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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.

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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Features, Web services, web 2.0

Mufin launches new music discovery engine beta, Download Squad readers are invited



As a music lover, one of my favorite innovations of the last five years or so has come in the form of music discovery services. Services like Last.fm, Pandora, Rhapsody and iTunes 8 have made it easy to find artists or songs that are similar to your musical tastes and preferences. The only problem with these services, is that they are based on limited databases (like the iTunes Music Store, for iTunes's Genius Mode), reviews or ratings by other users and overall popularity. That means that the music discovered might indeed be similar, but it really limits results to mainsream songs and generic genre distinctions. This is great for an automatic playlist, but not so great for really finding new bands or artists.

This is why Mufin's new music discovery engine is so unique; it analyzes the actual structure of the song, not just the genre meta-data. Mufin's discovery engine just entered private beta, but Download Squad readers can get in on the action by using this invite link: http://beta.mufin.com/start?ic=e75eecf85a4a547ca9379d6f8b6c23bb.

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.

Read more →

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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