Make music a social experience with these sites

We all like to share songs with friends, and we all have songs that share meaning with loved ones. Perhaps that's why there are so many music social networks out there. These sites combine both, and make music exploration and enjoyment something that you're not doing on your own.

From the well-known to the obscure, I've been exploring a variety of music social networks that you'll definitely want to check out:

Buzznet is a great way to connect with other music lovers. You can write status updates and view an activity feed that shows what your friends are listening to. You can also tell all your friends what your "song of the moment" is and post it to a profile that can be completely redesigned and themed using built-in tools.

Buzznet has some songs from major artists, but I would have liked to see more tracks. That said, the site makes up for it with music videos from YouTube. That adds a bit more value, as long as the recording quality is good..

Log all your Facebook chats in Firefox

Facebook's built-in chat service is convenient, but where it lacks when compared to software-based chat tools is in letting users log past conversations. Facebook intentionally does not save full conversations, however it does keep a few lines from the last time you chatted with someone so you can pick up where you left off.

If you're looking for more though, there's a new Firefox add-on called Facebook Chat History Manager that saves all of your conversations locally. As long as you're using the browser with it installed, it saves everything and puts it into a log that can be filtered by friend or date. There is, however, no search function, so if you're looking for a specific word or phrase from a past chat, you'll have to view all your chats on one page, then use Firefox's built-in search tool. Hopefully a later version will add a way to search from the local index.

Since the extension saves all of your chats locally, you're totally hosed if your computer gets lost, stolen, or suffers failed hard drive. On the flip side of that, the chat log viewer is password protected, so there are no worries of someone else gaining access to your entire chat history.

If you're a heavy Facebook chat user who does not access the service through a software chat client, this extension is one of the easiest ways to log your chats, and definitely worth the download.

Gmail mobile gets keypad shortcuts auto-complete

On Wednesday Google released two small but important updates to the mobile version of Gmail. New to the service are keyboard shortcuts and address auto-completion; two time-saving features that desktop Gmail users have been enjoying for years.

The keyboard shortcuts (obviously) do not work on the iPhone. For now, Google is limiting them to Android phones with a physical keyboard. These are exactly the same as on the desktop version, so you don't need to re-learn anything.

The auto-completion, on the other hand, is available to everyone and is quite a time saver. It begins pulling up names from your contacts as soon as you type just one letter.

Auto-completion only works in the "to" field when typing a new e-mail though, and does not work on Gmail's search like you're able to do on the desktop variant by using the Gmail labs add-on. Hopefully that feature will trickle down to this mobile version, since it's immensely helpful when trying to add search operators, or sort out messages from specific contacts.

One thing to note is that these new features are only available in the English version of Gmail mobile. Google has not said if, or when, they will make their way to other localizations of the service.

Manage your social life with these apps

Managing social network profiles is getting more difficult. As we sign up for more services, we need to split our time between multiple sites. But with the help of social aggregators, we can limit those issues. The following tools do a fine job of keeping your social life in one spot, helping you to monitor it more efficiently.

I should note, though, that these won't be your path to social networking bliss. Some folks find aggregators too overwhelming. They believe these resources only complicate matters. You might agree after trying some of these tools.

I should also note that Facebook Connect--Facebook's single sign-on service that competes with OpenID--might soon match these aggregation services. Users can already bring some items with them to Facebook. It might only be a matter of time before the service allows users to pull full social network feeds into Facebook.

Social network aggregators
Atomkeep Atomkeep is designed to help you sync all your profile information across multiple social networks. When you change your profile information on the site, all the networks you sync with it will be updated automatically. So, if you're moving to a new home, you can go to Atomkeep, change your address, and it will update that information on Facebook, Bebo, and other social networks. The site is in private beta, so you'll need an invite code to try it out.

Yahoo to distrbute its version of Hadoop

Yahoo announced plans Wednesday to release an open-source version of its take on Hadoop, a grid-computing framework used to run many parts of its business.

Yahoo is a major force in the development of Hadoop, which is principally overseen by the Apache Software Foundation. Hadoop is essentially an open-source version of the software Google uses to run its Web indexing servers, and Yahoo uses it for much the same purpose internally.

Hadoop runs on tens of thousands of servers inside Yahoo, said Nigel Daley, quality and release engineering manager for Yahoo Grid Technologies, in a blog post Wednesday. That's a much larger implementation than other companies and organizations might wish to deploy, but at the same time they would like to benefit from the reliability tweaks that Yahoo has made to Hadoop in order to support its enormous Web properties.

"This distribution is largely a response to the numerous requests that we have received to share Yahoo!'s internally tested and scale-proven releases," Daley wrote. The code is available for download immediately here on Yahoo's site.

Blellow: A New Site for Freelancers

Looking for a new way to find freelancing work, network, and help out your fellow freelancer? If you’re a Twitter user, Blellow may be right up your alley. Blellow is a social networking community for freelancers and creative professionals who answer the question “What are you working on?”

It works much like Twitter. You follow and are followed by other Blellow users, and you enter status updates (in 300 characters or less). The fundamental difference is that it’s work-based: you describe what you’re working on, a problem you are having, or help you need on a particular project or problem. Then, other Blellow members will reply to your thread with suggestions, solutions, or comments.

Kudos

Blellow has a driving purpose of sharing knowledge and collaborating with others. Users who regularly help others solve problems and find solutions can receive “kudos” from the original poster of an issue or problem. You can give out as many kudos as you like for each thread. The idea is to reward the person who helped you the most.

Groups

Groups allow topics to be organized and sorted, i.e. Photoshop, Web Designers, Entrepreneurs, etc. By joining a group you can immediately interact with other members without having to follow anyone.

Projects

Projects allow you to post a request for assistance on one project. Projects can be paid or pro bono. Pro bono projects are unpaid projects meant to add to your portfolio, but may lead to further paid work depending on the project and popularity.

Jobs

The Jobs section is a job board that allows businesses and individuals to post jobs for full-time, part-time, and contract positions in the categories of design, development, writing and other.

Meetups

Blellow provides an opportunity for live gatherings for networking, socializing, or just getting to know the people you interact with on Blellow.

Overall, it’s an interesting new service that can be a potential powerhouse for freelancers once it takes off, especially for those accustomed to Twitter. The goal of information sharing among colleagues is great on it’s own, but the added features of a job board and project help may also make Blellow a great new way to find freelance work.

Have you used Blellow? What do you think about it?

Article source: Sitepoint

Web Fonts: Do Something Positive!

Mark Pilgrim has fanned the flames of the web font debate with his post today, entitled F**k the Foundries. It’s a shame he chose to express his thoughts as an angry rant, because his tone undermines some important points.
The Debate in a Nutshell

This debate isn’t simple, but it isn’t terribly complicated either.

The good news is that the people actually involved in this debate (as opposed to those just shouting from the sidelines), including font vendors, browser vendors, and professional web designers, actually agree on some important points:

* web fonts should not be encumbered by DRM (hooray!)
* there should be a convenient way to license commercial fonts for use on the Web

Among the browser vendors there is heated debate over whether browsers should support the use of ‘free’ fonts (for most meanings of ‘free’) using existing file formats on the Web. In fact, this debate is a distraction that would immediately evaporate if the real issue could be resolved.

The only significant point that the people involved disagree on is whether or not the file format that is used for licensed, commercial fonts on the Web should include the details of the license embedded within it or not. If yes, the format must be developed and support added to browsers.

Microsoft has already built the beginnings of such a format, but further investment is needed. Meanwhile, there are many who believe that the time and effort required to develop, license, and support such a format in all major browsers is too great, or that it will have little or no practical benefit, and is therefore unjustifiable.

Right now, the game is at a stalemate; Microsoft and the commercial font vendors believe the new file format is needed, but are unable to develop it with the available time and money. Everyone else believes current font formats like OpenType are all we need, but they don’t control the fonts.

If you’ve ever played chess, you know there is nothing more frustrating than a stalemate: everyone walks away angry. That’s why the only real developments in the font debate lately seem to be explosions of anger like Mark Pilgrim’s.
Do Something Positive

As a web designer, whatever you believe, you’re probably frustrated too. Instead of joining the shouting match, try making a positive contribution to fonts on the Web.

Here’s one important way that you can: Buy a font. Send a message.

Maybe, like Mark Pilgrim, you would happily pay to use commercial fonts in the web sites you design, and you don’t believe upstanding web designers like you need a new file format to make you aware of the license terms that apply to fonts. If only those backward font foundries would take your money!

Well guess what: they will!

There are legal ways to use commercial fonts on the Web today; they just aren’t particularly convenient. Nevertheless, professional designers use solutions like sIFR and CSS image replacement to use commercial fonts on the Web every day.

The next time you design a site, use one of these techniques to demonstrate your willingness to support commercial fonts on the Web. Simply include a commercial font or two in your design, and make sure you buy a license to use those fonts. Once you have—and this is the important part—tell the world you did!

Include a colophon page on your site that lists the fonts you used, and states that they are fully licensed. Send an email to the designer or foundry that created the font and let them know you bought it to use in a web site design.

Most importantly, mention in your note that you would gladly pay an additional fee (a fair one) to use the existing OpenType version of the font file on your site, if they would only offer a license that allowed you to do so.

The good news in all this is that commercial font vendors are not the monolithic entity that many tirades like Mark Pilgrim’s make them out to be. Most of them are tiny studios with just a few designers who just want to design fonts and get paid to do it. We do not have to convince them all at once.

This is just one way to make a positive contribution to resolving a debate that has, sadly, to this point been dominated by negativity. Can you think of others?

Article source: Sitepoint