Archive for September, 2009
TouchSmart contest update.
Sep 17th
So we have had an overwhelming response to our TouchSmart promotion in conjunction with Hewlett Packard. I wanted to drop some more information on you – So here it is…
You guys do not have to be coding in any particular language – you can even have HTML or FLASH pages rendered on the machine. I know this opens up the contest to A LOT of other developers. And in addition to that there will be MicroCenter’s with TouchSmarts for you to try your application on. So what are you waiting for??? Go get to it!
There is another “MicroCenter Day” this Sunday, the 20th. MicroCenter will have a TouchSmart dx9000 open for developers (or anyone, for that matter) that wants to test out a piece of programming or an application—or, for that matter, see how the TouchSmart works.
There are a bunch of MicroCenter’s around the country—there’s a link to all stores nationwide here (http://www.microcenter.com/at_the_stores/)
So how are you coming with your application?
Name that tune in 140 characters or less. Can’t remember that songs title? LyricRat to the rescue.
Sep 8th
When ever I start to think about not remembering a song I think back to that episode of Married With Children, way back when, when Al was trying to remember that song that starts hmmm hmmm himmmm…
Well this service might not have helped him but it can help you!
The way Lyric Rat works is simple you either visit their website – located at http://www.lyricRat.com or if you are a twitter head you can tweet right at LyricRat.
For the scope of this article we will be walking through using the website but according to the Lyric Rat website’s instructions here is how you can use it via twitter:
@LyricRat
Lyric Rat is naming that tune in 140 characters or less on Twitter.
Send a tweet to @LyricRat with some lyrics and the Rat will reply with the song title and artist and a link with more info. Just make sure “@LyricRat” is the first thing in your tweet.
Back to the website. Once you are on the Lyric Rat site you can type in as much of the song as you remember. I started off with an old favorite of mine. A little Jay Z tune from back in the day. I picked PART of a line out of the song and typed it into the query box on the home page. Once I was done I hit the Find The Song button and the rat when out and found my song!
I waited patiently for about 45 seconds as I stared at this spinning flash graphic. It was scouring Amazon I can only imagine utilizing the Bing search engine for lyrics and returning the best hit.
Then it returned what I was looking for… The song is called Dead Presidents (back then it wasn’t called part 1!) . Then after a moment a Amazon MP3 player popped up and let me play the song I was looking for. This is awesome. The only thing it was lacking was the full lyrics of the song. But hey it did find what I was looking for so beggars shouldn’t be choosey!
I decided to try some other songs from other genres like an old song called blister in the sun… This search was quick and returned the correct song, artist and a Amazon MP3 player again allowing me to get my listen on right there in my browser without clicking around.
You can see the MP3 player below. All you have to do is click on the play button or the right arrow and it will start playing. You can also click buy to be sent to Amazon to cop that song. I am sure the software’s author is using affiliate links to make money as the site is FREE. Free as in Free beer!
I was having such a good time I decided to throw a stranger less known song at it from the Spin Doctors. But it had NO PROBLEM finding the song in a jiffy.
Are you stumped? Are you in a bar and fighting about what song that is? Well if so feel free to browse on over to Lyric Rat and solve your problems! Do you have another application that does what Lyric Rat does? Do you know of an off-line solution? We would love to hear about it in the comments!
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