend, or paste it in an IM window, Orb takes care of the rest. If you share your stuff over email, a hyperlink is used as well, but this time the recipient gets a personal Orb account, so they’re the only ones to access the data!

A few of the more interesting features that Orb provides are the flash widgets and Orb Public Place. The flash widget can be embedded on any HTML-enabled website or blog, and allows visitors to quickly browse music, pictures and videos. The Public Place is a personal blog-like site, on which you can post text entries, as well as share your media – it’s unlimited. Here, everyone can browse through the different kinds of data that you’ve made available.

How do you use any free file sharing programs to share your media and documents? Tell us all about it in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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If you get a email with a Word document attachment all you have to do is upload it to File2.ws and it will convert a file to HTML and shoot back the link.

Let’s check out how it works.

You start off by visiting their website. You will see a page that looks like this:

All it takes to create a web page is to point that browse box to your local file and let it upload to their server. You can convert the following file types:

• image/photo files (jpeg, gif, png, svg…)
• audio formats (mp3, ogg…)
• documents (doc, pdf, odt, txt, rtf, ppt…)
• programming source code (java, php, cpp…)
• web documents (html, htm, swf…)
• archive (zip, rar, tar…)
• video, fonts, chemical file formats and more

How awesome is that? I started with a Word document that was formatted and included highlighting.  Let’s see how it was handled. Hit browse and find your file. Then hit open.

You will see the filename filled into the box. There is a 15MB file max then hit the start conversion button. The file will upload to their site and the rest of the process is automatic.

Once your file has been successfully transferred to their site you will see a success screen with a link to your new webpage containing your document’s contents.

If you click on the link it will take you to the page. It should appear identical to your original with the exception of the Adsense or Bidvertiser ads at the top of your document directly under your title.

Next up let’s upload a MP3 and see how that handles. I threw it a old “Tribe Called Quest” song called Start it up. It took longer to upload then the Word document that’s for sure. It took about 11 minutes to upload but then the track came back embedded into a website. Fearing copyright infringement I will not post the link to the track but here is the link to my Word document that contains no sensitive data.

I can think of hundreds of users for this free website including showing a client a proof, showing a document, Excel sheet, Powerpoint document, home movies…. I mean the possibilities are endless. the site goes on to talk about its features. I figured I would post them up so you can see them as well:

• Fastest download speeds
• No download limits
• No CAPTCHA codes
• Multiple simultaneous downloads and uploads
• Unlimited page bandwidth
• No sign up required
• No software to install
• Link directly to the generated web page

I can say the download speeds are WAY better than the upload speeds but what we here at Make Use Of LOVE is the no signup and software to install. This makes this site very versatile.

Do you have a similar application that you use? We would love to hear about it? Maybe you have some creative uses for this service? Leave them in the comments and don’t worry you won’t be judged (maybe a little!)

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The application is installed on your computer and then it acts as a server and allows for your computer to be connected to. You can then access your iTunes library through your browser and stream any song that you have or share your iTunes library with others.

Since it acts as a server you will need to keep the computer turned on that you wish to access. If it is turned off then the application is not running and therefore you won’t be able to access your library. If you want to be able to access your iTunes library all the time but not leave your computer on, then the best solution would be to purchase a cheap computer that you can leave on all the time.

Installation and Setup

To download pulpTunes simply go to the pulpTunes website and click the Download Now button to being downloading the application. The file that will be downloaded is a zip file so expand it then open up the application named pulpTunes in the folder that is created.

The first time you start up the application a window similar to the one pictured below will be displayed. This is telling you how to access the library within your browser and to open port 15000 on your firewall so that you can access your library from outside your network. If you do not know your IP address then this will also be shown so take a note of it.

When you click OK if you go to http://localhost:15000 you will see all of your songs and playlists. Your iTunes server has now been setup locally – you’ve now shared your iTunes library, and anyone on your network should be able to access it if they know the port number. If you do not want everyone to be able to access it then you can setup an admin username and password by clicking on the icon in the tray and then selecting User Management.

When the window opens up check Enable User Management and then enter the username and password that you would like then hit save.

If you return to http://localhost:15000 you will now notice in the upper right corner that there is a hyperlink called Log in.

When you click the hyperlink you will be asked for the username and password that you have just entered into the User Management window.

If you successfully log in you will now notice a hyperlink in the upper right corner called User Management.

If you do not want anonymous users to have access to any of your library then uncheck the Has access box. If you want anonymous users to only access certain playlists or songs then you can do this by clicking All Playlists and selecting the playlists and songs that you want to allow an anonymous user to listen to.

To add a user that you do not want to be an Admin you must first create a group. I created a group called Users and I will allow them to rate songs so I check the Can rate songs box. To create a user, click on the Accounts tab and then press Add User. I named my user user1, the group Users and other required information. When I click save it is now possible to log in as user1 and listen to my library.

Advanced Settings

By default when the page loads, the first song automatically plays so to stop this, click on the pulpTunes icon in the tray and press Advanced Settings. If you uncheck Start playing songs, hit OK, then restart pulpTunes then the first song will no longer automatically play when the page has loaded.

The Advanced Settings window also allows you to change the port number that is used to access the library, so for example if port 15000 is used by something else on your router you can change it to a port that is unused.

If your iTunes XML library file is located somewhere else than the default location you can also change this here.

If you want to see who is accessing the pulpTunes server and what songs they are listening to, you can enable logging to keep track of this. Click OK and restart the pulpTunes server and the changes will be applied.

Please let us know what you think of sharing your iTunes library with pulpTunes by posting a comment below. If you know of a similar application feel free to discuss this below with other readers.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Today, we will talk about some of the best sites to use for telling your friends what you’re listening to and get that extra use out of the service.

Twisten.FM

Twisten is by far my most favorite method of sharing music on Twitter. Created by the people who made Grooveshark, Twisten is just as easy to use and since it uses the same database as Grooveshark, holds quite a large library of music.

Besides being able to update your status messages with links and info about the song you are listening to, Twisten also allows you to save favorites for further access on your profile.

Songly

Song.ly is another simple and easy-to-use service that certainly contains many of the best features of Twisten. The hompage consists only of a search box that allows you to enter a link to an audio file on the web, or search for a song. Songly then allows you to listen to the song for free, with the option of posting to Twitter.

Songly also features a Firefox add-on for quick tweeting if you like.

Twiturm

Twiturm is unlike Twisten or Songly in that it allows users to upload a song(s) and then share it on Twitter.

This feature is great if you happen to have a large music collection of songs/artists that for some reason are not able to be found on Twisten or Songly, but otherwise Twiturm is not the easiest way to quickly share songs on Twitter.

TwittyTunes

TwittyTunes is a Firefox extension that utilizes FoxyTunes (a popular Firefox extension for playing music) to post updates on what you are listening to on Twitter.  Obviously if you do not use FoxyTunes, TwittyTunes would not be very useful, but for those that do use FoxyTunes, TwittyTunes may be just what you are looking for.

Something to note, though, TwittyTunes does not post a status message every time you listen to a song, it just gives you the option to post songs to Twitter, so if you were scared that you would be posting hundreds of status messages a day and scaring your Twitter followers, I am sure that is not the case.

All in all, it seems Twitter is continually growing and with the help of a growing online music industry, web apps like these may be the way to go.

What do you use for sharing music on Twitter? Tell us in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Sadly, that feature is no longer implemented. What’s worse, DivShare finally set an upload limit at 5GB and a 10GB monthly download transfer limit.

Since then, quite a few contenders arose. DropBox, one of my favourites was a viable challenger. Although it isn’t exactly a file-sharing service primarily, it can be used to share files – and quite easily too. It has the one thing missing from DivShare, a file sharing desktop client. Well, things are about to change.

I came to know of ISUploader a few weeks ago. It’s still a very new application with a lot of room for improvement but as of now, it’s more than I can ask for.

At the moment of writing, the application is only capable of displaying a list of your files hosted by DivShare, retrieving some information about the files (uploaded date, size, number of times downloaded etc.) and grabbing the download links. And yes, it does support uploading to DivShare, naturally.

However, there’s a one file maximum limit per upload. Future versions of the application will support multiple-file uploads. Phew. And another thing, file deletion is yet to be possible.

ISUploader works great but as I’ve said: it still has a lot of room for development. And here’s the good news: I’ve been working closely with one of the developers of ISUploader to come up with a more fantastic 2.0 version. I’ve also been given a very early beta version of the new ISUploader to play around with and I can honestly say that it will be mind blowing when it is released.

Here’s a little sneak preview:

Support for multiple DivShare accounts

Easier setup

New Sidebar

ISUploader 2.0 won’t be available until sometime next month. And since I’ll be working alongside the developer, MakeUseOf readers will have the inside scoop before it hits the public. So watch this space!

For the time being, the current version should be capable enough to satisfy your uploading needs. You can find it over at inventiveSoft. ISUploader works on Mac OS X and is free but donations are always appreciated.

What features would you like to see implemented in the next version of ISUploader? Say it out loud in the comments and it might get added into the final product!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Just look at MakeUseOf, the site you’re hopefully browsing at the moment. Where in the world can you buy a magazine with (currently) 1,754 articles for free? (more if you include the Directory and Geeky Fun).

‘Free’ does exist, and it’s brought to us through the internet.

Last week we saw industry quality open-source games with Yo Frankie. This week, we’ll take a look at the audio visual side. Free industry quality movies are pretty scarce but free music can be found in many places. So, enter what in my opinion are the best sites to download free music.

Not the torrent or limewire kind; the I-take-it-without-paying-so-it’s free, but music released under creative licenses, by people who don’t think music should be a business. People who sing for emotions, not money.

Jamendo

All the music available on Jamendo is released under the Creative Commons license. This means that it can be freely listened to and used and redistributed under the same license.

The artists then get rewarded via user donations and revenues from the Jamendo’s commercial programs and partnerships.

You can browse through over 150,000 tracks by artist, album and genre, or you can use the tags for quick navigation.

All of the tracks and albums are available for download without any needed registration and can be shared over the internet using widgets.

CCHits

CCHits is a great website to find and share music under the Creative Commons license.

All the songs can be played on the spot and downloaded in MP3 format. You can browse through the different songs by date, the number of hits, or by using tags. Alternatively, you can also search through the database.

The site uses a digg-like system, in which you can ‘like’ a song. This will increase both the song’s rating and also allow you to find it easily again at a later moment.

To give songs your ‘liking’, see your listening history and your liked songs, you’ll need a Ning account. Signing up is a very quick and easy process.

The song database is somewhat limited at the moment, but this website is destined for growth. You can always help by uploading your own songs to the website.

Amie Street

Amie Street is an online marketplace for music by independent artists.

As you may have deducted from the word ‘marketplace’, not all music on this site is free, only the yet-undiscovered ones.

This is how it works: Initially, about all of the music that appears on Amie Street gets released without a price – you can then download it without paying a dime. However, as the popularity of the piece increases, the price goes up.

The trick is to browse the new releases, and find the musical pearls between them. Note that signing up is required to download an album.

Another great feature is that you can earn credits by recommending songs to friends – up to 98 cents per song – which you can use to buy some of the premium songs. The retail price of these premium songs never goes over 98 cents apiece either.

Check out our earlier story on Amie Street.

ccMixter

ccMixter hosts many a capellas and samples which can be freely downloaded and resampled by remixers. The samples can be ordered based on various categories, popularity, beats per minute, or can be looked through using search queries and tags. In short, a great place for DJs and alike to find free samples.

A lot of these remixes have also been reposted on the website, for video-makers to use or music lovers to enjoy. Among these remixes are some really high-quality works, that even most people with less interest in the genre (like me) will enjoy.

Newgrounds

Just like flash games and movies, lots of royalty-free songs are released daily on Newgrounds by aspiring musicians.

The author must be credited upon redistribution, and the music can only be used for non-commercial purposes. If you just want to play it on your computer though, there’s even less you need to worry about.

The major part of the songs consist of house and trance music, but pop, rock and even classical music is represented. Though a lot of the songs are only good to use in flash games and movies, there are also a ton of songs that wouldn’t look out of place on the average radio station.

Do you know of any other good site to download free legal music? Do you want to share a song with the other readers? Give your opinions and suggestions a nice home in the comments section below.

Picture Credits: marimoon

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The site provides several ways to discover artists and their music: hot lists, forums, exploring the latest public tracks or suggestions of people that may enjoy similar material, and of course simply searching for specific tracks or artists.

Members can follow musicians to receive updates about new releases distributed through the SoundCloud. You can drop someone a track into their DropBox or embed a DropBox link on your website or social network profile to receive tracks and demos from others.

Best of all, there is no need to download anything, as the SoundCloud hosts the tracks and offers a web-based playback, as displayed below.

All public tracks can be shared for example by embedding the code in a website. Try it and play the track below.

The free account offers all of the above mentioned amenities, except that monthly uploads are limited to 5 tracks and even then only the latest 10 are shown. That’s quite a limitation and makes the service useless for managing your music collection for free. There are a few more limitations and three types of Pro accounts. Nevertheless, this is a great tool to discover fresh music, especially for fans of electronic music, drum’n'bass, dance, house, and similar styles or remixes of any kind.

Here’s a short SoundCloud Tour giving many more details:

The Cloud Player is a spin-off of the SoundCloud. It’s a web-based music player and technically it’s an open source clone of iTunes or Songbird. Interestingly, no membership with SoundCloud is required as you can simply log in with your GMail login details.

The player integrates the public song catalog of the SoundCloud, which is the only but major drawback as this source is still rather limited, especially in the styles of music it offers. However, if electronic happens to be the type of music you enjoy, you’ll feel like in heaven!

The Cloud Player comes with several handy features. Users can create personal playlists and save and share them. The tool also allows the creation of smart playlists, which means you give it a few cues and it will retrieve all the tracks that mach your query.

The SoundCloud and its Cloud Player are two rather simple tools with great entertainment value and a lot of potential. They are one of many new tools that are paving the way into a digital life in the cloud, independent of stationary computers. Are you willing to experiment on the way?

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In fact, I would not describe actionext as a music discovery site. It’s different and maybe even better than that. I would say it’s a music lyrics search engine. You don’t have to listen to random tracks based on a pattern you seem to enjoy. Rather you can search for what you like yourself and create a custom music playlist. Additionally, actionext offers lyrics that anyone can edit in a wiki-like manner. Dive in to see more…

I know, there are other music search engines. However, this is the best I have seen in a long time!

Without signing up you can go ahead and search for artists or songs, browse lists of artists from 0-9 and A-Z, pick a featured album from the frontpage or browse the Top 100 list.

The best thing is that while you’re looking for music and adding tunes, the music player will stay with you and you can listen to what you have collected so far continuously, with only minor interruptions to to page loads.

A search will usually return a long list of results. The quality of songs greatly varies, the volume is not equalized, some songs are live recordings, others are album versions. You can’t necessarily tell the quality by the title the creator gave the song, so of course you can test play tunes before adding them to your playlist. Just click the play instead of the plus button.

Results always come back with two rows. On the left are the audio tunes and on the right you’ll see available lyrics. This is where the wiki-like system comes into play as you can edit the lyrics and submit your changes for review.

As you see you can download tracks and get them as ringtones. But don’t get too excited, both links will take you to services that will charge you for the favor.

To save and keep your playlist, you have to sign up. From there you can copy the code and share it through your website, blog or even myspace profile. That’s right, you can easily add actiontext music player with your playlist in it to your Myspace or other social networking profile. The code will be available when you save the playlist and at the bottom of the page when you’re playing it.

Interestingly, playlists can only be deleted when they’re open. You’ll see a “Delete this playlist” link in the top left above the player. A delete button next to each playlist in the “My Playlists” section would certainly be more comfortable. Also I’m not sure whether the amount of playlists you can create is limited. For this test I made 20. That’s plenty and the site probably allows a lot more.

Here for example is a playlist of artists I have seen live during the past two years. Not all of them, just the best of course.

What is your impression? Is it worthwhile? Are you gonna share some songs with us?

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• (1)Twones (Alpha) – Stumble, Discover, Bookmark and Share Music From Around The Web

There are many ways of doing this, probably the most reliable way being to have your own media server. This though may be impractical for smaller archives of music or for sharing music on a limited scale. Thus, today I intend on showing you some of the best sites to access your music on-the-go with limited effort.

(There have been other posts on this subject on MakeUseOf here and here.)

MediaMaster

MediaMaster is one of the best sites for setting up your own streaming music online. The amount of features are immense and, fortunately, signing up is easy.  Once you are in, you have the ability to view recently uploaded music, community related material, as well as the ability to upload your own music.

Formats currently supported include: MP3, M4A, non-lossless WMA, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV, Musepack V7 and FLAC. Once uploaded, music can be viewed through your library, edited, or added to a radio station and played whenever you like.

One cool feature of MediaMaster that most sites similar to it don’t have, is the social-networking aspect. You can add friends, listen to friend’s radio stations, rate them, etc. MediaMaster goes even farther to give you the ability to customize your profile, which adds more options. I highly recommend trying it out.

blueTunes

blueTunes is quite similar to MediaMaster, with an extremely simple user interface. With such a simple interface though, are not as many features. Such as the ability to only upload MP3’s, a larger array of options need to exist that do not yet. If all you need to do is listen to a small amount of music or don’t really intend on sharing your music, blueTunes may be your best option.

While features are limited, blueTunes is improving and adding more features, such as recommendations based on your songs, blueTunes facebook app, $.01 per song requirement (after your free 100 songs), playlists, etc.

MP3tunes

MP3tunes is another extremely feature filled online streaming site that really is paving the way for the future of online music. One thing that sets MP3tunes away from many other online streaming sites, is the ability to sync your music on nearly any electronic device connected to the internet.

With such a wide array of devices come even more options, such as: recommendations, auto sync with a computer, plug-ins, etc. Uploading is easy with their new BETA drag-and-drop uploader, and listening to your music is, obviously, even easier. With a free account, you receive 2GB of space for music (approximately 400 songs), yet you can also upgrade to a premium plan for 50GB of space (approximately 10,000 songs.)

Another extremely neat feature of MP3tunes is their webload feature. Webload allows users to upload any song from around the web with a URL, obviously saving time when downloading songs and then uploading them. There is even a developer API if you would like to go even further and get your music onto devices that aren’t compatible. If features and access to your music virtually anywhere is what you are looking for, then MP3tunes may be your best choice.

Hopefully this helps some of you find the best place to store your music online! What do you use to access your music everywhere? Tell us in the comments!

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Hamachi is a service that runs in the background and connects your computer to any other computer you wish in a particular network. This creates an encrypted VPN (Virtual Private Network) between you and other PCs in your own network.

This becomes ultra convenient when you have a number of PCs that you want to connect to, for example if you have a work PC, home PC, school PC and/or servers. Once Hamachi is installed, the computers are available via IP address for their file shares, or any other service. Lots of people also use to play video games in a multi-player mode regardless of their location.

I like a few things about Hamachi that set it apart from the other VPN software available:

• Ease of use – Installing the program is a snap!
• Network Compatibility – Works with many types of networks, uses a variety of methods to get around firewalls (NAT, etc.)
• Cross-Platform Availability – Clients include the typical Windows and Mac, but also Linux, Mobile Devices, Windows Mobile and more.
• Security Built In – Communication between Hamachi clients is encrypted.

Windows Hamachi Install

Setting up the client is easy on Windows.

After installing the client, run it for the first time and “power” it on. It will have you create a network, and include a password so that anyone joining it (if it is a personal network, this would just be you) will need a password.

You will then join the network. For now, you will be the only one in this network. On subsequent installations, you can cancel out of the “create” network part. You will just join the network – so supply the password you used while creating the network.

Setting Hamachi up on Linux is a bit more difficult because it is via command line, however it is still easy as long as you are comfortable typing in a few commands.

Linux Install

From the readme for the Linux client:

• Run ‘make install’ and then ‘tuncfg’ from under the root account
• Run ‘hamachi-init’ to generate crypto identity (any account).
• Run ‘hamachi start’ to launch Hamachi daemon.
• Run ‘hamachi login’ to put the daemon online and to create an account.
• Run ‘hamachi join ‘ to join the network.
• Run ‘hamachi go-online ‘ to go online in the network.
• Run ‘hamachi list’ to list network members and their status.

More or less, this is all you will need to do. Depending on which flavor of linux you are installing this on, there may be some tricks you’ll need to use to get it working properly. Also, don’t forget to add it to your init scripts (or rc.local) to load on startup.

There is also a GTK GUI for the Linux client – see this forum post if you are interested in downloading or knowing more about it.

So now what?

So now that you have your machines set up, what can you do with them?

Here is just a random selection of some useful programs or services that you can use between your Hamachi clients:

VNC, Remote Desktop, NoMachine, etc. – Remotely access any PC on the VPN. The connection is encrypted, so you feel secure using even unencrypted protocols (like default VNC).

File Shares – Whether you use Windows file sharing, Samba or other protocols, you can access files on any other Hamachi PC. For Windows shares, just use the IP: \\5.x.x.x\. You can also map these shares to a drive, giving you access to your files like a local drive.

Music or Video Streaming – Use a streaming media server, such as Jinzora, to stream music from one PC to another.

Gaming – Play multi-player games with friends even if you’re on different networks.

Really anything you can think of that would be handy via a VPN, P2P network would work really well with Hamachi. Most connections are direct, so bandwidth is limited by your direct internet connection. In some cases a ‘relay’ is used to maintain connectivity, but this is only used in rare cases (Hamachi claims that 95% of connections are direct).

Finally, there are two versions of Hamachi. The free version has a few limitations – namely it will not run as a system service, is limited to the number of networked clients and uses ‘low speed’ relays (when necessary). The paid version takes away these limitations – for a full description see the comparison page.

The only two downsides that I can see to Hamachi is that it is closed-source, and that it depends on mediation servers. Being closed source, it is impossible to audit the code to ensure it is 100% secure and encrypted. The mediation servers have always worked well for me, but this adds in a 3rd party which some people may not like.

Hopefully you will find Hamachi as useful as I have! This program was purchased by LogMeIn a few years back but has retained its free and useful nature. If you have any particular issues with it, their forum is a great resource with lots of knowledgeable users.

Alternatives: OpenVPN is a similar service, but since there is no mediation server – configuration is a good bit more complex.

(By) Dave is an IT Manager by day and technology consultant by night. He is interested in all things internet but is specifically interested in system administration, network security, history, and backpacking. He lives near Philadelphia with his family. See his blog @ www.systembash.com.

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Liberating Your Media

As big stores continue to move away from DRM and give more rights to their customers so that they have more control over the music which they’ve bought, DoubleTwist is a new and different software which lets you liberate your media with ease. We know that there are huge numbers of such software available, but DoubleTwist makes the task very easy by playing the media and stripping off its DRM label, if any, in the background.

Sharing Media

DoubleTwist lets you share media with your friends and recommends using the iTunes software.

Media you can send using DoubleTwist -

Video: 3gp (used by most cell phones), MPEG4 (.mp4, .m4v), wmv, avi and MPEG2 (.mpg, .mpv, .mpeg)
Audio: mp3, aac/m4a, wma, wav
Pictures: jpg, gif, png, bmp

Sharing with doubleTwist from Jon Lech Johansen on Vimeo.

The DoubleTwist software allows you to login to your Facebook account and add friends or share media with friends by emailing them. If your friends are using DoubleTwist then you can share stuff using simple drag-n-drop in the software.

Facebook App

DoubleTwist also provides a Facebook app named Twist me! which can integrate with the desktop app and act like a media drop box, enabling you to privately send audio, video and photos to your Facebook friends. For files sent through this Facebook app, there is a 10 MB limit per file.

Syncing Media

As I’ve already mentioned, DoubleTwist works best with iTunes and lets you sync your iTunes playlists to a number of devices. It also lets you convert the legally purchased iTunes files to other formats like MP3.

Currently it supports syncing with the following external devices :-

• Nokia N & E Series phones, including the N95, E61i, E62, and others
• Sony Ericsson Walkman & Cybershot phones
• Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0 platform (e.g. Treo, HTC, Palm)
• BlackBerry Curve and Pearl
• LG Viewty and LG Voyager
• Sony PSP
• Amazon Kindle

However it doesn’t support the iPod or iPhone yet.

Overall it looks like a nice software, especially for those who love to share media with friends. This is still a new app and we can expect many more features in the future.

(By) Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips, productivity hacks at Jeet Blog

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Grooveshark has two different sections to its website. One regular section of the site (which I will be talking about here) and another feature called “Grooveshark Lite” that is new and is more of a web based streaming service.
Anyway, to use Grooveshark at first, you’ll need an account. Due to their safe user-centered site, as well as their BETA status, you will need to register and wait for a reply by one of their employees, but it doesn’t take long. Once you are in, you have to download their small application – only 771KB – that allows you to actually play the songs, as well as download and upload music.

You can then search for a song using the search bar at the top right. You will get options for “Artists,” “Albums,” “Songs,” “Users,” or “Playlists.” You of course can listen to the song by clicking on the “Listen” or “Save to Playlist.” Grooveshark as well offers downloads for $.49-$.99, which is extremely neat considering the other features of Grooveshark that allow users to upload music to the site and get paid!

To do this, all you need to do is go to “Sharkbyte” on your local computer and select the “Library” tab. Then add a folder on your computer that has music, to the application, and select “Apply.”

Later, the Grooveshark algorithm will decide who makes the money when someone downloads the songs as there are numerous songs that are the same out there. (The only formats currently available for upload are: M4A, MP3, OGG, and FLAC.)

As you grow your playlists, you can share them with others while simultaneously growing the number of friends you have. All of which can be done by searching for users, finding their friends, finding the creator of a certain playlist, etc. Other community-wide features include the option to subscribe to playlists, message people, find fans of a certain song or artist, etc.

A recently added feature includes the option to allow Grooveshark to create a playlist for you, if you feel too much at a loss of energy to click. You simply select the songs you want that are already in your library and then click “Create Mix.” Grooveshark will then find 50 songs similar to it and create a playlist for you.

Grooveshark ends up being definitely one of the top websites out there and most certainly gives an example as to what should be in the online music world.

Will is a computer nerd and geek that runs Advanced Tech Solutions and Online Free Tech Tips.

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Lala is a music player, store and discovery tool. It’s also a fantastically downplayed CD trading site. Back in 2006 or so, Lala was primarily a platform for trading CDs with other users. Today, the focus is on its music player but the trading community is what makes it a great site.

For $1 per trade and $.75 for shipping, you can request CDs from other users. At the same time, other users are requesting them from you. You can revamp your collection for the price of one CD and you never have to step foot in a store or a post office!

To start, add the CDs you have to your Have List. This can take a little time. I did it in increments. It can be a little emotionally jaunting to realize that it’s time to get rid of your Norwegian death metal collection, but you’ll feel cleansed in the end. Next comes the fun part, adding CDs you want to your Want List. Usually this occurs in bursts of music fits where you’ll decide you want a band’s entire discography.

Trading CDs is just like renting DVDs from Netflix. But, before you can trade you need to request envelopes. When you’re a more experienced user you can request up to 10 envelopes, but to start, Lala will send you 5 prepaid envelopes and 5 thick cardboard CD sleeves. Once you receive them then you’re ready to start sending them out. In your Have List, you’ll see the albums people are requesting followed by a “ship it” button.

After you’ve agreed to ship a CD, you’re taken to a screen that will ask whether or not you have the cover art. It is also possible to flag which of your discs have no cover art prior to this so Lala knows beforehand. Some users are really into cover art. If it’s an album I plan on keeping in my collection, I must have the cover art. Electing to receive CDs without cover art can speed up the trading process as lots of people are missing artwork. Once you’ve got all of the discs ready to ship, Lala will ask you to activate each envelope so it can be tracked. You input the 7-digit code and hit activate. Now you’re ready to drop them off in the closest mailbox.

Receiving CDs is always exciting. Your Have List isn’t set up like a queue so you have no way of knowing which ones will be sent next. It’s a surprise every time. To keep the trading fair, Lala ensures the ratio of sent vs. received is somewhat even. This way everyone in the community is equally sending and receiving. You can always see how many CDs you’ve traded, how many are on the way, and which are awaiting receipt confirmation.

Upon receipt, it’s good to test the disc and then confirm that it’s been received in good condition. I have yet to get one that won’t play. Lala’s policy states that all traded CDs must be in good condition. If you receive a damaged disc you can report it.

You’ll notice when you go to Lala.com that there is no information on CD trading. It’s like Lala’s forgotten stepchild. Don’t let that fool you though. There is a thriving trading community that most likely wants your Norwegian death metal. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of their user base primarily uses it for trading. The rest of their services are ok but with Last.FM, Anywhere.fm, Pandora, Imeem and the rest of the music player sites, they have a lot of competition. Trading CDs this effectively, now there’s an edge.

If you’re looking for a way to trade more than just CDs, Mark did a great post titled “9 Websites to Swap Your Stuff”. The post offers good suggestions for trading DVDs, books and games. Most are US only, like Lala, so international users keep that in mind. There’s also a post in the directory that highlights Lala’s music player features.

As the epitome of a music/tech geek hybrid, Lala satisfies both my hunger for a new, tangible, piece of music (hooray for album artwork!) and my need to constantly stay connected to the digital world. It’s a fun and useful spin on trading music online.

Written by Renee Valdez, A dot com junkie, music lover and frequent blogger at Shopwiki’s Overlooked, a blog showcasing overlooked products from Shopwiki’s webcrawlers.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Muxtape allows you to upload up to 12 MP3’s, organize them, and share them via a personalized URL that streams the flash-embedded music. Like the name implies, it’s like sharing a mix-tape with a friend. Those of us that grew up in the 80’s and early 90’s know the significance of a mix-tape. It’s that painstaking process of picking out the best 12 tracks that gives Muxtape that personal edge that most music sharing sites are missing.

Perhaps the main difference is how incredibly simple it is. Customization is basic with your username serving as your personal URL and your desired color, in hexadecimal value, for your muxtape’s color bar. Once the MP3’s are uploaded, organizing them is as simple as drag and drop. At that point you’re ready to start handing out the URL!

Playback is done via an embedded online flash player that can be controlled using the return key for playback and the left-right arrow keys for moving within the playlist. You also have the option of adding muxtapes to your favorites list which is only viewable from your own login page. If you really like a specific muxtape you can also subscribe to its feed or just bookmark it. It’s that easy!

The legality of the site is definitely a concern for some people, as with any new form of music sharing. With Anywhere.fm, Hypster.com, and the slew of other mp3 uploading/music sharing sites out there, Muxtape appears to be most subdued thus making it less of a legal target. Even when compared to alternative services like Mixwit, Muxtape seems to be on a better ground. Muxtape is going to great measures to ensure that the uploaded tracks cannot be downloaded. The open source flash player plays link referrals and that linked file expires in 2 seconds making it difficult to find the file name and download it.

While Muxtape is very basic and devoid of any “real” features this is what sets it apart. For those of us who don’t want new music suggestions, to share our whole libaries, or be forced to share music in a social networking environment this site is a godsend. It’s biggest feature is that it has no features except the personalization we inject into it by painstakingly selecting our 12 perfect tracks.

(By) Written by Renee Valdez, A dot com junkie music lover and frequent blogger at Shopwiki’s Overlooked, a blog showcasing overlooked products from Shopwiki’s webcrawlers.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Simply for the sake of streaming your music from another computer, I would highly recommend Simplify Media. It has already been covered by Aibek in iTunes addons about a week ago, so I won’t go too deeply into it. Briefly, Simplify Media will allow you to listen to your friends’ shared music as though they are on your local network. I don’t have any specifics about how it works, but I suspect that it runs quite similarly to Hamachi, setting up a VPN between you and the people you add to your contact list. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux; and is compatible with iTunes, WinAmp and even the iPhone.

But there is a new kid on the block. It’s called Mojo and it’s got something up its sleeve. Mojo will allow you to browse, select and download shared music from other Mojo users. Pretty nifty and dodgy at the same time, if I may say so myself.

How does it work?

Couldn’t be simpler. After downloading Mojo, you’ll need to register and set up an account, which will then appear on your Mojo roster.

Once that is done, you can start adding other Mojo users, wait for their approval and browse their music. However, unlike Simplify Media, listening to shared music is not done in iTunes but in Mojo’s built-in music browser.

Songs which are greyed out are the ones which you already have. Restricted songs which you may not download are labelled in red.

If you see a song you like, just click on the download icon next to the name of the song and it will be downloaded and automatically added into your iTunes, arranged nicely in a Mojo playlist folder.

It’s that easy. No lengthy registration or troublesome setups. There are some down-sides, though.

I have a lot of music and I store my iTunes library on an external hard disk. I accomplish this by holding <Alt> while clicking on iTunes and choosing my target library i.e. my external hard disk. But Mojo doesn’t offer me the option of choosing the iTunes library I would like to share. Instead, it loads the default library in /User/Music/iTunes – which is empty!

There is a pretty neat option of subscribing to other user’s playlists and automatically synchronizing any new songs which are added. This means that you won’t need to keep browsing all the time to see if there are any new songs, Mojo does it for you. But surprise surprise, this feature is only available in the Pro version.

There is also a maximum number of buddies you can add. I can’t seem to find out how many it is because they won’t tell, but apparently it’s limited to 5 users on your roster at any time. So, if you need to, you may actually delete old buddies and replace them with fresh ones to fulfill your music satisfaction and urges.

All in all, although this application has a few limitations, it accomplishes the goal eventually – sharing music.

Mojo is free and available here for Mac OS X Leopard. There is also an older version (2.4) for OS X Tiger. And for all you Windows users: a beta version is available. To find out more about Mojo, watch the video screencasts here.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time med student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.

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1. Google Browser Sync – Sync Browser Bookmarks, History, Settings, etc. between diff. PCs

Google Browser Sync is a Firefox extension from Google that can auto synchronize your browser bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across multiple computers. It even lets you restore open browser tabs and windows across different machines so you can always pickup from where you left. It’s completely automated, all you need to do is to install it on all computers that you use on a regular basis.

2. SyncToy – Synchronize Files Between PC and USB Thumbdrive

USB drives are great for backups. Want to automate backup to USB process and make sure that files always remain fresh? SyncToy is simple Windows program from Microsoft that provides an easy way to sync files between the hardrive and USB Flash Drive. Check out our step by step guide to sync files between PC and USB thumb drive here.

3. DocSyncer – Sync ‘My Documents’ Office Files with Google Docs

Are you a Google Docs user? If yes, then make sure to give DocSyncer a try. This web/desktop application allows you to automatically synchronize Microsft Office files in ‘My Documents’ folder with your Google Docs account.

Why would you want to use it?

Not only it does it enable you to edit your Office docs (on all of your PCs) through Google Docs, but it also lets you keep documents that are stored on multiple PCs (work, home etc.) always synchornized with the latest version.

4. FolderShare – Synchronize Files Across Multiple Computers and Mobile Devices.

Another free utility from Microsoft. This one lets you synchronize different folders between multiple computers. There are also remote access and file sharing features. Windows only.

5. IM History – Sync chat conversations from multiple IM clients to Web

IM-History is a pretty cool desktop application that stores and syncs IM conversations from multiple instant messengers in one place. Whether you’re on Skype, MSN, AIM, ICQ, at work or at home, you can have all chat conversations securely stored online. Access and search them anytime from anywhere. Read more.

6. Nutsie – Sync your iTunes Music Library to Web and Access it from Mobile

Nutsie brings your iTunes library to your mobile phone. It creates an identical online version of your iTunes library and makes it accessible from your mobile phone or some other computer. The only problem with it is that it may take upto 2 days to generate your library.

7. ShiftD – Sync Notes, Links and Places between Multiple Devices

ShifD is a newly launched service from NY Times. It’s a one of a kind service that can be used to synchronize stuff like notes, web links and addresses (map locations) between multiple devices (mobile, Blackberry, PC, Mac etc.). For instance, if you post a note from one of the devices it will appear on all other synced devices as well. It can be used from the website, desktop client or mobile phone.

8. Mobical – Backup Mobile Contacts, Address Book, Calendar, Bookmarks and Settings

Simple and straightforward over-the-air mobile backup and restore service to automatically backup your mobile phone. Mobical creates an online copy of your mobile contents. You can edit contacts, add appointments, and save notes online and it will sync changes with your handset. Similarly, all edits you make on the phone will be synced with the web copy. Simple and convenient.

9. OggSync -Sync Windows Mobile Phone and Outlook with Google Calendar

Oggsync is a two-way sync between Outlook (or Microsoft Exchange) and Google Calendar(s). That is to say, you can view Google Calendar entries in Outlook and vice versa. For a two-way sync between Gcal and default calendar on your mobile phone see GCalSync.

10. Mozy – Backup Files to Web

Unlike anything above, Mozy is backup tool. It’s a simple, quick, and highly automated program that lets you securely backup important files online. Install it, specify which files you want it to backup, and let it do the work. No need to worry about keeping backup files up-to-date, Mozy keeps them synchronized. See demo video here.

As always, in case we missed any good sync tool please let us know in comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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IMPORTANT: All listed services are FREE, however depending on your mobile plan data transfer fees may apply. I recommended that you contact your mobile carrier and find out about your ‘data transfer’ charges before going with any of the below listed music applications.

SimplifyMedia

SimplifyMedia is a one of a kind application (Mac, Win) that lets you easily share your music library with friends and allow them to access and stream your tracks without leaving their iTunes player (screenshot). The best part about it is that it works even if you are NOT in the same network. You can also use it to access your own music library from other computers and most importantly from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

How To install SimplifyMedia on iPod Touch or iPhone:

• 1. Download SimplifyMedia client to your computer (Win / Mac) and complete sign-up process.
• 2. Download and install SimplifyMedia Mobile on your Apple device using the AppTap Installer.
• 3. From your device: Sign in with your Simplify Media username and password.

If you’re interested in seeing video demo go to SimplifyMedia : Share Music With Friends

Nutsie

Nutsie brings your iTunes library to your mobile phone. It takes a copy of your iTunes library file (get it from File->Export) and creates an identical online copy of it. Although sometimes it may take a while (1-2 days) to generate your library, it’s totally worth it.

Once your library is ready, you will be able to access it both from your mobile phone or any web-connected PC. Unlike SimplifyMedia, Nutsie streams music from their own servers and NOT from your PC so there is no need to keep it up and running.

When you access Nutsie online you also get an option to share your playlists with friends and access hundreds of shared playlists created by other Nutsie users. For more details and video demo go to Nutsie Review on MUO Directory.

Mundu Radio

Mundu is all about mobile radio. Basically, it’s a tiny mobile client that allows users to access hundreds of digital internet radio stations from several phone models.

Features include: browse radio stations by name or music genre, bookmark favorite stations to ‘favorites’ list, manage station lists online, and more. Sound quality may vary depending main only on your network speed.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in comments. Enjoy!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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1 UnwiredBuyer – Receive last minute eBay notifications and place bids directly from your mobile. Definitely a must-have for every eBay junkie. (US and Canada). Video Demo.

2. Soonr – Need to access your PC directly from the handset? Enter Soonr, a free mobile client that brings remote PC access to your phone: search files, view documents, check emails, run programs and more. US only. Video Demo.

3. Mosio – How old is Yoda? What was Einstein’s IQ? … and for all other questions simply send SMS to Mosio and get a quick reply shortly after. Screenshot. US only.

4. Plusmo – Super-fast mobile feedreader with lots of cool features. Video Demo. Another similar app is Viigo.

5. Fring – Really cool mobile app that lets you place free calls or chat with anyone from your Skype, ICQ, Google Talk, MSN, Twitter, or SIP contacts. Video Demo. You can also get same stuff with Nimbuzz.

6. Mobical – Over-the-air mobile data backup and restore service. Store and backup your contacts, synchronize data between multiple handsets and more.

7. Jajah – Dirt-cheap international call from your handset. Video Demo.

8. AllFreeCalls – Not just dirt-cheap but totally free international calls to over 50 countries. Available in US, UK, and Ireland.

9. Emoze – This one lets you push emails to your mobile. Works both with web-based emails (Gmail) and desktop clients (Outlook). I have covered a bunch of email to mobile apps here.

10. Directory Services - These services offer everything from the nearest Dominos and Movie theater schedules to the driving directions and maps to any address of your choice. There are plenty of good ones: Free411, Goog411, TellMe, and DialDirections. Although i have to warn you in advance, all of them are for the US only. European? See below.

11. Google SMS – Via SMS directory service with lots of extra features: dictionary lookup, currency converter, translations, flight schedules, stock quotes, etc. . Europeans can try Google SMS.

12. Foonz – Handy service to make group calls and send group SMS messages for free.

13. Nutsie – This ingenious app brings your iTunes music library to your mobile. Video Demo. Also check out MunduRadio to access hundreds of digital internet radio stations from any web-enabled mobile phone. Video Demo.

14. Podlinez – Any podcast any time from your handset. Completely FREE. Sorry folks, again US Only.

15. mShopper – Lookup prices and deals for any product right from phone. Quite handy for price lookups while window shopping Video Demo.. US only.

16. Trumpia – Send message to friends and get it delivered to their email, instant messenger, and mobile phone. Recipients can send replies from email, IM program or as a text message. Video Demo.

17. SoLow – Addictive auction service where the winning bidder is the one who has the lowest unique bid. Today’s auctioned items: 250$ cash, Vail Ski Holiday, and Necklace by Laura Shape. US only.

18. BooksInMyPhone – The best mobile book service out there. Comes with an excellent book reader app that makes mobile reading quite convenient. Also see DialyLit.

19. Jott – Voice-to-text transcriber with a bunch of cool features. Dial toll-free number and “Jott” yourself memo notes, Or “Jott” messages to a group of friends. Jott will transcribe your messages and send it to indicated emails.Video Demo. US only.

20. Qipit – Use phone camera to capture documents and convert them to well-formatted PDFs. Forward ready PDFs to your email or even send fax it anywhere you want. Video Demo.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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(1) Seeqpod
About: A+ service that aggregates music videos from Youtube and similar biggies and presents them, in an intuitive, fast loading, well-designed and easy-to-navigate interface. (Special thanks to Jen, for tipping us about it.)
Extra Features: 1. create/share/playback playlists, 2. in-built Audio/Video player, 3. embed playlists to your web profile, 4. submit videos, 5. view live searches performed by other users.

(2) Middio
About: simpler, less pimped and feature-handicapped alternative to Seeqpod. Although, availability of ‘Top 100′ section makes it worth a check.

Extra Features: 1. ‘Top 100′ section, 2. share (via Facebook), 3. also shows related videos.

(3) Alluc
About: rather popular user-contributed link aggregator/directory for popular entertainment content including ‘music videos’. It won’t play videos on-site, instead it’ll provide you with links (Youtube, DailyMotion, Metacage, etc.) pointing to desired videos.

Extra Features: 1. features ‘Top 20′ and ‘Newly added’ sections, 2. browse videos by alphabet, 3. submit new links, 5. report broken links, 6. shows nr. of comments and views for each video, 7. also features Sport, Anime, Movies, TV shows and Cartoons categories.

(4) TV Links (no longer online)
About: yet another link directory for popular entertainment content, but with a couple of handy extras, i.e ‘full-screen’ mode and ‘on-site’ video streaming.

Extra Features: 1. browse artists by alphabet, 2. full screen mode, 3. also features TV shows, Cartoons, Anime, Movies and Sport categories, 4.report broken videos.

(5) Aggrega
About: here is something quite unique, Aggrega lets you instantly create custom music video plaslists by simply providing it with the name of your favorite actor and/or music genre (Reggae, Pop, HipHop, etc. ). It’s like Pandora but for music videos.

Extra Features: 1. create/manage/save/share channels (sort of like dynamic playlists), 2. submit videos, 3. love/hate playing videos to make your playlists better 4. comment on videos, 5. report broken links

(6) Yahoo!Music
About: well-known, massive and nicely-presented music entertainment service from Yahoo.

Extra Features: 1. ‘Top 100′, ‘Recently Played’ and ‘Recommended Videos’ sections, 2. browse videos by artist and genre, 3. feature ‘25-videos’ editable playlists, 4. different video quality options for each video, 5. rate videos/artists, 6. view lyrics, 7. ‘email to friend’ option.

(7) AOL Music
About: AOL Music Network (US only)

Extra Features: 1. browse videos by tags and genre, 2. features ‘Most recent’, ‘Most viewed’, Highets rated’ sections (for today, this month, this week, all time), 3. embed videos to your web profile, 4. cool daily ‘Top 11′ show, 5. tag videos. [Note: music videos currently available only to US users]

(8) iFilm
About: iFilm is a popular, Youtube-like video sharing network. However unlike many other video sharing biggies, it classifies video content into mainstream categories (incl. music videos) and let its users tag videos within the particular category. Hence, you get a nicely-organized, user-contributed, and easily-navigable directory of popular music videos.

Extra Features: 1. create/save/share playlists, 2. browse videos by tags, genre, and alphabet 3. features ‘Most Popular’ (now, yesterday, this week, this year) sections, 4. lists predefined music playlists (best of 2006, classics, old school rap, etc.), 5. shows related videos (from artist, from all), 6.upload and comment on videos, 7. ‘email to friend’ option.

(9) MusicBrigade
About: “Musicbrigade is the leading independent European social networking site based on the interest in and consumption of music.” (UK and EU only)

Extra Features: 1. create/save/share playlists, 2. features ‘Top rated’, ‘Most popular’, and ‘Newly Added’ video sections, 3. browse videos by artist (top rated, by alphabet, top 100 chart), 4. rate/comment on videos.

(10) VidZone
About: In a way similar to the above mentioned ‘Yahoo!Music’ and ‘AOL Music’ networks. Although, provides rather non-obvious navigation features and will play upto 10 sec. promo videos at the beginning of each music clip.

Extra Features: 1. create/save playlists, 2. browse videos by artist and genre, 3. predefined music video channels (by Genre), 4. full screen mode, 5. features ‘Artist of the week’, ‘Top 3′ and ‘Breathtaking’ sections.

(11) HotGet
Extra Features: 1. create/save playlists, 2. Browse videos by artist, 3. share/embed videos, 4. browse lyrics (partially), 5. view recently updated playlists from other users, 6. shows number of times video was played, 7. comment on videos, 8. also lists Audio tracks.

(12) SingingFool
Extra Features: 1. create/save/share playlists 2. full screen mode, 3. embed playlists to your web profile, 4. features genre based auto-playlists (Rap, Rock, Pop, R&B, etc.), 5. submit videos, 6. Most popular section (today, yesterday, week, this month), 7. comprehensive video browsing features.

Tip: Since some of the above mentioned websites play videos directly off Youtube and similar networks, it’s possible to download desired videos to your PC. More on it, in Youtube Tools.

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