Webware

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.

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One of the key benefits of using Google Desktop rather than the search functionality that ships with Microsoft Windows XP is its speed and online functionality. Vista has improved the built-in search, but for XP users, Google Desktop is a powerful search tool that does a much better job at helping you find things, even if they're online. This morning, Google released a version of its Desktop search client for the Mac operating system. Sure enough, the release has a lot of people asking why? After all, Macs have been shipping with Spotlight, OS X's built-in system-wide search since early 2005. What could possibly make this worth installing when a search function is already installed at an operating system level? We decided to give it a go with a Mac laptop lying around at CNET Labs, to see if it's worth using.

Search is managed with a widget that displays results.

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Google Desktop installs quickly and will index everything on your computer's hard drive in a few hours depending on how many files you have. Also included in the indexing process is your entire Gmail account. Not included is data from other Google services such as Groups, Calendar, and Docs & Spreadsheets. The app is managed entirely in system preferences, where you can set which drives it should index, as well as files or folders you don't want it to look through.

To search for something, hit the apple key twice in brief succession. This will pull up a widget that you can type your search query into. Results come up as you type, and pop up at about the same speed as on Spotlight. It's also worth noting that if you don't have Google Desktop running, the keyboard shortcut won't do anything.

One thing that Google still insists on doing is using a Web browser to display full results; only a few will pull up a few in the search box. If you don't already have your browser open, Google Desktop will launch it, which is kind of a pain. If you're looking for e-mails or Web pages, this can be handy, but for local system files it just slows down the process. Spotlight is much easier to work with, pulling up a detailed results box as part of the application.

Google Desktop for Mac is a solid download, despite the fact it requires users to be running OS X 10.4 (which has Spotlight search built-in). Mac users who don't have 10.4 yet have likely been using tools such as Quicksilver and Launchbar to find and launch applications, files, and media. The Gmail integration is neat, but we would have liked to see them add integration with the rest of its office suite to make it a compelling alternative to Spotlight.

Google Desktop's indexing options. You can configure Gmail integration here as well.

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Basic program setting menu. Here you can configure things such as keyboard shortcuts and the quick search box.

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Taskbar integration. Unfortunately there's no way to do a search right from the taskbar, unlike Spotlight.

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The results page. Here you can see complete results from a search, split up by file type.

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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.

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