How Good Is Googles Instant Mix

post from Daring Fireball on 16 May 2011 11:04:16 PM. © Daring Fireball

Paul Lamere tests the algorithmic playlist generators from iTunes, Echo Nest, and the new Google Music. I like his metric, the “WTF Test”:

Evaluating playlists is hard. However, there is something that wecan do that is fairly easy to give us an idea of how well aplaylisting engine works compared to others. I call it the WTFtest. It is really quite simple. You generate a playlist, and justcount the number of head-scratchers in the list. If you look at asong in a playlist and say to yourself ?How the heck did thissong get in this playlist? you bump the counter for theplaylist. The higher the WTF count the worse the playlist. As afirst order quality metric, I really like the WTF Test. It is easyto apply, and focuses on a critical aspect of playlist quality. Ifa playlist is filled with jarring transitions, leaving thelistener with iPod whiplash as they are jerked through songs ofvastly different styles, it is a bad playlist.

Spoiler: Google’s Instant Mix did terribly on these tests. I’ll play devil’s advocate and say that maybe this is the sort of thing that needs more time and more users to get the algorithm and song database tuned.

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Read The Full Article:
http://musicmachinery.com/2011/05/14/how-good-is-googles-instant-mix/

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[Sponsor] Remember The Milk for iPad

post from Daring Fireball on 16 May 2011 08:03:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Got tasks? Remember The Milk for iPad is the eagerly anticipated companion to the popular online tasks app. The gesture-rich interface (inspired by Twitter) is designed to take full advantage of the iPad and makes tasks fun.

The app is packed with features, including the innovative Smart Add and Smart Lists, and syncs with Remember The Milk online (naturally!) so you can take your tasks anywhere.

Best of all, the app is FREE, with extra goodies for Remember The Milk Pro users. Never forget the milk (or anything else) again.

Check out Remember The Milk for iPad on the App Store.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ipaddownload?s=df

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Dr. Drangs TextExpander Sparktweet Snippet

post from Daring Fireball on 16 May 2011 05:03:55 PM. © Daring Fireball

Whether you think sparktweets are a good idea or not, this is worth reading just to get your head wrapped around the cool things you can do with text-filtering scripts and TextExpander. Shame about the baseline rendering problems with certain of these glyphs, though.

Update: Fireballed; cached here.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/05/textexpander-sparkline-snippet/

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Cringely on Microsofts Purchase of Skype

post from Daring Fireball on 16 May 2011 05:03:55 PM. © Daring Fireball

Cringely:

Microsoft bought Skype to keep Google from buying Skype.
Notice I didn?t mention Apple. In terms of being the baddestMoFo in the market Apple has no peer, but Apple is following itsown very different course. Apple isn?t the next Microsoft, yousee. Apple is not the next anything because the role it aspires totranscends anything imaginable by Microsoft, ever. Google is thenext Microsoft, so Google is seen by Ballmer as the immediatethreat — the one he has a hope in hell of actually doingsomething about.

This is Cringely at his best. I think he’s nailed something true: Ballmer doesn’t now and never has understood Apple. He doesn’t understand what Apple does, what it aspires to, or what consumers see that’s so appealing about Apple’s products. But he understands Google, including the ways that Google’s products threaten Microsoft’s.

Remember when Ballmer made a fool of himself in 2007 by laughing about the iPhone’s prospects? That’s because he didn’t get it. It wasn’t just bluster or spin — I think he truly believed that “There?s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” I don’t recall him ever exhibiting a similar blind spot regarding Google. That’s not to say he knows what to do about Google, just that he at least understands it.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.cringely.com/2011/05/why-microsoft-bought-skype/

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ab2labs Launches Effects HD 1.0 for iPad

post from prMac on 16 May 2011 04:28:00 PM. © prMac

ab2labs announced that their photography app, Effects HD 1.0, is now available exclusively for the iPad. Effects HD is a stylish and creative way to create unique photos. In Effects HD, the user can manipulate pictures in multiple ways thanks to many innovative features. The features include filters, layers, live preview, sharing with social media and email, upgradeable export resolution and custom frames.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-25507.htm

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iPhones Share of the Entire Mobile Phone Market
in Q1

post from Daring Fireball on 16 May 2011 04:05:19 PM. © Daring Fireball

Horace Dediu crunches the numbers, and concludes that the iPhone accounts for 5 percent of handset units sold, 20 percent of the industry revenue, and 55 percent of the profit.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.asymco.com/2011/05/16/iphone-share-of-phone-market-in-q1/

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NBA Team President Rick Welts Comes Out as Gay

post from Daring Fireball on 16 May 2011 04:05:19 PM. © Daring Fireball

Dan Barry, for the NYT:

?This is one of the last industries where the subject is offlimits,? said Mr. Welts, who stands now as a true rarity, a manprominently employed in professional men?s team sports, willingto declare his homosexuality. ?Nobody?s comfortable inengaging in a conversation.?

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/sports/basketball/nba-executive-says-he-is-gay.
html

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Lodsys Patent Troll Mark Small Sets Up Blog to
Explain Himself

He claims Lodsys is asking for 0.575 percent of in-app purchasing revenue, and that Apple (along with Microsoft and Google) have already licensed the patent in question, but that their license doesn’t extend to third-party developers. (Via Lex Friedman at Macworld.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.lodsys.com/blog.html

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FX Photo Studio Adds Muscle and Turns Pro For
Move to Mac

MacPhun announces today the highly anticipated release of FX Photo Studio for Mac, the supercharged and more adept version of the wildly successful FX Photo Studio mobile franchise. With access to over 150 of the most widely used photography effects, users can blend all of today's top trending filters while easily mastering styles of photography art such as, lomography, analog effects, vignettes, tilt-shift, sketches, textures and many more.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-25591.htm

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Mac 911: Playing podcasts in chronological order

Mac 911: Playing podcasts in chronological order Want to play your podcasts in the order of their creation rather than the most recent first? Here's how.

Read The Full Article:
http://rss.macworld.com/click.phdo?i=1bfaf9afadaaadb63d7b9aad1a9cbcd1