Hiveplay, a social jukebox app

Hiveplay is going to be a revolutionary app in the music panorama. Hiveplay transitions people's selections from the old-style jukebox to smartphones. 

The application was developed by a group of students in Spain, reported El País. This digital jukebox allows people to pick songs they want to to be played when they enter a bar, pub or restaurant by making the choices directly on their phones. 

Hiveplay can be downloaded for free in iOS and Android devices. "Our intention is to take the next step in the evolution of music", states Luis J. Álvarez, one of the promoters of this initiative.

Local businesses that are interested in allowing their customers to use Hiveplay only need a computer with an Internet connection and to pay the company a subscription fee. The new client can choose from a list of 250 to 300 songs, and then visiting customers who have the app on their phones vote according to their taste. The number of customers' votes in the queue will decide which song is next. The goal is for local establishments to enhance customers' music experience by responding to their personal preferences, reported Consumer Lab.

However, there are questions concerning the copyrights of the songs. According to the last edition of Wayra, a Latin-American technological startup funding firm, whose sponsor is Telefónica, the Hiveplay entrepreneurs earned financing (40,000 euros) and the permission to use the seven million songs that Telefónica's On the Spot service offers. On the Spot  specializes in in-store digital media services, and is used by many local businesses. According to Luis J. Álvarez, Hiveplay actually only takes advantage of about 10,000 songs. He adds, "our goal is to make people in a bar fight for their favorite music."

Below it is Hiveplay's presentation video on Youtube.

Image: blogthinkbig

Google Keep -- a "keeper" or "keep-away"?

Google launched last Wednesday a new note-taking tool: Google Keep. Google describes the new service as way to "quickly capture what's on your mind and recall it easily wherever you are."

With Google Keep, you can create notes, checklists, photos and voice memos -- and all the content syncs across your devices, reported Mashable. Google Keep is available for Android 4.0 and above on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep.  According to the company, in the coming weeks it will be directly accessible from Google Drive.

As CNET reported, Google Keep is straightforward, has a clean interface and mirrors the basic functionality of the Android app. Google Keep offers four different methods to enter a note: 

• A quick note directly from the text box on the initial screen. 
• Add a checklist by tapping on the check mark icon. 
• Create a voice memo by tapping on the microphone. All memos are instantly transcribed, keeping both the audio and text in the note. 
• Add a photo as a note by tapping on the camera.

Furthermore, as Google describes, it is possible to color-code the notes, swipe to archive things no longer needed and turn a note into a checklist by adding checkboxes.

Some users have started to compare the new Google tool with Evernote. However, as CNET reviews, it may be too soon to make the comparisons as Google Keep doesn't have nearly the feature set that Evernote does, and it's only available on Android and on the Web and evaluates Google Keep for what it actually is: a simple, convenient note-taker for Android.

Nonetheless, since Google announced two weeks before to shut down Google Reader on 1. July this year as part of their second spring cleaning, users are now much more wary about trusting their data to Google's services, reported The Guardian. Even a petition on Change.org was started by user Dan Lewis and until now it has reached over 140,000 supporters. In addition, The Guardian has made an analysis of 39 Google services that did not stay longer than four years and suggests that Google Keep will be working until 18 March 2017. Other consumers, like Om Malik, from Gigaom, has stated "Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself".

Image: abcnews.go.com

Twitter linguistics yet another a window into human nature in surprising ways

Contrary to commonly held belief that users simply want to share everything with everyone on social media, a new study reveals that Twitter users are forming ‘tribes’ with their own languages, according to The Guardian. 

Analysis of a substantial number of Tweets was done by academics at Royal Holloway, University of London and Princeton University. According to the joint article published on the journal of EPJ Data Science, a relationship between human communication and social networks can be seen, which suggests the interaction between language use and human society. 

What this all boils down to is the theory that we will be able to identify emerging social groups and classify a hierarchy of online communities in social networks based on their use of key words.  For example, ‘Tbr’ can be used to identify fans of comics and novels; ‘Avn’ can be traced to Twitter users sharing and discussing pornography; ‘Melb’ are Australian users, while users who tweet ‘Alterra’ are related to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee community.

The largest community found was African Americans using the words 'Nigga', 'poppin' and 'chillin', which comprises about 90% of messages within their group. Members in this community also tend to shorten the endings of their words, replacing 'ing' with 'in' or 'er' with 'a', according to The Guardian. 

For individuals who used Twitter extensively and tweet a lot of text, the level of accuracy is even up to 80%, Science Omega quoted Dr. John Bryden, project leader and postdoctoral research assistant.

Similar to previous findings about Facebook, this study also confirms social media’s ability to disclose one’s personal information and identity, such as race, nationality, hobbies, political orientation, and even religion, according to Science Omega. 

So, on one hand, the inclusion of keywords in the tweets on social media may help users engage more effective with their community and groups. On the other hand, however, though sometimes unconsciously and unwittingly, this private information might be exploited by marketers and advertisers, and also lead to the problem of online privacy violation.

Image: Guardian

New research reveals Facebook users passively leak personal information

A new study reveals that Facebook users disclose private information and intimate secrets unconsciously with their public ‘like’ updates, The Guardian reports.

Facebook ‘likes’ on people's status could reveal personal information that creates digital records of users’ online behaviors, according to the University of Cambridge. 

The research on over 58,000 voluntary U.S. Facebook users was collected by researchers of the Psychometric Centre at University of Cambridge and Microsoft Research. Mr Michal Kosinski, Operations Director of the center, said similar inferences with high level of accuracy could be drawn from all manners of digital data and social media. 

For example, the prediction over whether male users were homosexual had an accuracy rate of as high as 88 percent. What is more shocking, 95 percent of the estimations were accurate in distinguishing African-Americans from Caucasians, according to the university.

Thus, companies could mine data for personality traits to help favor certain job applicants and reject others, The Telegraph quoted Mr. Kosinski.

The categories of personal information are by no means limited to sexual orientation and race. The study results indicate that Facebook users’ private social identification information, such as age, IQ, political views, emotional stability, could be inferred, as well.

The study is believed to raise heated debate, yet again, about personalized marketing and targeted advertising in the digital age, as well as raise concerns about online privacy and information safety, according to The Guardian.

Facebook announced late last month that it would expand its custom audiences tool to  improve marketers' ability to reach a wider range of targeted customers. The extension to work with third-party partners would lead to a more personalized and relevant advertising experience for Facebook users.  In spite of Facebook’s repeated efforts to assure users of its online privacy policy, concern among Facebook users runs high about online security and their private information.

Amazon wants to buy generic book Internet domains

Amazon is interested in buying Internet top-level domain names such as ".book," ".author" and ".read", in order to expand its reach to customers, reported Fast Company on Monday.  

However, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP),  as well as retailers such as Barnes & Noble, objected to this bid. As Digitalspy writes, they are all concerned about the ambitions of the e-commerce giant to monopolize in the book market and claimed that its "potential for abuse seems limitless." They say that granting a single private company the exclusive use of a closed domain string would "defeat the expressed public interest purposes" for which generic top-level domains (gTLDs) were created.

Placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anti-competitive, Scott Turow, Authors Guild president, wrote in an official letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). 

In addition, the AAP notes that Amazon's goal to register such domains is "strictly control its use in pursuit of the company's business goals". "From inception, the introduction of new gTLDs has been promoted as a means to increase competition, add consumer choice, support internet freedom, expand market differentiation and diversify service providers," said Allan Adler, the general counsel and vice president of government affairs at the AAP.

Barnes & Noble, one of Amazon’s chief rivals, said Amazon should not be permitted to control the domains it is requesting because it would have “disastrous consequences not only for bookselling but for the American public", reported SiteProNews.

On the other hand, Amazon declared that by securing the domains .book, .read and .author, they will bring innovative ways to “surprise and delight our customers,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

ICANN is a nonprofit that manages the world's registry of Internet domain names.  Last December, it initiated an international process to allow companies to register for new generic top-level domains which do not include the usual suffixes like .com, .org or .co.uk., according to Digitalspy.   Applications submitted to ICANN included .ferrari, .ford, .microsoft, .netflix and .apple, all from their respective official companies. But Amazon EU also submitted bids for various generic web suffixes, such as .music, .movies, .mobile and .app.