Justin Ouellette, Muxtape's CEO and Founder just announced a preview version of the new Muxtape, which he has seeded with songs from twelve bands, including indie favorites like of Montral.

Artist Pages

The most important addition to the new Muxtape are the artist pages, which are currently dominated by profile pictures of the artists. Otherwise, the new Muxtape works exactly like the old Muxtape - just without the ability to create your own mixtapes.

Big Plans

In the future, Ouellette and his team plan to allow bands to sell downloads of their songs, issue tickets for concerts, and sell merchandise. For now, however, we are glad to see that Muxtape is still alive and well, though we are still sad to report that the old Muxtape won't return anytime soon.

Cynics will say they got what they deserved, others will ask why they didn't monetize as quickly as possible and pay internet radio licensing fees. The company says only that "Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA."

We've written about Muxtape a number of times. By allowing users to upload MP3 files and build simple playlists that anyone could listen to through the austere, oversized interface, the site provided a model user experience through simplicity.

We hope that Muxtape will return, we hope that Pandora will survive, but most of all we hope that the music business can find a way to move forward with its fans so that everyone's interests can be served in this crazy new era of post-scarcity digital distribution.

Using Muxfind is as simple as using any search engine - and you don't need a Muxtape login to access it. Above the search box, you have three options to search by: "Find Artists and Songs," "Discover by Muxtape," and "Discover by Artist."

The first option will simply return results either listing songs by the artist you searched for or the songs matching the song title you entered. Each link actually takes you to the muxtape where the song can be played, so you may need to scroll down in order to find it.

The second option, "Discover by Muxtape," will help you find new Muxtapes to enjoy. To use this option, you enter in the name of a muxtape that you liked, and Muxfind will return muxtapes that are similar to it, in terms of mood or genre, as best we can tell, that is. There is no info on how this matching algorithm works, but it does seem to return results from the same overall "genre" of music. For example, a muxtape by Stefan, which featured Bloc Party, Shins, and The Chemical Brothers, matched up with muxtapes featuring Moby, Depeche Mode, and Morphine.

Search by Artist on Muxfind

The final option also returns similarity-based results, but this time specifically by artist. For example, if you do a search for Radiohead, you'll get a list of results that link to muxtapes where a Radiohead song is included in the playlist. This option doesn't always work as well since some people's muxtapes are quite eclectic and include Radiohead tunes right along with NIN and Public Enemy, whereas others keep theirs more mellow as a whole, combining Radiohead with other mellow artists like The Postal Service or Modest Mouse.

However, that isn't so much of an issue with the Muxfind service itself - it just reflects the varying tastes of the users on Muxtape. If anything, this "problem" could be looked at as a feature instead because a user who strangely pairs Radiohead with NIN may just have a musical taste similar to yours, even if the two songs don't seem to automatically go with each other as being "similar artists." Much like a radio station simply plays artists in the same genre of music, Muxfind, in the same vein, could help you find online streams of artists in the same genre, too.

Conclusion

On A VC, Fred Wilson notes another reason that services like Muxfind and other user-gen search tools have value: they are "a bit of a quality filter." Because it takes time and effort to post something on the web, whether a playlist, a link, a photo, or video, the items that people actually take the time to upload are usually something worthwhile.

Muxfind isn't by any means the first or best music search/discovery service, Grooveshark, Last.fm, Hype Machine, Mixwit, and even iTunes offer ways to search and find new music to love. However, for those that love the muxtape format, Muxfind is worth a look.

Because it's a self hosted program, the bar for entry is a lot higher than for Muxtape of course, though as far as installation goes, all you have to do is to copy the OpenTape code into a publicly accessible directory on your server and you should be good to go (as long as your server runs Apache, PHP5, and curl). After that, all you have to do is set a password, give your mixtape a name, and start uploading songs (or FTP them into your 'songs' folder).

Playing and Embedding

Playing songs works just like in Muxtape or any of its competitors like 8tracks. Just click on a song and it starts playing - click again and it stops.

One nice feature of OpenTape is that it provides you with an embedded player.

RIAA

As others have pointed out, part of the reason people would want to host their mixtapes on their own server is to make it harder for the RIAA to shut down a particular server, but hosting a virtual mixtape with copyrighted music could quickly become a major nightmare, as the RIAA and others would probably have no problem with serving takedown notices and asking for enormous fines.

Still, OpenTape also has other applications - bands, for example, can host their own music with it (though that is also the only service Muxtape still offers), you could use it as a podcast player, or you could just use it to promote some of your favorite Creative Commons licensed music.

Limitations

While hosting your own mixtape (just one for now, unless you install numerous copies of OpenTape) is fine, the beauty of Muxtape or 8tracks is that you can also search for other people's mixtapes, which is often a great way to discover new music.

Of course, somebody could host a central repository for OpenTape mixtapes, but then that would make it even easier for the RIAA to go after alleged copyright violations.

For some, OpenTape might fill the void left behind by Muxtape's demise, but for most, the limitations of OpenTape and the fact that you have to host it yourself will make other like 8tracks a far more attractive alternative.

How it Works

To get Tumbltape to work, all you have to do is upload an MP3 file to Tumblr and then enter your Tumblr username into Tumbltape. If all goes well, that's all you need to do. Tumbltape should recognize the ID3 tags from your music files, but if it doesn't, you can tag your Tumblr post with 'tt:artist name - track name.'

After a very short delay, your files will appear in your Tumbltape. Starting and stopping files works by clicking on the name of the file, just like in any other Muxtape clone.

Tumbltape will display the last 12 files you uploaded to Tumblr. As you upload more, Tumbltape automatically rotates the older files out.

Limitations

One major limitation for Tumbltape is the fact that Tumblr itself only allows its users to upload one MP3 file per day. You can get around this by linking to a file that you host on your own server, or, if you have permission to do so, on any other server. Obviously, this is a far greater hassle than just uploading files to Tumblr. As Tumbltape's co-developer Adam Gotterer told us, Tumbltape is looking into ways of allowing its users to mash up playlists that are hosted on different services.

One other limitation of Tumbltape is that Tumblr's Terms of Service forbid any uploads of copyrighted material, so Tumblr itself might just cut you off if they get a take-down notice.

Verdict

Tumbltape is a nice Muxtape clone and the fact that it displays a number of random mixtapes as well as the newest uploads on its front page turns it into a more social experience than the self-hosted OpenTape we wrote about last week. The limitations put upon it, however, are severe and will deter quite a few users from really getting to use it.

If you are not a Tumblr user, 8tracks currently represents a better alternative if you just want to create a simple mixtape.

However, as Adam Gotterer explained to us, the idea behind Tumbltape was not for people to create Tumblr account just for the sake of creating mixtapes, but to aggregate the music people had already posted to Tumblr.

Muxtape will effectively remain closed for the general public and will only return as a music hosting service for bands. Favtape, on the other hand, now looks like Muxtape on steroids, with embeddable playlists, album art, integrated YouTube search, a shuffle mode, and the ability to create tapes based on your last.fm and Pandora bookmarks.

While Favtape once started out as a simple Muxtape clone, this new release goes far beyond Muxtape's feature set. One of the most important differences with Muxtape is that you do not have to upload any songs to create a mixtape. Instead, Favtape lets you search for your music and add it to your playlists. To do this, Favtape makes use of SeeqPod's APIs.

Favtape does not host any of the songs itself, but solely relies on SeeqPod's index for its music. SeeqPod indexes MP3s anywhere on the Internet, which surely leaves some doors open for copyright infringement claims by the RIAA. As Ars Technica reports, SeeqPod has already been sued by the RIAA for exactly this business model of providing a 'playable search engine.' If SeeqPod shuts down, Favtape will be left without any music to play.

From a user's perspective, however, Favtape is everything one could wish for in a mixtape service, including a list of the top songs on iTunes and Last.fm, as well as iPhone support and the ability to share your tapes by email or as a Twitter message. Favtape also includes numerous social features and lets you vote for tapes you like.

While we are sad to see the Muxtape we once loved disappear, it is great to see other services jumping into the breach and building upon Muxtape's foundation. It's probably not the perfect streaming music service, but it comes pretty close. Now we just have to hope that it will not be shut down too soon.

Mixtape from http://favtape.com/frederic/RWW Test

We've seen a number of new services lately that focus on the audio in YouTube videos, but the most enjoyable one so far is Mixtube - a mixtape maker for YouTube audio. It's based on the metaphor and interface of the now "sleeping" Muxtape.

We expect the site will be operable indefinitely, as YouTube rarely comes down on derivative services. Thanks to Andy Baio for finding this one.

For fans of Muxtape, the new PodLists feature may hold some appeal - the only difference is that instead of searching through various online mixtapes identified only by username (you should at least be using Muxfind for that!), you'll have daily access to a fresh set of what are, essentially, online mixes identified by theme or genre instead.

As you listen to the PodLists, you can use SeeqPod's built-in features to remove the tracks you don't like and save the rest to a playlist of your own.

At the moment, the PodLists aren't customized to a particular user's tastes, but the SeeqPod team does look at the most popular search queries by topic or artist, and, based on the data found, they then create a list that suits that particular demographic. However, sometime this summer individual users will be able to search for lists by username, list name, or date - which will make the service more Muxtape-like, considering that users could then create playlists that others could discover.

For anyone in search of more ways to discover new music, this service is worth a look...as long as they keep their recommendations fresh.

For more information on SeeqPod, you may be interested in checking out our recent Alt Search Engines podcast which featured LaurieAnne (LA) Lassek of Seeqpod and Aza Raskin of Songaza (who partnered with SeeqPod this year to offer more music).

The improvement in user experience for this already fantastic app is remarkable. Check out the how-to video embedded below. It's also a great example of several brand new apps all put to use together.

You can also skip the Fluid part and just download the completed "app" from Tom Martin's blog. You'll still have to make the CSS edit yourself, though.

If you've wondered why you'd use Fluid to make a standalone browser for a single web site, this is a great example. Following Sproule's instructions was remarkably easy, it took me less than five minutes and added a wrinkle to my internet experience that I expect to use regularly.

I struggled for awhile until I realized that my Mac needed a software update and that solved the problem of previews not appearing right away. For some reason still, a couple of the pages aren't fully previewing - but this is a much better experience than the standard Muxtape black box.

This really inspires me to try some more things out with Fluid, including perhaps a standalone FriendFeed browser - since the newly released AlertThingy really aint doing it for me. Update: While walking my dog and listening to Newsgang talk about politics and Twitter, I realized that to be honest it was through AlertThingy that I saw a Growl popup about Engtech Digging Sproule's post about this. Sometimes I drown in a soup of input and forget exactly where I first find things. I apologize for that.

The Coverflow feature combined with Muxtape is really great though.

Is it legal? Will it last? We don't know and we don't know if we care. These services are such a joy to use that they reinvigorate our appreciation for what the social web can do.

The elegant simplicity, combined with the tech success of its New York founders, has made Muxtape the mindshare leader in the online mixtape market. Users upload up to 12 MP3 files and then publish their collection. The interface is like one big button and it's a lot of fun to explore different peoples' collections of favorites.

All kinds of mashups have been built on top of Muxtape. See, for example, our coverage of Muxtape With Coverflow [Mac] (pictured below), MuxtapeStumbler, MuxSeek Search Engine and MuxScrobbler - a script to synch your Muxtape listening with your Last.fm user profile.

Favtape

The newest entrant into this field is much easier to use for publishing collections. Favtape creates a Muxtape-like interface for listening to the full-length version of your Pandora or Last.fm favorited songs.

It's simple, but it's very cool. There are tie ins to Lyric Wiki, a ringtone search, the ability to listen to more songs that are similar or by the artist and other features. It's powered by the Seeqpod API, which must be one of the most popular APIs on the web lately.

Favtape just launched this week, but we really like it already.

Mixwit

MixWit is a Flash mixtape creator with a very nice interface and the ability to embed your player on a web page. See my example below. This service can have songs added by URL or through Seeqpod or Skreemr MP3 search.

Hint - click the play button below, or if you're reading this by RSS - click here to see this embedded player in action.

It's a relatively full featured Flash authoring environment and exemplifies the design possibilities that emerge from a confined space. The cassette tape border around images users upload is really visually appealing. It's all pretty easy to use and it's a whole lot of fun. It's more fun to use as a publisher than either of the services above and it might be more fun for listeners too.

It appears that there are some performance issues, though, as the "menu" command often doesn't work with Mixwit. That should bring up a collection of other mixtapes.

The Changing World of Mixtapes

Different mixtape services serve different purposes. The point though is that this art form is becoming easier than ever before.

Mixtapes used to be something you put a lot of time and effort into, typically making one copy to give to one other person. The loss of that art form is a little sad. These services are something very different, they are very public and considering the free music widely available online - scarcity is no longer an issue.

Are these services legal? That's unclear; they are riding a thin line and legal decisions may be made about services like this in the coming years. Streaming, as opposed to full, direct downloads, is a different animal. The original mixtapes were arguably illegal as well, though, and what a loss the world would have suffered if that medium had been strangled.

Where's Your Mixtape?

We find the new mixtape publishing scene pretty heartwarming, in fact. We hope you'll enjoy testing out the services above - and leave us a link in comments to your mixtapes so we can all know what kind of music the RWW community likes to listen to!

CC photos used above include the following from Flickr: radio:cassette drawing from my primary school days by Alicia Yeah, "The Tree" by helmet13, An intense morning break over the Angels Bay, French Riviera by mamjodh

All of this is further proof that Web technology has gone mainstream in the music business.

The Guns n Roses MySpace page is impressive. It offers the full album online, a couple of days before the official release in stores. True GNR fans, including this author, will still buy the album when it is released. But by promoting the album online a couple of days before release, it encourages new fans and gives Guns n Roses a lot of free publicity and viral uptake on the Internet. This will almost certainly increase overall sales.

While Guns n Roses hasn't gone as far as Radiohead did with their latest album In Rainbows - which was released as a 'pay what you want' download before it was even an actual CD product - Guns n Roses and MySpace is an appropriate partnership for both parties. For Guns n Roses, it allows them to reach a young, hip, massive audience. And for MySpace, it gives them a lot of page views and we presume a very healthy profit from the record label and retailers such as Best Buy (which has a banner ad right at the top of the page). We should also point out that Guns n Roses has employed some heavy handed tactics to stop illegal file-sharing of the album, so they haven't been entirely savvy about the Web. Still, the MySpace promotion is inspired.

We've been impressed by many of the online music services this year - last.fm has continued to evolve its web services, Imeem has been a revelation for many music fans, Pandora's traffic continues to grow despite ongoing legal issues, sites like The Hype Machine (our coverage) and Muxtape (when it was available) offer something new and different, and so on.

But we're also noticing some of the more traditional radio stations vastly improving their Web sites - and NPR is a great example of that. NPR Music is currently marking its one year anniversary. It features content from NPR and 12 of its public radio stations, but what's impressed us has been the "original-to-NPR Music features" such as live performances, studio sessions, first listens to forthcoming albums, and interviews. This author is a subscriber to NPR's All Songs Considered podcast, which has recently featured a full Radiohead concert and a Guest DJ appearance by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

I want my MTV? Not anymore. I can get everything I want in my Web browser! Although to be fair, even MTV has moved its music to the Web.

Idiomag is a company we love to tell people about - it's one of the most awesome ideas we've seen in a long time. The personalized music magazine site relaunched today with 4 times more content than ever before and a more traditional, link-intensive page design. Unfortunately, this great idea has serious problems in implementation and today's redesign doesn't appear to have solved those problems.

Idiomag looks at the color scheme of the video or photos accompanying an article and bases the whole page aesthetics on a complimentary set of colors. The service learns from your feedback and offers a new set of recommendations ever day.

We love the idea, but two years after Idiomag launched, we still return to the site begrudgingly today. We visit it at every opportunity, appreciating the music recommendations and hoping the rest of the site will get better.

Content is Hard

Why is it so unpleasant to go to Idiomag? Mostly because the syndicated text content from music blogs is awful. Most of it is really poorly written and the presentation is even worse. The Flash display of text from feeds misses punctuation, inserts spaces between letters in the middle of words - it's absolutely unreadable.

We keep hoping that the next article served up will be free of overdrawn adjective soup or abrupt beginnings and topic changes. No such luck.

There's obviously a world full of crappy music blogs out there, and we appreciate the MP3s they post, but Idiomag's parsing for quality content isn't working. The blog posts are placed very prominently on every page of the site and the whole user experience suffers as a result.

There are a lot of moving parts in the UI that make it unpleasant to use, as well. The first paragraph of every article is repeated as a "pull quote" at the top of the page, meaning you've got to skip the 2nd paragraph on every page because it's the same as the first. There's an independent collections of MP3s playing on all the pages, luckily they stop when a video loads, but they are no longer tied to the same artists as the articles and it appears that every article now has videos instead of photos.

We didn't see any of the celebrated new content from partners like Billboard and Rolling Stone. As part of the relaunch today, Idiomag says it has quadrupled the number of articles it can offer - up to 11,000 per month.

Give it a try for yourself, it's a great idea and maybe it will serve you better than it has us.

2. Deezer: Deezer offers users free and legal streaming music while sharing advertising revenue with artists and rights owners. The site launched with a Sony BMG partnership and signed a Universal Music deal in 2008. Users can share their favorite music by connecting with friends within the social network, or embedding playlists in 3rd party sites.

3. Spotify: Heralded as one of the best music streaming experiences on the market, Spotify is only available in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Spain, France and Finland. TechDigest TV uploaded a fantastic looking preview of Spotify's much anticipated iPhone app.

4. Tunerec: Swedish company Tunerec allows users to create music libraries and playlists from recorded radio play. Because libraries are taken from recorded music, it takes a while to populate playlists; however, according to RWW's initial review by Frederic Lardinois, the service is worth the wait.

5. Last.FM: If you haven't heard of Last.FM, you've probably been living under a rock. The site offers users the ability to create radio stations and stream them complete with AudioScrobbler-powered recommendations.

6. Pandora: To the user, Pandora and Last.FM are similar recommendation-based radio services; however, where AudioScrobbler makes statistical inferences, Pandora's recommendations are determined by the Music Genome Project's 400 distinct musical characteristics.

7. Slacker: Slacker is another popular radio recommendation service. Users input tracks and receive recommendations. Slacker first launched with custom mobile hardware and has since expanded onto other mobile devices.

8. The Hype Machine: This is a fantastic service for those willing to leave music selection to the experts. Like other sites, this one allows listeners to search for music and stream playlists; however, the files on the site are actually streamed from the blogs of top labels, DJs, promoters and music start ups.

9. Blip.fm: Blip.fm is another site where music lovers can access millions of streaming songs. Members receive their own station and the ability to share station programming responsibilities with friends. The site also offers integration with blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed and Last.fm. The act of blipping refers to the act of linking to a song and attaching a 150 character comment to it.

10. MOG: MOG is a music blog network that encompasses more than 300 blog posts per week. The site offers an in-depth look at new artists and includes music recommendations, videos and streaming audio clips. A good place to start with this service is to play audio from it's Recently Popular Posts page.

11. Lala: Lala also offers users a playable web browser interface. The service contains 7 million free online songs and the ability to purchase additional web songs at 10 cents each or downloadable MP3's for 80 cents and up each.

12. Imeem: Imeem is considered "the new social mixtape". The streaming music site allows users to create playlists and share them across the web. RWW recently covered Imeem's iPhone and Android launch.

13. SoundCloud: SoundCloud also allows users to upload tracks and share them via the cloud. Listeners receive shared files via an email-style interface. From there, they can choose to either play the music from the site or download the tracks they've received from friends.

14. 8Tracks: This service lets users upload 8 tracks as a playlist and share the playlist with friends. This service is essentially what Muxtape used to be.

15. Muxtape: Muxtape has transformed from one of the early mixtape-style music sites (users uploaded and shared playlists) to a directory of bands. It remains a great place to discover indie bands.

16. Project Playlist: Project Playlist indexes music from across the web. Again, users create playlists and share links to music files with their friends. Reviewers see this as one of the best music search engines in existence.

17. Skreemr: Skreemr is also a search engine and music indexing site. It claims to offer users access to "6 million mp3 files from over 100,000 web sites".

18. Fizy: Similar to the now defunct Seeqpod, Fizy is an extremely bare bones approach to streaming music with a simple search bar. Like Seeqpod, the site offers speedy music video results and audio results, and unfortunately, legally questionable content. Perhaps the site's recent acquisition will change that.

On the Horizon: Microsoft is set to launch a streaming music site at the end of July. For more info on this project check out our coverage.

Popular playlist sharing site Muxtape got taken down by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in mid-August and it is unfortunately still non-operational. The fact is that Muxtape didn't pay its internet radio licensing fees. In our recent RWW Live podcast on online music, Lucas Gonze (creator of similar playlist service Webjay, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2006) said that Muxtape was "trying to become a big service, i.e. get too big to fail and so cut a deal [with labels]." Unfortunately Muxtape failed to escape the notice of the RIAA.

NetShare (iPhone app)

Nullriver's NetShare was an iPhone app that, according to Gizmodo, allowed you to tether your laptop to your iPhone using the handset's 3G modem as your laptop's own. Basically this let you have full Internet access on your laptop without Wi-Fi, for free. There was talk that this violates AT&T's terms of service, but whatever the reason the app has been pulled from Apple's App Store. The last message on the site is dated 4 August and states: "We're working with Apple to get NetShare back up on the AppStore." But we're not holding our breath.

Image courtesy of Gizmodo

The CLQ

Adam Steinberg of EventVue wrote in to tell us that he misses The CLQ (the acronym stands for Champions League for Quake style games). It's an app that kept track of "millions of game players (Quake, Unreal, Half-life, Tribes, etc.) on thousands of online game servers." It was a very popular app in its niche, however it was stopped. The developers claim that this was due to "incredible amounts of e-mail, GameSpy monopolizing access to game servers, constant upgrading of hardware and software to process increased traffic, games getting their own statistics, etc."

The good news for CLQ fans is that one of the developers, Nico de Vries, is currently working on a version 2.0.

PubSub

PubSub was one of our favorite 'future search' products back in the early days of web 2.0 - you could enter keywords and the product would deliver search results to you automatically. This feature is now common place in news sites, for example Google News has it, but back in '03-'05 PubSub was an innovator.

So it was a great product, but PubSub spectacularly imploded in mid-2006 after founder Bob Wyman blogged about "internal political issues". Wyman left the company shortly after and the product sunk along with its creator. Perhaps PubSub will rise again, because apparently it still exists today. Here is the message on its frontpage currently:

Others have risen since to take over the reins in future search. A few of our favorites are ZapTXT, FeedRinse and BlastFeed. We discussed those and other services here. But we'll always have a soft spot for PubSub...

AllPeers

In March we heard that P2P browser plug-in AllPeers had shut down, a blow to a market that seemed very promising back in 2006. AllPeers set out to add "file sharing to the web browser". Technically the service seemed fine, however the reason for the closure according to the company was that "we have not achieved the kind of growth in our user base that our investors were expecting, and as a result we are not able to continue operating the service."

Scrabulous (Facebook app)

We reported in April that Scrabulous, the extremely popular but unauthorized Scrabble Facebook app, was under fire from Hasbro and Mattel. Those two companies own the rights to Scrabble - Hasbro in North America, and Mattel in the rest of the world. In July the bigcos had their way and Scrabulous was taken offline.

After more legal ducking and weaving, in which the app was first pulled in North America and then internationally too, the app got re-born under the name Wordscraper. It uses circles instead of Scrabble-like square tiles. Unfortunately the change isn't proving too popular. This comment by a Facebook user is an example of the reaction:

"I loved Scrabulous !
Wordscraper is kinda the same but I do not like the round tiles , it makes it difficult to play , kinda messes everything together, change it to SQUARES and it would be alot better."

The old version, with squares

Pandora

OK you can still use Pandora in the US, despite concerns that it might be on the verge of closing. But those of us who live outside the US haven't been able to access this lovely music discovery service for too long a time.

Qumana

Tris Hussey tweeted to tell us that Qumana was a great java-based blog editor, "easy and light." Unfortunately it is not being updated anymore and the homepage isn't accessible.

Crgslst

Back in March we reported on a very slick multi-city search tool for Craigslist, called crgslst. As we noted, Craigslist itself doesn't offer a multi-search service. By combining the publicly available RSS feeds from Craigslist with AJAX, crgslst fills this need "so fast, we left the vowels behind." We noted at the time that crgslst may be in violation of the Craigslist terms of use and could face the same shutdown that other similar projects have in the past.

Indeed this has turned out to be the case. Currently when you visit crglst, you are greeted with this despairing pop-up message:

ShareYourOPML

This site for sharing OPML files was "retired" by creator Dave Winer in January. He wrote at the time that "now that Google and Bloglines both have discovery mechanisms, based on what you and others like, there would only be a future for SYO if it were a thriving and growing community, and it isn't."

The good news for OPML fans is that Toluu has risen to fill the void. We reviewed it in March, noting that it lets you share your OPML with others in order to discover new feeds, see what your friends are reading, and even discover new people who share your same interests. We were impressed by the service, even more so in May when enhancements were announced.

So perhaps, sometimes, there is a silver lining in the dark cloud of web apps that close or get shut down!

Have Your Say

Tell us in the comments which web apps have disappeared in recent times that you used to love. Also let us know if anything has come along since that you perhaps like even better.

To use PicClick, simply choose either the Amazon or eBay tab, enter a basic search term or drill down using pre-selected topics, and add price information if you like. Then, hit search and - voila - your browser is suddenly filled with a series of thumbnails, giving you a visual representation of the available products matching your criteria.

Aside from being visually compelling, PicClick is fast. It manages to return relevant results exceedingly quickly. Plus, flying through hundreds of entries seems a great deal easier without having extemporaneous information cluttering the page.

Clicking on any of the thumbnails takes you directly to the product page on the respective site. Thumbnails too small? There's a slider that dynamically changes the size of the images.

According to StartupSD, the service is the latest brainchild of the prolific Ryan Sit, the developer who created FavThumbs - a similar visual browser for delicious bookmarks, Favtape - which ReadWriteWeb's Frederic Lardinois called "Muxtape on steroids," and Swurl - which RWW's Marshall Kirkpatrick described as "your lifestream made beautiful."

To start - literally - looking for what you're looking for on Amazon and eBay, visit PicClick.