Where’s Your Twicsy At?

Have you used Twitpic yet? If not, now you have the opportunity to search through the thousands of images users are uploading to their Twitter accounts by using Twicsy. The best part of the website is the fact that you can now see all the images uploaded in the last hour. Above is an example of just the bizarre cornucopia of images that end up on Twitter via Twitpic. Now Twicsy gathers all those images in once place.

http://twicsy.com/


Thanks to Mike Kimmel for the find.

Trazzler, Tell Us Where To Go?

The other day Leading Hands gave you Hunch, a website that recommends books, movies, etc… based upon filling out a few questions. Now another service called Trazzler, recommends trips based on your location and travel personality; it seems that recommendation featured websites are all of a sudden becoming popular even though Amazon has been doing it for over ten years.

Your travel personality is created as you save trips in your wishlist and places you’ve been. Then Trazzler learns about the kind of trips you like and creates more trip choices. If you have a Facebook account, Trazzler will connect to your account, share wishlists, recommendations, and soon will suggest new friends based on travel compatibility. As you continue to use it, more travel suggestions will occur.

Note: All your travel descriptions and choices are public information.
http://www.trazzler.com/

Must Text & Drive? Try This.

We here at Leading Hands do not condone texting while driving, however if you must text, try this combination. First purchase a Bluetooth headset and second get Dial2do.

A low end model Bluetooth headset can cost you as little as $40 and high end model can cost as much as $150. Dial2Do is a free service that will translate your voice to text. The program does a rather accurate job translating your voice; it also does a great job reading back your email too.

Before you get pulled over because you’ve got your head down texting, try the alternative and keep your head up and your voice forward by using this combination. This suggestion will keep you hands-free for your steering wheel and looking straight. I think the question we need to answer is, “What constitutes failure to control your vehicle?” Will this headset plus voice translation service still cause an accident while driving? Is anything other than driving your car a distraction?

Learn more about Dial2Do

Microsoft SongSmith Revolutionizing Music

Music is continually evolving before our ears and most of the time we don’t comprehend it, however SongSmith crushes that stigma. Check out this video by Nirvana, created using SongSmith. If you are familiar with the song, you will instantly hear that a piano wasn’t part of the original accompaniment for In Bloom. However with SongSmith, you can now tweak virtually any song and make it your own.

Let the mash-ups begin!
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/

Rock Induction on Fuse.tv

Ever since I could remember, VH1 has broadcasted the Rock Hall Induction ceremony, but now they sold their rights to the Fuse network. The former Behind the Music Specialists are now playing lifestyle programming like “Brett Michael’s Rock of Love” and are moving away from their focus on music. So if you are a music fan, then see if the TV network is in your area or surf their website.

The Fuse website is packed with polls, exclusive interviews with rock legends and tour information. Video, photos, games and blogs on pop, metal, rock and hip hop is also what you can find.

http://www.fuse.tv/

Mashup For You, Mashup For Me

What is a mashup? I define a mashup as combining unique items together to achieve something dramatically different that is overly unique. This act of synthesis is currently driving the innovation of today’s technology. Think about when chocolate met peanut butter to create Reese’s cup.

Google maps combined old MapQuest technology with Ajax to create innovative maps. Microsoft took the versatility of Flash and combined it with .net to create SliverLight. Thur-You layers single YouTube clips over each other to form new music tracks.

George Nemeth twittered Thru-You, a mash-up by Kutiman, that is so unique it will make your head spin. This artist took the time to listen to individual video clips of musicians, find similarities and then combine the clips to make new music. I can’t stop listening.

http://thru-you.com

More posts from Leading Hands about mash-ups are coming.

Digital Album Download Cards

The other day I was in Best Buy and for the first time, I noticed digital album download cards. The card had a picture of the album cover on the front and then the listings of the songs on the back. You would take the album card to Music Pass and download your music.

I thought this is an interesting hybrid between getting a CD and downloading tracks from iTunes. At least here you actually get a card that you can hold on and cherish for years to come.  The card does leave you with something tangible; it’s a picture of your favorite album (even if it’s essential Mullet Rock tracks).

Do you think this has merit to replace the physical realm of CDs? Would you buy a digital download card? as a gift? for yourself?

http://www.musicpass.com

The Filter – Search Music & Movies You Like

For years if you went into a store and were looking at something, the sales person would come and say, “If you like this item, then you might also like this item.” Amazon took that concept of suggesting items you might like and rolled it into their online store ten years ago. This concept of suggestive retail is now living strong and has catapulted into other arenas. Now most of your popular social networks like Facebook will suggest other friends you should add to your list. Now the Filter, a new website that is like a search engine, leads you to music and movies you’ll enjoy.

The Filter is a website that will suggest music and movies based on your tastes. Type in an artist, you’ll download an artist bio, videos and essential songs plus a list of others that are similar. Then you can slide the familiarity and time scale to narrow down the related artists. You can likewise do the same when you do a movie search too!

Try the Filter; it recommends music and movies based on your tastes.
http://www.thefilter.com/

Groove Shark: Listen to Free Songs

Seeqpod started with the idea that you could look up any song and immediately start it streaming and create playlists. Now Groove Shark has built upon that idea by letting you look up any song, immediately start streaming it and save it to a playlist. They have added more features and introduced a really simple, yet intuitive interface that is similar to Google. My favorite feature is being able to easily preview a song before you play it.

http://grooveshark.com
Thanks to Jason from Thunder::Tech for the tip on this entry!

I’m All About This Blog Series!

Want to discover everything about music, movies and games? The “all” family of blogs features in-depth stats and facts about each of these topics written by their staff of experts/fanatics.

What I like about this series of blogs is that from one search you can discover and connect facts. For example, if you are a fan of the band U2 you may discover that they were influenced by David Bowie, the Hothouse Flowers followed their sound, Duran Duran sounds like them, and that many artists covered their music. You can literally get lost on these sites for hours by clicking around from one fact to another.

Explore:

• Top Searches
• New Releases
• Editors Choice
• Spotlight

All Movie – http://www.allmovie.com/
All Music – http://www.allmusic.com/
All Game – http://www.allgame.com/