Tunesweeper

http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/tunesweeper/

Remove iTunes Duplicates – Safely! Tune Sweeper is the premium duplicate removal tool for iTunes.

Tune Sweeper displays duplicate tracks in groups.
Automatically select which tracks to remove.
Remove all duplicates in one button click!
Optionally backup removed tracks – just in case

meta-Tunes

http://www.macroplant.com/meta-tunes/

meta-Tunes (formerly meta-iPod), the iTunes Cleaner, can clean up an iTunes library with as many features as a Swiss Army Knife. From recovering ratings and play counts from your iPod to tracking down files or folders gone missing, meta-Tunes analyses all data sources containing your music to put the pieces of the puzzle back together.

TuneUp

http://www.tuneupmedia.com/

TuneUp transforms your music collection. Automagically.™
• fixes mislabeled song info (track 01 & unknown artist)
• removes duplicate songs
• fills in missing album cover art
• gets concert alerts, music videos, artist bios & more

Rinse

https://www.rinsemymusic.com/about

We built Rinse to be the easiest and fastest way to organize your songs – add missing album art, fix misspellings, remove duplicates, rename genres and more. Rinse is powered by an intelligent online database which means it can fix songs without making you type in the new information.

Keynote Panel: Social Media “Hotseat”

From the recent Online Marketing Summit in Houston. Hear from both your marketing peers and the world’s elite brands as they delve into how their organization has evolved into a successful social business.  From internal Social Communciation policy to business unit alignment and of course getting buy-in from the Big Kahuna(s).. insights, stories, and in essence one giant case study on how to succeed and avoid potholes along the way.

• Jeremiah Andrick, Online Customer Acquisition Manager, Logitech (@jeremiah) [Pictured]
• Chris O’Hara, Sr. VP of Sales & Marketing, TRAFFIQ (@chrisohara)
• Aimee Woodall, Founder & Leader of the Flock, The Black Sheep Agency (@aimeewoodall) [Pictured]
• Craig Meurer, Director, CRM/Technology Solutions, Harte-Hanks (@craigmeurer) [Pictured]

Also pictured Aaron Kahlow (far right).

Photo courtesy Brian Potter from Schipul.

Impressive device from Amazon.  Summary of specs below. The Kindle Fire should arrive in late November. I also have a previous Kindle for reading and love it. Takes and entire bookshelf and puts it in my hand.  Great stuff!

• Movies, apps, games, music, reading and more, plus Amazon’s revolutionary, cloud-accelerated web browser
• 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books
• Amazon Appstore – thousands of popular apps and games
• Ultra-fast web browsing – Amazon Silk
• Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
• Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle
• Fast, powerful dual-core processor
• Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows

Technical Details

Display 7″ multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors.
Size (in inches) 7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″ (190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm).
Weight 14.6 ounces (413 grams).
System Requirements None, because it’s wireless and doesn’t require a computer.
On-device Storage 8GB internal. That’s enough for 80 apps, plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books.
Cloud Storage Free cloud storage for all Amazon content
Battery Life Up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as web browsing and downloading content.
Charge Time Fully charges in approximately 4 hours via included U.S. power adapter. Also supports charging from your computer via USB.
Wi-Fi Connectivity Supports public and private Wi-Fi networks or hotspots that use the 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or 802.1X standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks.
USB Port USB 2.0 (micro-B connector)
Audio 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers.
Content Formats Supported Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8.
Documentation Quick Start Guide(included in box); Kindle User’s Guide (pre-installed on device)
Warranty and Service 1-year limited warranty and service included. Optional 2-year Extended Warranty available for U.S. customers sold separately. Use of Kindle is subject to the terms found here.
Included in the Box Kindle Fire device, U.S. power adapter (supports 100-240V), and Quick Start Guide.

I always knew Apple products were inspired by alien races. Please check out this new proposed Apple campus in Cupertino, CA. Here is Steve Jobs’ presentation to the Cupertino City Council. This new project would be built on a new piece of property Apple, Inc. bought from HP. Unique, eco-friendly and really shows what can be done to reclaim land and still house a huge company like Apple.

Steve Jobs presentation to Cupertino City Council

Make sure to check out this AMAZING campus design from Foster + Partners. Here  is a link to the entire set of drawings.

“How to sell a domain.” I was recently asked this question at a conference. Here are some thoughts…

Selling a domain at a good price can be a little challenging, because you have to find someone with a distinct need or create a bidding war or wait…

Here are the big auction houses:
www.sedo.com
auctions.godaddy.com
www.snapnames.com
www.afternic.com
www.pool.com
believe it or not eBay too, but pros would probably balk at this.

One of the best ways is to send targeted emails to people you think will buy it.

There are also boards where you can shop your domain around – but I have found that the domainers often lowball hoping to find a newbie:
www.namepros.com
www.dnforum.com

There are also some resources to help you evaluate & price the domain (numbers may vary a lot)
www.estibot.com
www.namebio.com
www.domaintools.com

Finally, here are some big brokers:
www.fabulousdomains.com
www.ricklatona.com
www.greatdomains.com

Happy domaining!

I just stumbled across this new site. Love the interface! Hipmunk.com makes it easey to find the flight you are looking for. You won’t believe how simple it is now.

From the site: Hipmunk: We make it faster and easier to find the flight you want. Most flight search sites haven’t changed in years. They have an intimidating search page and endless pages of flight results. Finding the right flight often takes all afternoon—or all week. At Hipmunk, we make your experience a lot better. We’re building better interfaces for searching, browsing, and filtering your flight search results.

This flight search engine is brought to you by:
Steve Huffman, Co-founder. Steve previously co-founded Reddit, which was acquired by Condé Nast in 2006.
Adam Goldstein, Co-founder. Adam previously co-founded BookTour, and authored AppleScript: The Missing Manual.

Rumor has it that FaceBook is adding location capabilities soon.  The competition heats up.  Foursquare spotted a latent need and now the big boys are looking to play. Speculation is showing up several blogs and tech news sites — and indications from developers are that it will be enabled through an API as well as onsite settings. How this will play out is yet to be seen. Will Foursquare and Gowalla facing major competition, or will FaceBook focus on services closer to home as well as local advertising?

From Twitter’s Blog:

“Fast Follow. Anyone in the US can receive Tweets on their phone even if they haven’t signed up for Twitter. This is a simple way for people to get information they care about in real-time. For example, let’s say you want to get Tweets from New York City’s office of emergency management (@NotifyNYC). Just text ‘follow NotifyNYC’ to 40404 in the US.”

Fast follow only works in the USA today, but will be expanded.

• You can also set a phone alert on twitter by clicking the phone icon shown by hovering on the avatar of the user.
• Send “on username” to 40404 or “off username” to 40404 to toggle.
• Turn text on or off by sending “on” of “off” (or use Twitter settings).
• You can use “get username” to see the last tweet on your cell phone.

@craigmeurer

Eric Schmidt from the August 2010 Techonomy conference. According to Schmidt and presumably using Google’s vast view of data, civilization up until 2003 created about 5 exabytes of info.

According to Schmidt, “There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing…People aren’t ready for the technology revolution that’s going to happen to them….”

“If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence,” says Schmidt, “we can predict where you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don’t have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You’ve got Facebook photos! People will find it’s very useful to have devices that remember what you want to do, because you forgot…But society isn’t ready for questions that will be raised as result of user-generated content.”

“People are not ready for the technology revolution that’s going to happen.”

Social media will only exascerbate this trend.

Google Wave to Close Down

Google announced today that Google Wave will shut down later this year. Google cited a lack of traction with features and users. Parts of the technology will be used in other projects. Also Google will leave the service up for some time to allow users to transition. Press release below.

Update on Google Wave

8/04/2010 02:00:00 PM We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users’ lives. Last year at Google I/O, when we launched our developer preview of Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even “playback” the history of changes—all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops.

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow