What's Your Motivation?

Every struggling songster sometimes feels abandoned by their muse. If you're looking for tuneful inspiration, then you may need to consult a rhyming dictionary first. There are a few online, but Rhymezone's database returns not just single words that match your query, but entire phrases too. A quick search or two and I produced this gem:

Read/Write Web coming across your network
Raising the blog bar like a clean and jerk
Musicians unite across the web2 landscape
Record labels are dead just like videotape
-- MC Pipes

Well, ok, so we're not going to be winning a Grammy any time soon. Moving right along... Other useful digital devices to put in your toolbox before you get strumming are this web-based guitar tuner, and this database of sound files to search if you're more remixer than troubadour (there's more on digital DJ tools below).

Soundsnap.com is another resource that's more fun to browse if you've got a particular musical itch to scratch; it also allows you to upload your own samples, and retain the rights to your work. Speaking of rights, one of the web's most useful databases for aspiring musicians is the U.S. government's own site at www.copyright.gov. If you're curious about tracks and covers whose copyright may soon be about to expire (making it 'sample-able'), bookmark ASCAP's easy-to-use service as well.

Get Out of the Garage

Many people are familiar with Apple's GarageBand that comes bundled with iLife on OSX. But JamStudio is a pared-down, free web-based app that allows you to script a score and construct song structures with chords. The Flash-based control panel looks just like blank pieces of sheet music, and you can fill in the bars with chords and drum loops. There are a handful of instruments to choose from for the free-to-use version, including electric and acoustic guitars and piano, but more instrument loops are available through the music library add-on, which is free for a limited time, with a fee-based subscription structure planned for the future.

Preloaded genre-specific loops are also part and parcel of the music library, if you want to sidestep the groundwork and have a blues riff play in the background whilst you work out chords to your next masterpiece. Where the application falls down - and this is primarily because it's a new product - is a buggy login system, and the lack of a proper notation system that has a printer-friendly output. In other words, it's great for novices eager to learn how chord progressions make up a good tune, but not ideal for musicians who want to script entire symphonies, because they won't be able to put down individual notes or rests. The system is, however, sophisticated enough to adjust tempo. Here are some other key features that JamStudio is set to offer in upcoming releases: different beats per measure (currently only 4/4 time is allowed), built-in lyric support and song contests. This latter feature would be instrumental (excuse the pun) in the application achieving some sort of following online. In short, JamStudio is a diamond in the rough and with a few tweaks to the existing app, it could be an addictive treat for budding musicians who don't care to learn a more complex application such as the ones listed below.

Knob Fiddlers... on the Roof

These days, of course, toying around with sound files is just as much fun as playing your own tune. But where aspiring Sir Mixalot's used to have to shell out hundreds for the latest high-tech sound processing suites such as ProTools or Propellerhead's Reason, these days there's Splice Studio. Like many web apps, it's not designed to offer all the bells and whistles of a full-featured tool. It keeps the feature set focussed on what remixers want most. That means a decent sequencer, which lets the user add instrument loops and drag samples into the timeline, an effects mixer that's intuitive, and a tool to build up and play melodies (absent in the aforementioned JamStudio). There's a shared collection of samples to help you construct your tracks, and good tutorials to get you started.

What's more, Splice combines the best social networking features - sharing, reviewing, rating - into its community section. Each song you produce through the tool gets its own page on the site, which others can comment on and rate. Better yet: you can even grab the songs of other Splice users and remix them, similar to the way you can remix videos on Jumpcut, meaning each sound has a kind of evolution on the site which is pretty cool. Finally, there are regular contests to find the best remixers on the site.

Johnny No-Bandmates?

For those shy, retiring types, there are several ways to hook up with other musicians to share in the joy of online collaboration, in other words 'jamming' without risking being evicted from your flat, or having to hire out a studio. Pick of the bunch is Kompoz, which describes itself as a 'social workspace for musicians'. You can think of it as Basecamp for music lovers. Registered users can start a 'project' and upload tracks (MP3, WAV, and WMA formats accepted) and request other 'kollaborators' to add in particular instruments or vocals to the base track.

The tracks can also be submitted to the Kompoz Radio web-station and there's even Google Maps markers to indicate where each of the collaborators lives on the world map. Superfluous, but fun.

Got a band but can't always get together in the same place? Two downloadable applications can help you jam with other folks online in real time. eJamming and JamNow are the most refined of the ones we've seen out there and come with extensive user guides, but neither are without their bugs. For Mac users, eJamming's AUDiiO kit is probably your best bet, since PC users will be required to have an ASIO-compliant soundcard for performance reasons. A list of JamNow's supported audio cards can be found here. JamNow's unique selling points are its lively interface and nice Flash jam player, but we'd expect some revisions to both systems before either can claim to duplicate the kinds of quality musicians are likely to receive from a professional sound studio.

More for the Eyes and Ears

If plain old music has never been enough for your adventurous artistic self, you might try exhibiting your flair at SoundToys, a remarkable collection of fascinating audio-visual artistry with a terrific interface. I lost a few dreamy hours of my life dipping into some of the shows on the site, such as Sensity. Artists can contribute a large number of file-types for upload, and there's even an API method set for the more technically gifted contributors.

And if you're definitely not a phony, but you are a ringtone artist, first read this page about how your ringtone can qualify as a copyrighted piece of work, then go to Musicane to upload your tones.

Is There Anybody Out There?

Once you've got a band and some tracks together, you're ready to set up an ecommerce site to flog those songs to the great unwashed. Big Cartel's site-builder is tailored to bands. Moving up from the free version buys you the ability to add up to 100 albums (or products), view statistics, give discount codes, set up an inventory and other features.

But what's the point of creating great music if the masses can't find it? It's a small world after all, and viral, widget-based marketing is becoming more important to finding and keeping an audience for your wares. There are now dozens of sites devoted to helping you place your MP3s for sale on 'host' sites. MySpace users can hitch a ride to online sale with a BlastMyMusic MusicBlaster badge.

Profile owners can upload their music in a matter of seconds and track sales and plays of their tunes. Other music marketplace widgets can be found at Goodstorm. And of course, social music marketplaces such as Sellaband and ReverbNation are great places to hook into fan support.

For those interested in a heavyweight band-management system online, Music Arsenal's web-based organizer may be worth a look. It's been specifically developed for industry types, with contact management, task scheduler, expenses filing, tour date booking services and mail-out tools all in the package. The pricing's pretty cheap too.

Do you know of other web-based tools that would come in handy for a budding musician? Let us know in the comments below.

You can specify any year or month to target your search back to January 2004. Take, for instance, this comparison of the front-runners in the Democratic race for the US Presidency. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama swapped successes for much of 2006 and 2007, and Trends says that in terms of raw volume of searches, more people are interested in Hillary than Barack, with John Edwards trailing in their wake. (Republicans look away now if we throw Rudy Giuliani into the mix). However, in the race for attention, it's all about those column inches, and interestingly, Obama has gained the most press coverage in the same period according to Google News. Want to predict which states favour another Clinton dynasty? Have a look at which cities' citizens are searching for Hillary: Washington D.C and New York top the list. Meanwhile, big hubs in the Midwest and Mountain states are going bananas over Obama. OK, it's not the most precise tool for measuring future exit polls, but it's well worth a snoop around. Google also plans to add more language support to its trends tools; currently it serves its data in English and Chinese only, but tracks search terms in many more, including most European languages.

Want Some Chilli With That?

The Trends data is primarily updated every month, but the more recent addition of Hot Trends gets refreshed every hour. Hot Trends looks for search terms that have spikes in interest on the day you're curious about. But for each search term, Hot Trends takes a stab at examining why the surge of popularity might have occurred, showing blog entries, related web sites and news items from the day that contain the term. Each term is given a heat rating, and some data about when the peak interest in the term was on the day and where searches were most prevalent. As Josh Catone noted in his news article earlier this year, Hot Trends could be a rich mine of data for online marketers looking to spot some drift in public curiosity over time. However, at the moment, Hot Trends isn't set up as an analytical tool - just as an interface to daily popular searches.

Google Labs also released two other Trend-based services. Google Music Trends acts as a Billboard chart for the most popular MP3s being played each week by Google Talk users who have opted in to the service. However, since it doesn't query as broad a cross-section of society as Trends (or Yahoo! Buzz, below), it's of less value, in our opinion. Then there's Google History personal trends, for those (egomaniacs?) interested in discovering more about their own personal search patterns.

What's Missing in Google Trends?

• More frequent updates: Refreshing data every month (or every few months, in the past) just doesn't create a sticky experience.
• RSS for Hot Trends: This information is ripe for syndication as a daily dose of what's on the public mind. For those using iGoogle, Marcel Maatkamp has scraped Google Hot Trends to give us his Google Hot Trends Gadget.
• An API: There are a couple mashups appearing from its data at the moment, but as far as we can see this data must have been screen-scraped. If you'd like Google to open this data up for scrutiny, email them at trends-support@google.com.
• More advanced timeline with new features: For instance, if stories are geolocated, why not blend Google Maps with the timeline, making the news stories or blog posts appear contextually as well? Making the timeline draggable, as in Google Finance's applications, or indeed M.I.T.'s estimable Timeline product, widen the window of the timeline to allow the user to segment the data to the day, and add many more search terms to the list.
• Hyperlinks in the timeline: Why not use Google's AJAX tooltips a la Google Maps to activate story links on the trends timeline?
• Printable timelines: Being able to print off trend charts would be great for business people wanting to spice up a meeting.
• Editorial 'in roads' to the content: Just what Yahoo! does well.
• Business model: Even this executive-level data is useful for marketing agencies and companies. Surely the great minds at Google can think of a way to capitalize on extending the Trends service? Allowing a subscription service to extrapolate deeper, more meaningful information from their data without compromising personal data must be an option.
• Numeric data: Currently Google only shows whether one term has outperformed against another relative to overall traffic. Giving actual numbers of searches next to this relative data may be useful - especially to marketers.

Yahoo! Buzz Index

This all dovetails nicely into Yahoo!'s contribution to the world of trendspotting: the Buzz Index. Here's how Yahoo! explains the site: "A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week." Less geeky and interactive than Google Labs' offering, the Index presents a stock market-like ticker of the biggest movers and shakers in searches on the day. It's handily split into categories, so that you can track the online popularity of actors, movies or TV shows, amongst others. Yahoo! has editorialized their service with a blog and RSS support for their updates. Like Google, they've also made an attempt at regionalizing their data, with Canadian and French Buzz lists, too.

And since Yahoo! has opened up its Buzz content somewhat through RSS, some mashups are starting to appear from some creative types. Check out this visualizer model, as an example.

What's Missing in Yahoo! Buzz Index?

• Go! Go! Gadgets: More cool tools that enable the user to play around with the data, please
• Use existing content partnerships: Integrate Flickr photos that have been tagged with the search terms that are on the index. The same line of thinking could be extended to del.icio.us tagging behavior.
• Play around: If editorial ingenuity is what Yahoo's after, what about a game allowing users to predict future Buzz Listers, a la the BBC's now famous Celebdaq?
• Make some money: What about linking up the search terms with Last.fm's playlists? Or iTunes' top tracks? Surely Yahoo!'s missing a trick here.

Top of the idle Frenchman's mind today? Couch surfing.

Conclusion

In a sense, Yahoo! Buzz and Google Trends are yin and yang; despite all its nifty graphing and plotting, Google Trends lacks an interesting editorial hook that the Buzz Index delivers in spades. However, Buzz Index only dusts the surface of all the search activity that is going in Yahoo!'s properties. (These approaches mirror the corporate strengths of both companies somewhat: despite its innovative design and technology departments, Yahoo!'s advantage historically has been around expanding its vertical content silos, whilst Google has focused on web tools and services, and until recently shunned overt efforts to create content for its own sake.) If only the two would put aside their differences and unite, we might have a truly useful and interesting tool.

FormatPixel has a thankfully simple registration process to endure before you can start playing around with your first project. You'll need to choose which payment scheme to use. We chose the 'Vanilla' - or entry-level - scheme. This is free, but limits your account to just one project, and doesn't allow you to export your projects as Flash files. On the plus side, whereas the starter version of other popular "freemium" apps, such as Basecamp, limit functionality on the entry level plan,the Vanilla level of this service includes access to every feature apart from the aforementioned export. There are three other packages to choose from, with the priciest ('Chocolate') allowing the user to make 20 projects for $US80 a year.

We also opted to use the Beta version of the publishing application for this review, rather than the supposedly more stable version, because it included some extra animation features along with the standard feature set detailed below. We didn't run into any issues with stability or flakiness in the Beta version, however, so we'd expect the standard, non-animating version to be just as slick.

Because it's not pretending to be a whistles-and-bells publishing tool, it's easier to create content right away with FormatPixel than learning the intricacies of a traditional layout program like Quark. Each of your projects is organized with thumbnails of the pages below the main editor frame, so navigation from one page to the next is straightforward. Once you've started drawing shapes on your pages, outlines of those shapes appear in the thumbnails, to aid your memory of what's where (see picture below). You can select the dimensions of your backdrop too, should you want your project to look more like a widget or a blog than a standard magazine spread. Tracking guides have been added to help you keep consistent layouts from page to page, but unfortunately, the shapes and other object don't 'snap' to the guides as you would expect in a full-featured app.

Creating new shapes and text blocks is a one-click affair; editing those elements requires a double-click. Once you're in edit mode, you can adjust colors with a handy RGB slider, and set some text and shape preferences such as outline and blend options. If you're using the Beta version, those shapes (and other media) can have basic animation behaviors assigned to them, such as fades and slides. The animation is 'playable' via a timeline at the foot of the canvas that shows the actions in frames, a la Flash's own timeline. Don't expect Photoshop-like finesse of shapes and images, but for the purpose of presenting a decent online scrapbook, it's more than adequate. One serious drawback though is the inability of the text blocks to accept images or other media themselves (meaning text would flow around the media). Also, forget about applying two or more columns of text to a block; you'll have to settle with appending one block next to another. That said, we were impressed with just how streamlined and intuitive the interface was; it's just a shame that for a layout tool, more thought didn't go in to some of the quirks surrounding text blocks.

Probably FormatPixel's most useful service is the ability to add links from shapes to either external URLs or different pages in your project. This makes creating clickable wireframes a snap. Anyone thinking that this tool could be used for early-stage prototyping, you're right. (For the purposes of this review, I played around with the tool with exactly this intention - rapid development of a simple site design - and found it easier and quicker at the task than my typical wireframing tool, Microsoft Visio.) Finally, there's your personal library of photo or Flash video media. You can import, crop and tag your photos and vids, or paste in a YouTube URL for FormatPixel to add the video to your library. Then it's simply a matter of dragging your media to the right place on the canvas.

Once you're happy with your project, you can publish it (or keep it private) to the growing directory of current galleries, comment on other folks' work, and find out how many people have viewed your projects. You're assigned a profile page too which lists your work and stats. And, as we mentioned earlier, paid users can export their projects as Flash files that they could insert in any site or presentation as Flash objects.

Conclusion

None of FormatPixel's features will take your breath away (for that, we're waiting to see what birds of paradise emerge from the Aviary); but what FormatPixel does, it does well, and does simply. The community is young, and in need of some sharp projects to act as showcases, but we can already see this starting to bloom, especially if FormatPixel offers a few more carrots to the most creative users, as well as beefs up the app's feature set a bit. Photographers or graphic artists looking to publish their wares online in a stylish and interactive format will need to search hard to find a better alternative to FormatPixel.

What are your thoughts about FormatPixel? Know of a WTP product that blows this one out the water? Let us know in the comments.

There are, of course, ways to tell. So with that in mind, we thought it was high time we brought you a list of the best places you can go to see how the world is feeling (the headline text for each app is a link to it). We're just touchy-feely like that...

Few of the entries here will be practical necessities in your digital life. No one knows this better than the tongue-in-cheek creators of Benrikland. But that's just why this site is so addictive. It's worth browsing for its many amusing features, but Benrikland's mood chart and Love Hit Parade are particularly amusing. In the site's own words, "Benrik's World Mood Chart collates thousands of individual moods a day, providing an accurate reflection of the World Mood. You can enter your mood below daily to participate in this valuable global exercise." The Love Hit Parade allows bloggers to either declare themselves in love, or meet in the 'singles bar', and assign each other love hearts and log their relationship ups and downs.

2. WeFeelFine

This year's worthy Webby Award Winner WeFeelFine is an exercise in utter simplicity yet remarkable complexity. It's as rich an experience as you want it to be. WFF trawls the web for bloggers' comments and picks out posts that include "I feel" or "I am feeling." Then the information that's contained in those posts are referenced for location, author, time and weather, and used to create a startlingly organic and visually inviting world. The authors have documented their methodology painstakingly and offer an API for others to mash up their data. The same team also gives us Lovelines, which uses the mood-parsing kit from We Feel Fine, but looks for different key phrases.

3. Moodviews

Brilliant geekery here from the University of Amsterdam. It's been going a bit longer than We Feel Fine, but essentially uses the same blogospheric data to fill its graphs and lists. This is a statistics lovers' delight, and you can easily get lost in pages devoted to reactions to global events, such as Valentines Day or the Virginia Tech shootings. Badges are available to stick on your blog too, but the data the site receives is from LiveJournal users only.

4. MoodMill

A newbie in this crowd, MoodMill is more of a Twitter hybrid than a truly new experience. Still, it's a bit of fun for the emoticon addicts out there and does well what it is made to do. It's well-designed and already has a Firefox Extension and Wordpress Plugin to augment the core service. One to watch.

5. StateOfBrain

The aptly named StateOfBrain is a Digg-alike social news service that hooks emotional ratings to the submitted link. The rating system is a bit confounding at first, bit it's a novel approach and worth checking out. But those with refined visual palettes beware... it's an aesthete's nightmare.

6. Moodjam

If Piet Mondrian was alive today, and he was fired up about programming, we're fairly certain he would have created Moodjam. It's another mood logging device, but unusually in this space, it's got its own Google Gadget. Visually, Moodjam sports some hot neoplastic style (okay, maybe it's more like a TV test pattern, but regardless, it is rather pretty to look at).

7. Moodstats

Moodstats is a desktop application that acts as a hi-fi equalizer for your soul. Well, it's not quite that amazing, but it tracks more than just your mood. It diarizes your stress levels, exercise regimen, and even how many emails you send a day. It then compares your stats with other users of the application. Pretty nifty stuff. We wonder if psychologists are going to jump on the bandwagon and start integrating it in their therapy sessions...

8. Wordpress Mood Visualizer Plugin

A keen student invented this dashing blog badge that allows users to blend visual panels into an approximation of how they're feeling at any given time. The Visualizer plugin lets your users create a 100x100 visual comment on your blog to approximate their mood while reading your post. If there are more than two visual comments, they're assembled into a mosaic blog badge that you can use to display the mood of your post as perceived by your readers.

9. Burst Labs

Mood music for the wired generation. Burst Labs, which is a music production and licensing firm, lets users browse their catalog by the mood of the music instead of the traditional directory-trawling tedium. This is probably very helpful to music supervisors who need to match music to movie scenes or commercials. An equally useful and similar service that you might want to check out is Musicovery, which matches you with music based on mood, genre, and year (for example, inputting energetic/positive funk from the 2000s pointed me to the ever-upbeat Maceo Parker).

10. Facebook Mood

Because it's Facebook Week here on Read/WriteWeb, we'd be remiss not to point out Facebook's Mood application by James Yu, which allows users to post their moods to their profile in a similar way as some of the sites listed above. It's very similar to the built-in Status app, but is focused specifically on moods and uses icons to represent each mood.

Have we missed out on your favourite mood-tracking app? Let us know in the comments. [Bonus points for whoever can identify the picture to right of this post's intro. -- Ed.]

Fresh Logic Studios has built an addictive Flash mapping interface, aggregating worldwide "Tweets" (Twitter messages). The screen refreshes every six seconds or so with a different Twitterer's status report; and profile details are displayed on top of their location on a map. A toolbox allows you to toggle between views - and the Microsoft Virtual Earth graphics are stunning. Each of the Twitterers has their own lollipop on the map to note where they are, plus there's (limited) language support. But the Atlas isn't just a visualisation device for status junkies. There's also a practical side: users can get directions, search for local shops and services, find out what events are coming up in places around the world, and even see where the most expensive petrol stations are around.

What's it missing? The ability to get only your Twitter group's tweets shown on the map.

2. Squawk

Those enjoying a Second Life have a few options for social network integration. One of the most impressive is Squawk, which links up your gaming application with services including Twitter and Jaiku. There's an introductory how-to video for installing the service (note: you'll have to find it as an object in the SL 'metaverse' and then configure it). There's also a good social network devoted to tracking Squawk's progress, letting those not in Second Life peep in on the locations of top squawkers.

3. Twitticious

This little app from Alex Girard is about as stripped-down as you get - it doesn't even have a GUI. But it's a time-saver for those who'd like to link up their Del.icio.us bookmarks and their Twitter posts for later tagging and grouping. All the app does is take your tweets and route them to your Delicious account. With lots of Twitter networks set up specifically for this kind of link-sharing activity, this could be a golden life-hack. A word of warning though: there's no turning off the service. Full marks go to Alex for making some amendments to the service, to allow your followers' comments to also be added as links to your delicious account - as well as the Public Timeline's, should you want that many links in your Delicious account!

4. Remember the Milk + Twitter

Alert and to-do service Remember the Milk has just combined its range of services with that of Twitter, meaning that if you include 'rtm' as a friend in your Twitter network, your new task-oriented friend informs all of the web services that you've got synced up to Remember The Milk - and that can include iGoogle, Google Calendar and others. The smart bit is a series of commands that you can send to RTM via Twitter, using a few easy short codes. For instance, to get a list of these commands just type in 'd rtm !tips' and you'll get back a full command list. Once you get the hang of the commands, you'll see how much time this can save, instead of flipping between devices or websites to update your lists.

5. Social Comic Book

It's never going to win any prettiness awards, but the creative juices were flowing the day that Tim Wintle decided to mash up Flickr tags with Tweets. The idea is simple: enter your Twitter name, and the app creates a comic book of six panels - with your Tweets serving as the description in the panel and Flickr photos being pulled in that relate to your Tweets. Kind of like a visual Mad-Libs. Great idea - just a bit of a shame that some Tweets can't find relevant Flickr photos to attach to them. Dust up the old design and it could be quite viral.

Another comic strip attempt is Tweetweet. Not quite as inventive as Social Comic Book, but still worth a look if you've got ten minutes to kill between meetings.

6. Twapper

Twapper hooks into your 30Boxes online calendar account and allows you to post tweets directly into your calendar from your mobile phone or online. It also allows you to see the Twitter activity of your network from within the 30Boxes environment. Another great feature is the ability to 'roll your own groups' of Twitterers. Whilst it helps to have a 30Boxes account to get the most from the integration, there are some features available to anyone.

7. Twit Bin

Why go to Twitter when Twitter can come to you? Twitbin's a Firefox extension that nestles all your friends' tweets into a sidebar. It's configurable too, and the tiny ad at the bottom of the sidebar is something I can live with. BTW, it works just as well in Flock.

8. TwittyTunes

If you want to share what you're listening to with the ease of Twitter, this is the browser plugin for you. It's a sibling of the popular FoxyTunes extension, and supports dozens of players. So if you're signed in to your Last.fm player, Twitty Tunes will let your Twitter friends know what you're listening to. There's even a social network devoted to the most recent TwittyTunes shout-outs, called Foxy Tunes Twitter DJ.

9. Twitterment

This one appeals to the statisticians and the buzz crawlers. This charts the 'zeitgeist' of what's being Tweeted about across the globe. You can even see comparisons of one key phrase versus another, and what day of the week key terms pop up most frequently. For instance, here's one that compares beer and sex. Not surprisingly, beer starts getting popular around Friday.

10. Flotzam

Flotzam started life as Flitterbook, a showcase mash-up of Flickr, Facebook and Twitter data - developed by Karsten Januszewski and Tim Aidlin for MIX07. It's available only to PC users as a downloadable .exe or as a screensaver, but it's well worth having a nose around. For Mac OS X users, check out some of the dashboard widgets collected in the Twitter Fan Wiki.