Songza has added profiles to its music web search site. Finally! After launching a few months back, Songza has been releasing new features at a more rapid pace, in part thanks to its successful launch. One of its more recently added features is Twitter integration, which ties in nicely with the new profiles on Songza.

So why should you care that profiles are now an option on Songza? It means you can save your playlists. You don’t have to re-create a playlist every time yo visit the site. Songza is moving from an instant gratification search tool to a personal search tool. There’s even a handy, easy-to-remember URL with your username at the end of it, for easy access on your part.

Similar to Seeqpod, you can search for songs and add them to your playlist, log out, log back in, and have your playlist intact. Unlike Seeqpod, however, you don’t have to keep re-saving your playlist. However, you can only create one playlist, and there are not yet any “player” options like “skip,” “repeat” or “shuffle.” So you may want to remember where you left off, once you sign out. I’m sure there are lots more features in the Songza pipeline, including more directly involved personal recommendations to complement the OneLlama integration Songza already has.

ShareThis

I had a great first day at the PoliticsOnline conference. Although, due to a mixup at Kinkos earlier in the morning, I didn’t arrive in time to catch the breakfast keynote, which I hear was particularly interesting, and centered around privacy issues and the sort of thing I talked about later in the day during my panel.

The Panels I Attended
Before I talk about how fun that panel was to run, I’d like to comment a bit on the other panels I attended.

Those of you that followed the blog on Tuesday were likely treated to my live stream of the panels I attended, one of which was accompanied by a liveblog. This is something I aim to do more of tomorrow, but it gave me a unique opportunity to comment as it happened on what some of the speakers were saying while many of you joined me in listening to what they had to say.

In both of the panels I attended today, I found that while the terminology used by a lot of these DC, politicals, and campaigners were different than the terminology you’re familiar with seeing here in the pages of Mashable, they were almost always on the right track in terms of seeming to ‘get’ social media.

The one caveat I’d make to that holds true for the ‘Developing Mobile Apps’ and ‘Social Network Outreach’ panels both would be that social media, especially when you’re dealing with high profile political candidates is not about customisation.

We’re not talking about something that people want to bling up, as the kids say these days. We’re talking about concepts and people that folks not only want to engage with, but arguably have a right to engage with.

Clearly and especially at this stage in the game, Obama, Clinton and McCain are not going to be able to respond directly to individual constituent requests and questions. On the other hand, would it hurt Barack to have an occasional conversation on Twitter? If he wants us all to believe he’s the next Tech President, perhaps he should, you know, like maybe use some technology? Just spit ballin’ here.

I am picking on Obama here, but the same could easily have been said about 16 of the 20 candidates that ran this year (see the embed below for one of the panels I attended).

The Panel I Ran
I had a great time with Allen Stern, Jim Harper and Sascha Meinrath discussing Privacy in the Digital Age. We all had a loose idea about what we wanted to cover, but the audience drove a lot of the conversation, including the audience out in California.

The first anecdote I had that lead into a discussion about DataPortability, APML, and Social Network’s ability to see everything about you was the example of Robert Scoble, when his Facebook account was cancelled.

I was midway into transitioning into the next question when Robert, who to the best of my knowlege caught us broadcasting the panel live on the site, and called a friend of his in the back of the room to see if he could join in on the discussion.

That was a hoot, as was the questions asked by the audience and the hyper-intelligent responses from all the members of the panel (see the embed below for more privacy talk).

ShareThis

Here’s a Pixsy announcement that doesn’t involve powering search for another site. Not directly, at least. Pixsy has actually worked with Pageflakes to offer a specialized photo search widget. It’s actually a celebrity search “flake” that users can add to their Pageflakes personalized start page to immediately access an image and video search tool that features your favorite superstars.

It should be easy enough for you to find on Pageflakes–it’s currently featured as one of the new widgets for you to add to your start page. All those other announcements of Pixsy teaming up with another site to power its image and video search, or adding another site’s inventory to its database for a wider distributed search have amassed to this. Pixsy on Pageflakes.

ShareThis

We’ve talked about BrightKite before.  Perhaps you remember them. They are a notification service for the purpose of providing options to users as to what kind of notifications they’d like to receive. They’ve continued to be private beta, but from the descriptions and demonstrations they’ve given us, they seem to be a bit like a mobile version of Prologue.

As per their modus operandi, they sent us a quick message that they’re now funded, having finalized the details for the Series A funing, but didn’t give us any more details than that.

Well, that and they’ve moved to new offices.  See picture to right.

ShareThis

PhotoShelter is an image-sharing site designed specifically for archiving and e-commerce solutions for professional and amateur photographers, and today it is announcing its newly integrated Flickr Import Tool, enabling existing Flickr users to easily transfer photos over to PhotoShelter (and perhaps steal some market share, too?).

Flickr Import works for Flickr Pro-level accounts, and lets those die-hard Flickr lovers utilize PhotoShelter for the archiving and e-commerce side of the web-based photo-sharing world. PhotoShelter’s claim to fame is its security options, preventing unauthorized viewing, downloads and image theft, along with immense storage and e-commerce opportunities. So instead of waiting around for photographers to leave Flickr and use PhotoShelter for all their photo-sharing needs, the Flickr Import option kind of lets users take advantage of both worlds, if need be.

While Flickr is more about sharing than PhotoShelter, some of the benefits of PhotoShelter don’t entirely overlap with the basic premise of Flickr. So it does look like PhotoShelter is hoping to provide an alternative to Flickr all together, for those users that would like the security PhotoShelter has to offer. So if a time-saving import option is all you need to nudge you to the other side, then this is for you. See here for more photo tools.

ShareThis

Local video tour site EveryScape has just announced a $7 million Series B venture capital financing, led by new investor Dace Ventures, with existing investors Draper Fisher Jurveston, Draper Fisher New England, Draper Atlantic and LaunchPad Venture Group.

EveryScape has indicated that it will be using the financing to grow its sales force, which will be necessary for pushing it out across new cities on the local level. The funding will also go towards layering in new features. While EveryScape has not made a secret of its plans to roll out its service across US cities, we haven’t heard much in the way of EveryScape’s plans for the new features that will be added to the site.

I took a look at EveryScape when the service first launched last year, and again when the company released several new features and a much more comprehensive approach to its long term goals as an online resource on a local scale.

So far, I like the direction in which EveryScape is headed, and there’s a great deal of potential for growing in multiple directions as both an integrated and stand-alone solution.

ShareThis

The first approved applications for the new MySpace Developer Platform will be rolling out to users on March 13th according to a post in the company’s developer forums.

As of today, developers are now able to submit their applications for review. Here are the requirements MySpace outlines for getting your app approved and listed in the application gallery:

* Your App must not violate the Developer Terms of Service and must comply with the Application Guidelines
* Your App must have small and large images uploaded, and must have a meaningful description
* Your app must meet a reasonable standard of functionality and value (hint: hello, world” does not make it)

The platform was first opened to developers back on February 5th in what MySpace described as a “level playing field” in that everyone has a chance to have their applications included in the launch. Next week, we’ll get to see how level that playing field really is.

ShareThis

Tomorrow night is MashMeet DC REMIX, where a variety of startups will be presenting and 170 web industry people from the area will be in attendance. With the Politics Online Conference also in town and the limited capacity of MashMeet, we’ve decided to add an after party that is open to everyone. Here are the details:

When: Wednesday March 5th, 10:15pm - ???
Where: Science Club, 1136 19th Street NW, Washington DC
Who: Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, Adam Ostrow, Mark Hopkins, and Adam Hirsch

If you think you might attend, feel free to RSVP on the Facebook Event Page we’ve setup. We hope to see you there!

ShareThis

Remember “Driven” on MTV? I think it may still be around, but it seems that the cable channel has been overrun with teenage reality programs and the still-standing TRL. Pitchfork Media is hoping to fill any void you’ve had since the days of constant behind-the-scenes programming with a new channel that’s completely dedicated to the documentation of music artists. The channel, called Pitchfork.tv, will be launching April 7th, and will feature film documents on the music artists you love. And that’s it.

Pitchfork is also boasting that the absence of investment money or “special interests” means that the team has full creative autonomy in the production of the content that will be shown on the new channel. Now, Pitchfork was already an online resource for music news and events, videos and the like. So in introducing a deeper look at the makings of the music industry, Pitchfork is taking a quality approach for the presentation of editorial content, in hopes of differentiating itself further from the crowd.

It makes sense, and I like the concept, but I’m wondering how the overall concept will be executed. Will there be a good deal of content on the mavens of the web, for music promotion and sales? I’d find that terribly interesting. And what about the distribution of its documentaries across the web itself? Will we see partnerships with other video aggregates, as well as dedicated YouTube channels and the like? Pouring resources into the production of web content is a loaded task that many are taking up, including Hollywood vets (and MTV!) hoping to cash in on the growing online video sector. So we’ll have a watchful eye on the development of Pitchfork.tv. See here for other music discovery tools.

ShareThis

Another company has found Kaltura to be a useful integration tool for its services. Home Movie Depot, a service for consumers and professionals to have movies converted into DVDs, has teamed up with collaborative multimedia tool Kaltura. The partnership is in fact a two-way street, where Kaltura users will have access to Home Movie Depot’s digitizing services, and vice versa.

The shared features from this partnership will be made available over multiple phases, the first of which launches this month. It will allow Kaltura users to combine content from their digital camera along with content from their old 8mm films, VHS tapes, slides, negatives and photos. This has a heavy integration with Home Movie Depot, as you’ll need to send in your old video and image content in order to begin with this particular collaborative effort.

Phase two will enable users to further customize this content through Kaltura’s editing options. Having recently spent the better part of 6 weeks preparing old 8mm and VHS tapes into DVDs to realize my mother’s one and only Christmas wish last year, I fully understand the benefits of such a combined and deeply integrated service. I wouldn’t have minded getting some help from fellow family members in creating content for my dear mother, either. I think this move allows Kaltura to really tap into a larger market, bridging the gap between old and new media in an online world.

ShareThis