TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

Skinnyr.com weight-loss widget for sale

Just got an email from James Thomas (of JamJunky fame) that one of his other projects - skinnyr has both had a version upgrade, and been put up for sale.

Skinnyr is a simple widget allowing you to share weight gain or loss (depending on your goals) on your blog, website, MySpace page, skinnyr itself, or wherever.

James is selling the site to focus his energy on another project, and hopefully raise some seed funding for that same project. James shares the following on SkinnyR’s, success, history, and sale:

“Skinnyr has done pretty well. I haven’t advertised the site at all, and it manages a few signups per day. Traffic has been on the rise since the doors opened. So far I haven’t monetized the site, and I don’t think I’ll plan on doing it. Whoever offers to buy the site will be personally screened, so I won’t be taking the ebay route to the highest bidder. I want the site to continue to do well, either on it’s own or as part of another site. I built the site out of passion for web development, and I want that passion to live through the end result.” [James Thomas]

As a former follower of John Stone Fitness, I can attest to the fact that there’s a market for this type of tool - people who are motivated by fitness love to share their successes, and skinnyr provides a dead-easy way to do so. Its a “feature” to be sure, but a good one that could no doubt find a home in someone’s ad-driven widget stable, or be quickly rolled into a Facebook app.

In fact - I’d encourage James to not sell; instead, build the Facebook side out, and ride the hype-wave to a membership base. At the same time, work with MochiAds, who specialize in Flash-based game/widget advertising, to create & sell an ad-unit that fits.

Its easy to get over-extended, but IMHO its also easy to abandon potential on your own doorstep. Whatever you end up doing, James, best of luck with it!

jamjunky, skinnyr wackylabs

JamJunky - Song Writing and Independent Music Sharing Gone Social

Friend of TechFold James Thomas today launched his latest project: JamJunky - a tool & community for songwriters. Allen at CenterNetworks beat me to the punch, with JamJunky coverage here. JamJunky provides a means to organize your work (lyrics, tab, mp3’s), and a forum to solicit feedback - from a select group, or the whole community.

The Community Side: Browse music & artists.

Anyone can browse public songs & artists, play or download MP3’s (great in-browser player, btw), and leave comments. You can list songs by Genre (which loads with a nice AJAX implementation), and order them by title, artist, or popularity (listens).

Once you find a song, you’re taken to its page:

Each song page includes the aforementioned in-browser player/downloader, as well as a comment form, lyrics & chords, other song info you may have entered (key, tempo, etc.), and licensing options.

Its deliciously fast and easy to play a song and comment on it.

The Tool: Add your own music.

Adding a song is a simple process which allows you to add as much or as little info as you please. The most standout part of the process is the Lyrics and Chords section: if you choose to enter both (as opposed to just lyrics), you’re presented with a blue and white tab sheet which actually makes entering chords and their corresponding words very easy to do.

This is a key point: JamJunky is designed with the user in mind - i.e.: someone at home with a guitar, working out a song - not a virtuoso orchestral conductor building a symphony. Have you ever used PowerTab? Great features, but way too intense an application for the casual songwriter - IMHO, JamJunky has found a great balance point.

A final note on the tool side: JamJunky has awesome “ownership controls.” CC licesning options, download control, share scope (friends? everyone?), etc: it all adds up to a tool that is very musician-friendly, offering different ways to balance openness with property protection.

Suggestions

JamJunky is days old, so I’m sure some of these are being worked on, but I’ll throw them out there anyway.

Facebook-style “Activity” feed: Adding individual RSS feeds for songs or artists would be good, but potentially overwhelming if you wanted to follow a bunch of contemporaries. A network activity tracker that aggregated activity for everyone you followed into a single summary page and RSS feed would do the job.
Group options: People love to be a part of things. Build out an infrastructure to enable user-managed groups, and see what pops up. “Chicago Blues Guitarists,” for example, would be a great way for musicians with common interests to meet their contemporaries and set up in-person jam sessions.
Printable tab: Let me output those chords & lyrics and a nice jam session-friendly format and I’ll be really pumped.

That’s it in a nutshell - JamJunky is a great tool targeted at a great niche, which has been under-served by online applications to date. It has a great launch feature set, and I have no doubt that there are more great ideas in the pipeline.

Congrats, Jimmy!

artists, creativecommons, guitar, guitartab, jamjunky, music, musicians, songs, songwriting tab