Webware

We last took a look at the iTunes plug-in The Filter way back in 2006, so it's high time to see what this alternative to the Genius playlist is up to. Of course, when it first came out there was no Genius playlist, nor a Mac version--now that there's both, does it hold up?

Certainly the most obvious benefit is that although you do need to register to use the playlist, you don't need to hand over your credit card number to this Peter Gabriel-supported plug-in. These days many people probably don't care, but to me this is a strong vote in The Filter's favor.

Paranoia aside, The Filter seems to have made some serious, quality improvements. It still uses Bayesian mathematics algorithms and evidence models to make its suggestions, and it still takes what feels like forever and a day to scan large collections. That's not an improvement, of course, but it no longer lives on top of all other windows, either.

Instead, its icon lives on the Quick Launch bar. Right-clicking accesses a context menu, and from there users can jump to Preferences, thefilter.com, or change the default playlist generation from being based on the song to the genre. Double-click on the icon and it automatically generates a playlist, as long as a track is currently playing. Aside from scanning your collection I found The Filter to be reasonably responsive, if not zippy.

The Taste Profiler is a mandatory aspect of using The Filter. Before it can recommend playlists, and before you even finish installing it, The Filter requires that you rate at least three musicians and movies. In addition to music and movies, you can also rate TV shows and Web-only video.

The overall experience is slower than using Apple's Genius playlist, probably in no small part because it's a plug-in. However, The Filter now works with Windows Media Player and Winamp, although not MediaMonkey, on the PC, so non-iTunes lovers will probably be willing to suffer through the one- or two-second delay in getting their playlist kicked back to them. Rolling in all kinds of videos make this even more useful to today's mediascape.

FixMyMovie is a new service that takes your pixelated digital video clips and does its best to fix them. The technology stems from MotionDSP's processing technology, which is similar to what's used in government intelligence operations to improve those dark and grainy security films--like you see in movies.

The entire process is fairly straightforward: Just upload and tag a supported movie file, and the service will crunch it on its servers. You get a note by e-mail when it's done. Once it's finished you can preview the first 10 seconds of the enhanced version, as well as compare before and after results live, by pressing the "compare" button. What's even cooler is a stills mode that lets you compare the before and after with an easy-to-use slider that follows your mouse. Whatever's on the left of the slider is the old, with the new on the right.

To grab the improved film, there are download options for multiple formats, including iPod-formatted H.264, Adobe Flash, and Windows Media. You can also grab quick embed code to stick it in any blog, which I've done after the break.

I tried out the service on several video clips this morning and got improved results on every single one of them. The most dramatic improvement of all was with text, which managed to turn almost unreadable pixelated words into legible sentences. Just be wary, though: The service can only handle clips up to 352x288 in resolution, which means the VGA videos from your digital camera aren't going to cut it. Older cameras, on the other hand, are fine.

FixMyMovie is launching in beta at this morning's DEMOfall conference in San Diego with $25 worth of free processing for everyone while still in its beta period. Eventually, FixMyMovie plans to charge users for the option to enhance video and still images, which can also be captured manually by users within the Flash player. I can see this service being hugely popular, as everyone wants better looking video clips, and ways to improve older, lower resolution clips.

Update: It's worth noting you need the latest beta of Adobe Flash 9 to view videos on the service (which makes the neat, live before and after feature possible). You can pick it up here, or just get a feel for what it can do with the screenshot below.

FixMyMovie did a great job with this choppy and pixelated video clip, making small bits of text actually legible.

Up until this afternoon I had never heard of the expression "hypervideo," although I was quite familiar with the concept having used it in video services like Viddler, and enhanced podcasts in Windows Media Player. The idea is simple--take hyperlinks and textual information, and add it to various times or positions on a video. The result is that your viewers can have added contextual information about whatever they're watching, at the moment it happens.

The hard part is the execution, and making things user-friendly. A service called Asterpix has taken a stab at it with a hypervideo service that lets users build their own link-infested videos, complete with visual cues that tell you when you can access the added URLs and notes. While watching a video that's been enhanced on Asterpix, you won't notice much besides a small glowing circle that will show up on a person or object, and track them as they move. When you mouseover the notification, the video will pause, and you'll get a little page full of whatever text or links users have added to the video.

The actual process of adding these links takes two-steps. The first is picking the video you want to annotate. This is managed through the integrated search tool, which will scour YouTube, Google, MySpace, Brightcove and MTV to let you find whatever you'd looking for. Unfortunately you can't just plug in a video URL from one of these services, but if you know the title, you're good to go. The second step involves maneuvering a box around any object in the video clip and adding a description, URL, and tags. To do this, you simply need to highlight the object with a box. The service will do its best to track the object you've tagged, which it managea to do really well with on clips where there aren't quick cutaways.

The end result is a video experience that is slightly disjointed due to starting and stopping videos, coupled with various flashing indicators that pop up on the screen. If you're just in it to watch the video, you can turn the notes off, or click the link to watch the video on its original site. Also, if you're trying to avoid the flashing indicators altogether, there's a index on the left that shows all the notes for the entire clip. Clicking any of them will jump you right to the spot, complete with annotation.

I actually prefer Viddler's approach to this entire concept with their timed tags and comments, which are visually separated into two groups by color. The only downside with that system is that you can't call action to what's going on in certain part of the screen, and with more than 30 or 40 comments on a short video, things get a little hectic. However, when you scale Asterpix's approach to visual tagging, the entire screen will be covered in little pulsing indicators--not exactly viewer-friendly.

For other solutions that do visual video annotation with existing videos, see BubblePly and the currently defunct Click.TV.

Tag people or objects in a video with Asterpix. In this case, we're annotating Erica Ogg's face for the sake of identification.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

MediaMaster is one of many companies worth keeping an eye on, mainly for the potential of having your entire music library available anywhere you go, as long as you've got an Internet connection. Their Facebook app, which went live just a few weeks ago, is a prime example of a great use of the service.

The app lets you set up a huge playlist of music, and serve it up right on your profile in a miniplayer. Anyone who comes by your profile can then get the full quality versions of the tracks streamed in whatever order you set up. Uploading and rearranging tracks is all managed at MediaMaster's site, and once you're done, the site will jump you back to Facebook. The best part--your friends don't have to install a thing to enjoy the fruits of your labor. There are also quick button presets to play the track list in Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media Player, in case you want to subscribe to the station or feel like venturing off the profile page.

The Facebook app is an extension of the radio feature, which the company unveiled earlier this month. To take it beyond Facebook, you can give a direct URL of the playlist to your friends, or plug it into a smart phone. If you've got a speedy mobile data connection, you'll be able to stream your music to your phone from anywhere you get range.

The one major drawback at this point is the lack of playlist controls. The inline player merely plays the stream from beginning to end, with no real control for playing music on demand the way you can on other popular Facebook music apps like iLike, Last.fm, and even Box.net's file-sharing widget. At this point you're limited to finding out whatever the song's track name and artist are from the radio stream's metadata.

The real killer app MediaMaster has over the others is its core service, which at this point feels a lot like an online version of iTunes. You can find our hands-on take on the service earlier this year here.

Friends and profile visitors alike can listen to your own custom playlist any time they want, right on your profile or on their favorite music jukebox software.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

MediaMaster is a Web-based jukebox service that launched last week. MediaMaster gives users free storage space to upload their tunes and listen to them anywhere they have Internet access. The interface is clean, simple, and intuitive--if you're used to iTunes or Windows Media Player you'll feel right at home. Users can upload their tunes with two uploaders, a simple one for a few tracks and an advanced version that lets you simply drag and drop files from file folders right into the uploader.

Once your tracks are uploaded, you can create and manage playlists, rate individual songs, and share your music with others with embeddable widgets for blogs, Web sites, and social networking profiles.

MediaMaster has a lot of personality. Having an incomplete album will give album art a little "bite mark" out of it. Its radio station feature gives you a URL to publish so people can subscribe and listen to your customized playlists or music recommendations.

For copyright concerns, neither the widget or radio subscriptions actually give people copies of your music, it's all streamed. Likewise, there's no way for you to download the music once it's been uploaded, it can only be deleted.

For now, the service offers unlimited storage space, with plans to cap off user accounts at 4GB. There's also planned iPod integration. MediaMaster will let users upload any unprotected MP3, WMA, and M4A (AAC) file, complete with album art if it's within the file's metadata. Give it a spin here.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Wal-Mart is joining the fray of movie download services today. Its new store (which is mysteriously unfriendly to Firefox) features movies from all six major studios including Disney and Sony--two studios that have a long history of proprietary use and ties to competing download services.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Films range from about $13 to $20 and can be watched almost immediately depending on your connection. Movies are managed and played through a custom player that runs only on Windows PCs. You also can watch the movies in Windows Media Player. Like the iTunes Movie Store, titles released on DVD will be available digitally the day they're out.

The files reside on your hard drive and can be backed up and transferred to a portable device. Each file weighs in around 500MB to 1GB. Downloaded movies will play on Creative's players and several Archos models, but not your iPod or (no surprise) Microsoft's Zune.

This new service doesn't get me that excited. I'd like to see the prices on digital downloads come down substantially. I'm not sure who is going to pay $13 to $20 for a DRM'd download that has no special features and can't be downloaded again upon accidental deletion. There are a lot of competitors in this field, and I think the lack of compatibility with iPods and PSPs makes choosing a digital download over an actual DVD tough.