B00mbox – Collaborative Playlist Management
You must have seen video playlists by different users on YouTube. Now you can make it even better by asking other people to contribute and build a playlist with input from your friends, colleagues and loved ones. B00mbox, a free service, lets users achieve this without hassle, quickly and comfortably.
B00mbox lets users pick different YouTube videos, add them through a web interface to the collection and finally use this collection as a playlist by flipping through different slides. There are some already nice collections like top songs of 2010 and beautiful travel destinations open for input. Sadly there is no option to delete the video from the slideshow through B00mbox interface.
B00mbox is powered by slidebomb and each collection is hosted there.
What they say about themselves
B00mbox is great because it lets people work together to make something. If we find a way to turn this exposure into dollars we got a hit.
Why it could be a success
Asking others about their opinions on a certain subject is a way to add diversity. If you are trying to find something, searching for it yourself may take a long time, whereas if you ask other people to chip in, you will quickly get the desired results. The service can be used for fun, education or quick surveys.
Virtual Piano – Play Piano Online
This is an irresistible website if you enjoy playing musical instruments – whether or not you have any real ability. Virtual Piano presents you with a keyboard on screen which you can play in two ways. Either you can click on the keys with your mouse or you can use your keyboard where the letters correspond to the white keys and Shift lets you play the black keys. You soon get used to finding the keys on the keyboard as they go in sequence, but it won’t help you actually learn to play a real piano keyboard.
The site is still being developed and at the moment it can be used for fun, or to play tunes and have them recorded for you. Future developments include the ability to print out music, which would be useful. Virtual Piano also has some music available using the alphabet so you can type the tune into your keyboard – so you can play even if you have no training at all! There’s a Virtual Piano Facebook group for more information and so that you can hear what other users have created using this quirky technique.
Songkick – Live Music Concert Database
Songkick claims to be the biggest concert database in the world with information on more than a million past and future events. It combines a simple method of finding where your favourite musicians are playing with an invitation to join the Songkick community and share your experience of music with other fans. Wherever your favourite musicians are playing live you can find them by typing in their name for a list of international gigs.
There’s no need to be a member to get information on upcoming concerts, but those who join can also fill in details of gigs they’ve been to in the past. Other members can click ‘I was there’ and the database turns into a social network where participants can share photos, videos and reviews of each event. For future concerts members can click ‘I’m going’ and see how many other Songkickers will be there, so they could find a group of friends to go with.
Songkick’s extra features help members to track the music they like with calendar alerts for artists, venues and festivals. They can also see which of their friends are going to a concert and get together. There’s a Songkick plug-in to import up to 50 favourite artists, and once members choose a concert it’s possible to find the best value tickets via a ticket aggregator using the inventory from 29 different ticket vendors.
This is an attractive and easy-to-use site that also provides networking for members and seems to be attempting to provide all the features its target audience would require. Not much wonder it’s already proving one of the most successful London startups. I couldn’t fault it and teenagers using it should already be aware of the caution needed in meeting up with online friends at events like this.
Socially!