Filed under: Audio, Web services, Mobile
Mufin launches public beta with Facebook and iTunes support; licenses patented audio ID technology
Last month I wrote about mufin.com's music discovery engine. Unlike traditional music discovery services like last.fm or the Genius Mode in iTunes 8, mufin analyzes the actual musical structure of a song. This is great for music lovers because it can really open up more opportunities to discover new bands.
Co-developed at the Fraunhofer Institute (the creators of the MP3 format), mufin uses audio recognition technology to analyze the actual musical characteristics of a song. Mufin creates a unique "fingerprint" for each song, using 40 characteristics like tempo, instruments, rhythm structure and sound density. Then, when you search for a song in mufin's database, an alogrithm compares the fingerprint of that song against the database and presents you with results of songs that are similar in structure.
Today, mufin is officially entering public beta. If you missed out on the private beta, you can now sign up for the service and give it a whirl. Even better, mufin's public beta now supports both Facebook and iTunes.
Mufin for Facebook is pretty similar to the existing mufin widget for MySpace. You have access to the mufin discovery engine and song catalog from within Facebook and you can add your discoveries to your profile or share them with friends.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
