Napster Goes Free

Napster is now offering free music. Well, to be precise, they’re offering a free trial of their services. This free trial makes every track in their 2,000,000 song catalog up to 5 times for free. After the 5th free play of any single track, you can either purchase the track or become a Napster subscriber. Probably a good move on their part, as online users are 6 times more likely to convert into paid subscribers. I’m still a fan of iTunes, though. What’s your favorite download service?

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Perhaps this who Web 2.0 social networking and collaboration thing has gone too far: I found this website called Coastr (having the obligatory dropped "e", of course). Coastr.com is "an experiment in social networking for beer snobs…The basic idea is for you to create a list of your favorite beers, and to connect you with other people with similar tastes. And those connections will help you discover interesting new brews that you might have not known about before." I didn’t realize that I couldn’t find good beers on my own by…I don’t know, drinking them? And if the site is for beer snobs, then why are Corona, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Red Stripe showing on the homepage under the recent adds? However, the site has a link to places to drink beer, where you can look up a city and find its watering holes pinned to a map, which could be useful to see where the hot party spots are when you’re away from home. Still, social netorking for beer? I’m not feeling it.

YouTube, the popular video-sharing website has been revamped based on user feedback. The improvements include a redesigned video watch page and video player, but the old watch page is still going to be the default while everyone "test-drives" the new one and gives feedback. Other improvements are to your playlists, your videos and your favorites - they are now easily accessible from a "My Videos" link. The playlist manager was redesigned again (this is its 3rd revamp). Subscriptions are another new feature: you can now subscribe the favorites list of anyone by clicking a link in their profile. There is a "Members" tab that will show you which people were "most subscribed" that month. Finally, a bunch of "how-to" guides have been added to the Help Center.

Google has just released Google SketchUp, a 3-D modeling program that they are offering in 2 versions: a professional version licensed for commercial use, and a free one! With the SketchUp Free Edition you can make 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects, etc, etc. The models can then be placed in Google Earth, printed, or placed in the 3D Warehouse. Anything in the 3D Warehouse can be added to Google Earth or it can be used a base model that you can edit…and the the 3D Warehouse has some pretty cool models already!

Yahoo! recently acquired a company called Meedio, and they have wasted no time rebranding Meedio’s PVR technology as "Yahoo Go TV." The technology is available now as a free download from Yahoo!. Using Go TV  requires the following: a Windows XP® operating system, a 1 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 40 MB free disk space for installation, 20 GB additional disk space for TV recordings, a high-speed Internet connection of at least 1.5Mbps recommended, a TV with video and audio input connections, cables to connect your PC and TV , and, optionally, a TV tuner card and remote control (required to enable the DVR functionality). Then you just connect the cables, download the software, and if desired, set up the DVR. Yahoo! Go TV isn’t just about getting TV on your computer — it also works the other way, too. Go TV brings Yahoo! to your televsion so that you can view photos, search for video clips and watch movie trailers on your TV. Pretty cool stuff.

Early today, Microsoft posted a new Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 7, their new standalone browser for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. This is not a preview release, but the real deal…or perhaps I should say…the real "beta." Along with the release comes a new Add-Ons website for the IE 7 browser. From the IE Blog, Dean writes: "This evening we released IE7 Beta 2 at http://www.microsoft.com/ie. This release is not the preview or the update to the preview, but the real Beta 2 of IE7 for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows XP 64-bit Edition. Simply: please try it." Changes to this release include some CSS behaviors, application compatibility feedback, reliability data, and user experience feedback. He jokingly adds, that "yes, we do analyze the information that comes when you click “Send Error Report”…" Good to know! Free phone support is being offered to customers in North America, Germany, and Japan to encourage people to try this beta software without fear of messing up their computer. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch notes of this new release: "The key features are tabbed browsing (including “Quick Tabs”, a way to see multiple web pages on a single tab), a continuation of the minimalist approach on the UI and toolbars, and enhancements to the RSS reader built into the browser." Looks like it’s time to try the new IE!

Blog spam is a hot issue. One way to fight comment spam is the use of captchas…but how do you, as a blog reader, feel about this? Let’s Vote!

The federal government will soon put bandwidth on the auction block. Two major bandwidth ranges, currently valued at $10 - 15 billion, will be available. The first auction will be in June and will offer the 1710-1755 and 2110-2155 MHz frequency bands for sale. It’s said that Google, Amazon, and Ebay are preapring to bid on these bands. Recently, the Net Neutrality bill was defeated, which would have prevented ISPs from charging content providers (like Google) on a tiered scale based on bandwidth usage. So, who wants to bet Google is just building their own internet instead? I do!

SimplyBill is a Web 2.0 billing web-based application. SimplyBill lets you easily create invoices that you can send to clients by email or print out to mail. You can subscribe to your invoices with RSS (handy!), export your data for use in desktop spreadsheet applications, send reminders and thank-you messages to clients, keep track of payments you’ve received, get email alerts when invoices become overdue, set up recurring invoices to make sure you get paid, & tag your invoices to find out which types of invoices you send the most and which are for the most money. There are many pre-designed templates you can customize and you can use your flickr images on email messages. Nifty!

The Hunch Engine is a new application developed by Icosystem that builds upon human inituition. It’s a "way of doing search when you don’t really know what you are looking for, but you’ll know it when you find it." For example, they created a hunch engine to search through the flickr image library. The way it works is described on their site like this: "The user clicks on one or more images that he or she finds "interesting", and then clicks the evolve button. The Hunch Engine returns a new batch of images that are mutations of those selected by the user." There is a screenshot of their demo here, but no link that lets you actually use it yet. Fascinating, isn’t it? I hope that we will all be able to test this ourselves soon, but in the meantime, it may be good to keep tabs on their site for news.