Webware

TuneWiki is one of the most ambitious social music projects we've seen. It is part licensed lyrics spooler for your own songs and for streaming YouTube videos, and part network--you can see where else in the world other TuneWiki users are playing your track. What began as an Android app created for Google's Android Developer Challenge (and finished as one of 10 winners) grew into a Web site and is, as of Monday, a Windows Media Player plug-in.

TuneWiki for Windows Media Player has a few flubs and flaws, but on average, the lyrics and music maps add the utility and interest to make the free application a helpful addition to Windows Media Player.

Those familiar with TuneWiki's Web site will see the similarities right away. TuneWiki's interface reskins Windows Media Player's 'Now Playing' window. The top half of the screen displays either a music map of where else in the world songs are playing, a YouTube video, album art, or top songs nearby, depending on if you're playing a song from your library, watching a YouTube video through TuneWiki, or browsing the map.

The bottom half of the screen, below the ad space, is where you'll see the available lyrics stream, plus commands to translate into other languages, help TuneWiki resync the song, and expose the scroll bar for manual lyrics perusal.

The unskinned Windows Media Player playlist forms the right side bar unless you banish it. We suggest you don't--you may have a harder time queuing songs if you do.

(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)

TuneWiki has its share of rough edges. Some tools aren't immediately intuitive, like the resyncing button. Instead of clicking it to have the song resync itself, you click it, then click each line of the song as it plays to help TuneWiki time the lyrics more accurately. Unless you're an approved editor, your version of the time-synced lyrics will be stored locally, but may not make it into TuneWiki's larger database.

Also not obvious is the fact that only approved editors can edit existing lyrics. A text notice on the editor-only area would wipe away potential confusion and frustration. Anyone, however, can add lyrics to TuneWiki's wiki if there aren't any to begin with. (You can apply to be an editor at forums.tunewiki.com. TuneWiki currently tallies abut 1,500 editors.)

Some other issues we encountered were performance-based or preference-related. We'd like the size of the YouTube video to be adjustable, for instance. If the YouTube video stops, as it did once during testing, we want to refresh it without closing and reopening the app. When searching for songs, we'd like a more elegant display of the artist and album information returned in the results. TuneWiki's plug-in is good enough to use on its own, but in a few iterations from now, after a scrub-up, it should be even more promising.

PALM DESERT, Calif.--How can friends and family best share their experiences of things or events they did together?

A Taiwanese company called Qubes took the stage at Demo 09 Tuesday morning to offer its answer: Gagapost.

This is essentially collaborative blogging, in which multiple users can all share ownership and authorship of the blog they've created. In many ways, this is very much like a wiki, but with a simpler front end and cross-Web commenting tools that anyone can use, regardless of whether they're one of the blog's owners.

The company presented an example of co-workers who have returned from a party and who want to both share their thoughts on the event. So one would start the post, save it, and then invite their co-worker to participate. That person would then get the invitation and would be able to instantly start adding their own thoughts to the post.

In addition, the service allows commenting--and comment threads--anywhere on a post, not just at the bottom of the page. This is nice, because it makes it possible to quickly see readers' reactions right at the spot where you want to see it, rather than having to interrupt your train of thought to scroll down to the bottom. It also makes contextual commenting possible, something that has been sorely needed.

And these days, something like Gagapost wouldn't be complete without an associated iPhone application. And indeed, Gagapost has such an app, one that allows an iPhone user to start a post, take pictures on the device and share them, and also share ownership of the post with others. This then works both mobile-to-mobile and mobile-to-PC.

All in all, this is a very simple concept. As with everything, it is too early to tell if users will flock to this new platform, especially with so many other well-established competitor platforms, but if people do come, this could present a nice alternative to the established blogging model.

Widgetbox plus Confluence=fun

(Credit: Widgetbox)

Widgetbox widgets "componentize" applications and Web sites, making them portable and transferable across any Web site. To date, the focus has been on consumers, but the integration with a clear enterprise business product like Confluence is a good step behind the firewall. The company also recently introduced Blidgets, which take any feed and turn it into a widget.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Confluence wiki and Atlassian's bug-tracking tool, Jira, they provide free versions to open-source projects and accordingly have a huge market presence in the open-source community. They also happen to have a very good business selling their tools as one of Australia's fastest-growing software companies.

The Atlassian tools are utilitarian applications that get the job done right. However, once you get involved in seriously trying to customize your wiki or bring in outside applications and data, you quickly hit a wall.

Besides my obvious suggestion of incorporating video games into your corporate wiki, Widgetbox can help you bring in and manage all kinds of news feeds, as well as data from other sites, with in a much simpler manner then previously available.

The Medpedia Project, a joint effort on the part of Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, and other global health organizations, announced Tuesday that it has launched the beta version of its new site which it calls a new model "of how the world will assemble, maintain, critique and access medical knowledge."

The site features a repository of up-to-date medical information, contributed and maintained by health professionals from around the world. The site also boasts a Professional Network and Directory for visitors to find health professionals and organizations, a Communities of Interest section where medical experts and patients can share conditions and treatments, and a growing knowledge base featuring information on health issues ranging from back pain to diabetes.

Medpedia offers Wiki pages and Doctor Q&A to address your concerns.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)

Since the Medpedia Project was announced in July, over 100 organizations have contributed over 7,000 pages to the site's knowledge base.

I had the chance to use the new Medpedia platform Tuesday and I was impressed by the site. As with any wiki, you can search the site for specific ailments or ask general questions that might already have been answered by the community of doctors.

The site's Knowledge Base section consists of Wiki articles, but there's one catch: only physicians and those with a Ph.D. are allowed to edit the articles, and only once their credentials are certified. That cuts down on the number of erroneous bits of information that crop up on the site and, in my opinion, makes the site more reliable than a resource like Wikipedia, which anyone can modify.

Overall, I was impressed with the wealth of information Medpedia provides. After inputting simple keywords like "back pain," I was brought to a results page that not only featured a Wiki containing general information about the ailment and links to other, related Medpedia Wikis, but also a series of answers provided by doctors to questions asked by the site's users. And although some weren't directly targeted at my query, I could have easily asked my own set of questions, which would have been answered directly by a medical professional.

Since Medpedia is only in beta, I can't fault the company for not having information on every conceivable health topic--there were a few obscure conditions I looked up just to see if it provided articles on them and it didn't--but more Wiki pages are being added each day and the community is growing. It will be interesting to see how this project grows, and I'll be keeping an eye on it to see if it can eventually provide more information and value to users than WebMD.

Updated 2/11/09 at 6:50 P.M. PT to add more context to the licensing debate and to correct Amnon Sarig's title.

(Credit: TuneWiki)

Back in October, we took a look at close look at TuneWiki, a media enhancement application for Google Android that scrolls through a song's lyrics as you play a song or YouTube music video. The company announced this week an update to its free Android application that will let you also stream Internet radio on your phone. The update, which will be submitted to the Android Market this Saturday, will give streaming songs TuneWiki's lyrical capabilities, as well as its social networking enhancements. As a moral perk, many of the lyrics will be legally licensed. We'll lay out the program's highs and lows, general availability, and some legal particulars.

We mostly liked TuneWiki when it first came out--certainly the idea of it, and in general the application's performance. It is also the first application of this type that I've seen for mobile phones. (The free-to-try application MiniLyrics has been around for a while on the desktop.) TuneWiki wasn't always as stable as we'd have liked, and syncing wasn't always on-point. We looked forward to the media application's next steps. Lyrics precision and a few stability issues were still present in our preview version of TuneWiki; hopefully the latter will be addressed by the time TuneWiki 1.0 reaches the Android Market.

Streaming Internet radio
Providing Internet lyrics, and legal ones at that, are the two biggest points of interest in this update. First let's tackle the streaming Internet feature. Like Pandora, Last.FM, and Slacker Radio, TuneWiki's Internet radio feature (designated by a microphone icon on the application's navigation menu) lets you choose stations by genre and popularity, and save favorite stations. In addition, TuneWiki can display a music map showing you where else the song is playing at that moment, and can stream lyrics that users have uploaded into TuneWiki's database from its Web site--the 'wiki' element of TuneWiki's service.

TuneWiki's streaming lyrics component only works for some stations, and then the lyrics are only as good as the user-generated database itself. If you're lucky enough to get a station compatible with TuneWiki's lyrics software, making them sync with the streaming song is your next challenge.

TuneWiki tasks you with finding your place and then tapping on it, after which the software takes over and highlights the lines for you. This TuneWiki did, but on a song with a quick tempo, the feature didn't kick in until two more lines had played. This is by far the application's biggest drawback. In addition, artist credits were only present on stations that could stream TuneWiki's lyrics. For many stations, we were left in the dark.

Of legalities and lyrics
In addition to streaming Internet radio, TuneWiki is announcing a partnership with a major music publishers association that grants TuneWiki the rights to stream lyrics for almost 2 million songs. Music law is complicated stuff, but as TuneWiki's President, Amnon Sarig, explains it, the licenses let TuneWiki legitimately give the green light to many user-submitted lyrics. Those that fall outside the licensing scope are protected under the 'safe harbor' provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Wikipedia). TuneWiki isn't breaking any laws--for now--by streaming any unlicensed lyrics its users upload, unless the rights-owner asks for a take-down. (Sarig told CNET in an interview that his company complies with publishers' requests to block song lyrics.) This is interesting stuff, especially in light of Warner Music Group's lawsuit against Seeqpod for its role in corralling copyrighted MP3s for users to play. Perhaps TuneWiki's show of good faith and latest licensing gains will shield it from similar lawsuits.

Availability
TuneWiki plans to submit the free version 1.0 of its lyrics application to Google's Android Market. By March or April, the company expects to release TuneWiki for BlackBerry, J2ME, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. These versions are currently being tested in a closed beta program. It is also possible to download TuneWiki onto jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches, though there is currently no listing in the iTunes App Store.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Encyclopedia Britannica President Jorge Cauz said that the encyclopedia's free, online version, Britannica.com, will soon be allowing user edits and additions to its pages. This system is not yet live, but according to the Herald should be within the next day or so.

Registered users will be able to make corrections, or add entirely new sections to encyclopedia pages--much like Wikipedia. The big difference, however, is that Britannica.com's editing and approval system will be managed by its own editors and contracted staff instead of power users. According to the Herald, Cauz is promising a 20-minute turnover on these edits, but that number could go up dramatically if the company cannot anticipate a large influx of edits at once.

Cauz also told the Herald that the big reason for the change is to improve Britannica's search engine optimization and dethrone Wikipedia from its current dominance on Google.com and other search engines. These edits will also trickle down into the print edition, benefiting those who purchase its 30-plus volume set.

The Washington Post today is launching Who Runs Gov, a site primarily made up of a database of personalities in the United States government. If you're looking for info on your state's senator or representative, or details about a cabinet or high-ranking military official, it looks like the site could be a valuable resource.

Who Runs Gov profile pages are consistent and useful.

Who Runs Gov is a wiki, powered by MindTouch. Registered users can edit the pages, but changes don't go live until the site's staffers approve the edits. Also, subjects of Who Runs Gov profile pages (or their staff) will be able to submit their own profile information for inclusion on pages about them, a fundamental difference from Wikipedia, where you're not supposed to write about yourself.

As on other wikis, users can easily check out the edits and revisions that have been made to any page.

In a quick side-by-side comparison with competitor Wikipedia, I found Who Runs Gov far more consistent and predictable, although--so far--lacking the diversity of viewpoints that makes it into many Wikipedia entries.

A New York State court judge denied on Monday Amazon.com and Overstock.com's attempt to avoid lawmaker demands that the online retailers collect sales tax from New York state residents, even though the companies don't have a physical presence in the state. Neither company has commented on the decision, but there is a strong possibility that the case could move into the Court of Appeals as Amazon and Overstock continue their fight.

CollegeWikis, an online group for college students to send messages and create their own groups based on class year, dorm, or courses, has become Regroup.com. More importantly, the service also announced Tuesday that it's now integrated with Facebook Connect and that users can finally create private groups. The site's redesign and new features are live now.

KickApps, the online video player and social media platform, announced Tuesday the release of KickApps App Studio, which will provide drag-and-drop widget and video player services to users who wish to add third-party tools. According to the company, its users can create "highly customized" embeddable Flash applications using drag-and-drop functionality. And through KickApps' new partnership with Yahoo and Meebo, users can integrate Meebo Rooms and Yahoo Maps into their widget. KickApps says that more third-party partnerships are on the way. Plug-in APIs will be available in the second quarter.

iPhone developer Gorloch Interactive announced Tuesday that it has launched Boombox, a music streaming service for the iPhone and iPod Touch that uses Blip.fm's song library. Users are able to create playlists and purchase those songs from iTunes. The app is free and available now on iTunes.

The Washington Post announced Tuesday that it will provide live video coverage of President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural events on January 20. The show will start at 5 a.m. PST when the Obama family leaves the Blair House and conclude when the inauguration parade is complete. Post reporters using cell phone video cameras will talk with those on-hand and include the interviews in the live recording.

Disagree with Google's search results? You'll be able to do something about it with a change the company plans to release starting Thursday.

Google's SearchWiki is a feature that lets people elevate, delete, add, and annotate search results. Google remembers the changes a person made to search results, so repeat searches will show the same customizations and notes.

Google has been offering SearchWiki as an experimental feature to some people for months, but starting Thursday it will become available to anybody who's searching while logged in with a Google account.

"This is a search feature that gets a user more control over their search results," said Cedric Dupont, Google's SearchWiki product manager.

SearchWiki shows an up arrow for promoting Web sites, an X for deleting them, and a 'note this' speech bubble for adding comments.

(Credit: Google)

There's also a collaborative element: people can show the collective wisdom of the masses by clicking a "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link at the bottom of each search results page. That shows notes and how people have promoted or deleted pages in aggregate.

Google isn't alone in its customization work. With a research project called U Rank, Microsoft has been testing the user-tuned search results idea. Mahalo presents search results created by humans. And Wikia Search, an open-source search engine, is open to user suggestions. "Today, search undervalues the human touch," argues Wikia Search.

Feedback for ordinary search?
Where things get interesting is whether Google will use people's voting behavior as an input to the regular search algorithm that determines the order of search results. Google already employs human judgment in its algorithm by virtue of its PageRank technique, which judges a Web site's merit in part on how many other Web sites link to it, but people promoting or deleting specific Web addresses could be another signal.

Dupont was noncommittal about whether the company planned to build in that feedback loop, either directly as a signal to influence search rankings or indirectly as extra data that could help the company judge the relevance of its search results. But he certainly didn't rule the idea out.

"We don't close any doors. We constantly evaluate signals" that are incorporated into the search results algorithm. "Search is adapting to the Internet as it becomes a more participatory medium. Now you have people telling us specific things about how they'd like to see their search results."

Certainly people's collective behavior could be useful. For example, Dupont said, "You could imagine if we do see a particular site (about which) people have a unanimous opinion, that might trigger external things. Like maybe we should check out our spam control," he said. In other words, if a lot of people deleted a particular page from search results, perhaps Google should check why its system isn't flagging that page as a problem.

Another narrower possibility could be to use SearchWiki customizations to influence the personalized search results people can get through Google by signing up for the Web history feature. Dupont seemed cooler on this idea.

With SearchWiki, Google produces "customized search results in a very granular and precise manner," adjusting only specific Web addresses and not broad influencers on search results. "At this point we don't have anything to say about how to combine these two features."