Fine Tune Your Ears To This!

At Leading hands, we’re big music fans and we’re constantly seeking the best sites serving free on demand music. I was recently reading an interview with Candis Hecking and she mentioned one of her favorite websites was Finetune. After checking it out, I discovered the site was similar to Pandora, but with a twist.

Finetune pluses:

• Free music streaming website
• Don’t need to register to listen
• Creates playlist based on artists that sound similar t
• Commercial Free
• You can skip as many songs you don’t like
• Give you link to music to purchase

Finetune negatives:

• Can’t rate songs you like or dislike
• Can’t build a mix of artists to shuffle through
• Only search by artists, not song

What do you think?
http://www.finetune.com/

Discover & Publish Docs with Scribd!

Do you need to post a bunch of PDFs to your website? However once you upload them to you website, your users are annoyed that they pop-up in another browser? Easily publish and share your documents with the world with Scribd.

Scribd uses iPaper which turns your PDF into a virtual flip book. Now you don’t have to wait for the document to load into another window because it loads in the same window. Flip through the pages like you would with your favorite book. Right now you can surf their website and explore many topics.

Scridb is striving for collective intelligence; they want to use their technology to make collections of your documents, ebooks, and presentations easily searchable. There are many topics currently available for you to browse.

Scribd Topics include:
* Cheat Sheets
* Cooking and Recipes
* Databases
* eBooks
* Economics
* Funny Stuff
* Magazines
* Maps
* Origami
* Photography
* Physics
* Programming
* Religion
* Sheet Music
* Sports
* Textbooks
* Travel and Tourism

Do you like this technology? What don’t you like about it?

Discover and Publish Docs with Scribd!
http://www.scribd.com/

Deck the Halls with SomaFM

For some reason this year, I am totally wrapped up in the holiday season. The music is truly what gets me in the mood, however if you are like me, you discover that the FM stations keep rotating the same songs over and over. After a while, by the 25th of December, you can’t wait for the Xmas music to stop.

I just stumbled upon an online radio station from San Francisco called SomaFM which has 14 unique channels of listener-supported, commercial-free, underground/alternative radio broadcasting. SomaFM offers unique music that hits just the right spot.

The Online Music Channels

• Christmas Lounge – Chilled holiday grooves (Kid and Parent safe!)
• Xmas in Frisko – Annual eclectic, irreverent holiday music
• Boot Liquor – Americana music with a bit of attitute
• Tag’s Trip – Progressive house / trance
• Secret Agent – Soundtrack for the dangerous life
• Doomed – Perfect for Halloween
• Indie Pop Rocks
• Cliqhop – Blips and beats backed with backbeats
• Sonic Universe – NuJazz
• Illinois Street Lounge – Class bachelor pad music
• Groove Salad – Ambient beats and groove
• Drone Zone – Atmospheric textures with minimal beat
• Space Station Soma – Ambient and mid-tempo electronica
• Beat Blender – Deep-house and downtempo chill
• Lush – Mello mostly female vocals
• Digitalis – Rock music

Start listening today and truly find some unique grooves.
http://somafm.com/

Free MP3 Download from Schick

Hey music fans, you can get a free MP3 download for a limited time if you visit Schick’s music site and enter the code “SCHICKROCKS08″. If you purchase a specially marked Schick pack you can get 8 bonus downloads. You can choose from over 200,000 songs. Happy Holidays!

http://www.sleighbellsrock.com/

RIP – TRL 1998-2008

Carson Daly kicked off MTV’s first Total Request Live ten years ago. The premise of the show was to countdown the top videos and interview the hottest musicians of the day.

As MTV started to play less and less videos, the show morphed into teens yelling over top of the videos and giving “shout-outs” to their “peeps”. In the last few years, since MTV plays only 2% videos, TRL would only play 10 seconds of a video and then interview a guest like Jack Black to promote their latest movie. Music isn’t what’s important on MTV anymore and the retirement of TRL is the pinnacle of it.

Do you miss MTV playing videos?
If so, then watch them on their new online video station.

Say goodbye to TRL tomorrow night from 8-10 pm.
http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/trl/series.jhtml

Current.com – WebTV?

Looking for a way to stay on top of current events? No matter what you’re into whether it be music, comedy, politics, TV, art, style, or romance, current.com has the latest news you are looking for.

Current.com is an online TV station built by you. This website presents short video clips that give a clear sense of what is happening in popular culture. This site takes updating their content seriously and they are constantly uploading new clips. Current also turns to their users upload to original material too.

What I Like: They gave a face to the website by introducing news host Douglas Cabellero; he keeps you on top of the latest trends at Current.com. My favorite section is their hall of fame; it boasts the all-time best clips.

Will you give this a try or stick to YouTube?
http://www.current.com

Amazon’s WindowShop

If you own an iPod or iPhone then you’ll be familiar with the feature called cover flow, even though you may not even know it. Cover flow is classified as the 3-D feature of “flipping” through album covers with the flick of your finger to easily navigate to your selection. All you have to do is touch the item to select and to listen to it. Now Amazon presents new DVD and MP3 releases using the same technology with Windowshop.

Buy that new movie or new album by “flipping” through each release as samples load in real time. I was amazed at how fast the media loaded and how easy it was to move through the titles. Amazon has infused their gigantic inventory of products with the popular feature cover flow from Apple to introduce something completely different for your shopping experience.

What do you think of Windowshop? Do you think other websites will start using this feature to showcase and sell their products?

http://www.windowshop.com/

I Want My MTV

Remember when MTV used to play videos? MTV recently opened up their video vault and posted a plethora of their collection online for your viewing pleasure. The website that brings back music videos is called MTV Music.

What’s here?

• VH1 pop-up videos
• 80s music classics – first video played on MTV “Video Killed The Music Star”
• 90s music hits
• The latest hits like “Womanizer” by Britney Spears

MTV finally has a sense of historic perspective.
http://www.mtvmusic.com/

Error FM

Are you looking for an alternative to the daily grind of regular radio? Has your XM station worn out it’s welcome? Is your iPod on overload and you’re sick of the same songs being played over and over? Then look no further than Error FM to cure your need for fresh music.

ErrorFM is an online radio station that is supported by an array of volunteer jocks. The college radio station had a similar format, basically every two hours a new type of music was being played. Check out there schedule and see if there is a show you like. Better yet, you may want to become an internet jockey.

http://errorfm.com

Note: The content of some of these shows may not be suitable for children.

iPhone 2.1 software update

On Friday, the latest iPhone software was released. This updates all iPhones, both the original models and the newer 3G models to the 2.1 version of the software.

Previously, there had been a number of complaints regarding software crashes when using 3rd party applications, and many users had been having problems with 3G reception in some areas. The new software also speeds up access to contacts and is meant to improve battery life.

It’s interesting to think that when you purchase a product like the iPhone, you aren’t really going to end up with the same product you bought. With continuous software updates and improvements, the device keeps evolving as you own it.

Imagine purchasing a TV or car that came with ongoing upgrades. Would you pay extra for such a device knowing that every few months there would be a new “software” patch to fix bugs or improve performance?