A New Business Opportunity for Mahalo

Mahalo.com is a human-powered search site that launched in May of 2007. About one and a half years later Mahalo launched Mahalo Answers. Rather than explaining the site myself, here is a brief summary of Mahalo Answers straight from the horse’s mouth:

The site allows users to post questions on any topic; if the query is time-sensitive or may require in-depth research, users have the option of offering payment (known as a “tip”) for the best answer. Participants earn points for answering questions. As their points accumulate, users move up in belt levels and can do more on the site.

A day later after Mahalo Answers launched, I decided to sign up for an account. Since that time, I have participated enough to earn me a green belt and am about 500 points away from the purple belt. Their points, dollars, and belt structure is elegant and simple to comprehend. It works very well. The more you participate the more points, Mahalo dollars, and belt levels you get. The satisfaction of helping others, the utility of having others help me, and the addicted nature of the point-structure kept me coming back. In my opinion, the point-dollar-belt system is the best thing that has come out of Mahalo.

The point-dollar-belt system has all the components in making an online community an addiction. As a matter of fact, on the site itself, some people have expressed their addiction via questions:

• Mahalo user matthewh asked: My parents say I’m addicted to Mahalo and they are going to block the website. What do I do?
• Mahalo user baalcat asked: How much time do you spend on Mahalo a day? I joined this service just under a week ago and I’m already an addict! I just love this service and being able to answer people’s questions.
• Mahalo user easyeboy asked: How can I put a limit on Mahalo Answers usage and addiction? It is sometimes a distraction from me getting real work done.

Why not does Mahalo create a platform around the point-dollar-belt structure and license it for other companies? Companies such as Best Buy, Amazon, or Dell will do anything to have their customers say something like “Damn, I am addicted to this new Best Buy community.” or “I cannot stop participating in the new Amazon community.” It would be great if they can offer this platform for free for non-profit web sites such as, my very own, musicgenretree.com

Some of the features that the platform may offer:

1. ability to change the look and feel completely to match that of the customer
2. ability for community members to exchange their dollars for products that the customer offers. Think Best Buy dollars, Dell dollars, or Amazon dollars.
3. users do not need to create seperate accounts. For example, my Dell account can be used to participate in the Amazon community and all my points, dollars, and belt level will carry over between sites. Furthermore, the Mahalo Answers own account can also be used
4. one of the powerful features in Mahalo Answers. Is the lack, or completely absence, of trolls. This technology can be used to filter out all the trolls from the customer’s communities, as well.

If Mahalo does not monetize on this, others will simply catch-on the addicted nature of this structure and start implementing their own versions of this point-dollar-belt platform around their communities.

Obviously, I have not invested a lot of time in perfecting this idea. With more though and brain storming sessions, I think this is a viable opportunity for Mahalo, no? The platform almost sells itself!

Music Genres on Google Squared

Google Squared is a new Google Labs application for displaying search data in a more organized fashion than those regular ol’ search results.  For music collectors, this tool has the potential of being very useful for discovering musical genres.

Let’s say, for example, that you want to add more Rock to your collection.  A Google Squared search results for “Rock Music Genres” returns with many suggestions in a very organized view.

Having this detailed view saves you some time in cherry-picking through search results.  In a well-organized view you get to see all Rock sub-genres.  You’ll be able to tell from this view which genres you are missing from your music collection.

Good Music is Good Music

From time to time, I may have my music player on shuffle while a group of people listen to it.  Every so often, a song will come up that will make everybody in the room look at me with a quizzical look.  What just happened?  All of a sudden a song considered by many as “not cool” or “cheezy” happened to be next in the shuffle.  My reaction is always the same: hey “good music is good music”.  This is something I have learned to expect when playing my music of every single genre in random fashion for groups of people.

Here is someone else explaining the same situation:

Death Row Albums Now on eMusic

With Death Row record label now on eMusic, west-coast hip-hop classic albums such as Dr. Dre’s The Chronic (4x platinum), 2 Pac’s All Eyez On Me (9x platinum), and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle (4x platinum) are now available at relatively cheap prices (as low as a quarter per song).

Death Row, specifically The Chronic, is responsible for establishing the west coast in hip-hop and popularizing the distinctive style of g-funk.

A good definition of the term “Music Genre”

A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or “basic musical language” (van der Merwe 1989, p.3). Music may also be categorised by non-musical criteria such as geographical origin though a single geographical category will often include a wide variety of sub-genres

The article explains the different attributes that make up a music genre.  The post continues to explain the subjectivity in separating music into genres.  Finally, the article also explains the necessity by some organizations, such as record labels, to cluster music into genres.

Read the complete article here.

musicgenretree.com update

After finding a suitable home/host/server for musicgenretree.com, I am ready to offer a sneak peek at the very first incarnations of the site.  Send me a note if you would like an invitation.

These first few versions of the application will simply offer the ability to traverse the genre tree.  In a few months, I will add the ability to get information on each genre and possibly add a community around the site.

One of the reasons I am offering an advanced sneak-peek is to get feedback regarding the overall look-and-feel and to get suggestions on the genre tree itself.

DJ Fly Setting A New Bar In The Turntablism World.

It has been years since I have seen innovation in the turntablism world.  Just when I thought that the art of turntablism has reached its limit in innovation, 2008 DMC World Champion DJ Fly from France enters into the scene.  He has taken the turntablism art to a whole new level and has set a whole new bar for the art of turntablism.  He has a style that can best be described as perfect-timing turntablist and scratching skills to create a musical journey using hip-hop and electronic flavors.  The one thing that sets DJ Fly apart from the rest is his attention to precision.  He rarely misses a beat in his very difficult and articulate sets.  I can’t wait to see what DJ Fly is going to do next.

… and finally, here is DJ Fly with legendary DJ QBert:

4/29/2009 Update: one more video here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x24ylt_dj-fly-le-6-minutes-vice-champion-d_creation

Breaking News (or Twitter notifications) on My MP3 Player.

I consider myself a news junkie.  If there is some breaking news occurring, I want to know what it is, immediately.  While on my computer, I get breaking news alerts by subscribing to @cnnbrk and @breakingnewson on Twitter.  Even when I am out-and-about, I have breaking news sent to my mobile phone via SMS text messages.  The one place where I have no access to breaking news is while driving.  If I get an SMS text message notification, I will not read it because it is very distracting to keep checking my messages while driving.

The technology I have in mind that will fix this problem is very simple: include in internet-enabled MP3 players the ability to speak breaking news as they happen.  The process will work as follows.  I am driving down the highway listening to my MP3 player.  When breaking news is occurring somewhere in the world, my music player will be notified.  When the unit gets notified, it will gradually lower the volume of the music that is playing and then speak the breaking news to me, preferably a short snippet ala Twitter.  After the breaking news has been spoken, the music volume will return to its original state.  Technology-wise, it seems very simple.  So simple that I think something like this may have already been created.  Anyone?

To extend on this idea a bit further.  Maybe I can send selected twitter notifications to my MP3 unit and not only will I get breaking news, but friends’ updates, as well.  Pretty cool, ha?

Did you know? Where we’ve been. How we stand. Where we’re going.

Vinyl to MP3s even easier

About a year ago, I posted my intentions to rip all my vinyl into mp3s using the ionAudio – Vinyl Recording USB Turntable.  Needless to say, I haven’t even started ripping my first vinyl record.  That might change in the near future thanks to a new turntable that makes it even easier and less time consuming to transfer all your vinyl into MP3s: The LP 2 Flash Turntable made by the same company, ion.  With this new generation of turntable, you simply set the record and forget it.  The turntable will automatically rip and will seperate the record in tracks when it senses silence between tracks.  All I need to do is add the MP3 tags afterwards to all the tracks.

After ripping all my vinyl into MP3s, all that will be left to do is to get rid of it.  I might sell all my vinyl records on eBay.  It seems that there is still a market for them.