Andy Cook Tell 'Em

YouTube has revamped its music page, adding a brand-new layout and a slew of new features. Although the video-sharing site boasts that its redesign will help users discover new music, we can’t say that Pandora will be shaking in its boots any time soon.

According to the YouTube blog, the redesign of the page will facilitate musical discovery by “showcasing the most viewed music videos, special promotions, curated playlists, unsigned talent and giving you the ability to create on-the-fly mixes.” It even states that the site will soon feature live music listings in a section titled “Events Near You,” an addition that sounds pretty cool to us (and like a potential threat to MySpace, which also offers such features).

Still, the site isn’t so hot when it comes to helping one discover new music. Yes, YouTube() is the go-to place for folks who just want to listen to that one song they heard at that show by that band that they kinda like. However, the new music page focuses wholly on popularity, which isn’t the best way to help people find new jams.

For example, if you visit the “Indie & Alternative” page now, you’ll be presented with tunes like “Bodies” by Drowning Pool and “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers — i.e. “Today’s Hits,” i.e. “What A Ton of People on YouTube Are Listening To.” Yes, the popularity algorithm may work with, say, viral videos, but if you’re looking to listen to something new and different, aggregating the musical whims of millions may not be the best way to go.

What do you think of YouTube’s redesign? Will you use it to glean musical suggestions, or will you just stick to searching for that band you dig?

If you are looking for an alternative to SMS/MMS and instant messaging, Cnectd may be your solution. The application, which supports iPhone, Android, Symbian and BlackBerry, allows a user to chat with multiple contacts, share images and location. The free solution will even allow you to control your own personal profile, including picture and status, so you can let people know if you are available or not.

By saying the application allows you to chat with multiple contacts I don’t mean one at a time. I mean cnectd actually allows you to have group chats with multiple contacts at once by giving users the ability to create and manage their own chat groups. Users are alerted to new messages via push notification alerts and there is no need to login or out of the app since cnectd keeps you always logged in.

cnectd is currently being offered for free, but this is for a limited time. You can download the application at http://cnectd.getjar.com or scan this QR code with your mobile device:

This looks pretty cool and I think it is really going to blow up soon! For now its free, so take advantage of it!

What does Facebook’s Doppelgänger Week look like? Depending on who you are, it could look like a Simpson, Michael Jackson or, if you’re lucky, Angelina Jolie.

In order to celebrate Doppelgänger Week, Facebook users switch their profile pictures to famous people they have been told they resemble.

The trend appears to be catching on like wildfire, so much so that its success is being compared to that of the “bra colour” status updates. The recent viral trend had women updating the style of bra they were sporting in order to raise awareness for breast cancer.

The news feed announcing Doppelgänger Week on the social networking site this week read:

“It’s Doppelgänger week on Facebook; change your profile picture to someone famous (actor, musician, athlete, etc.) you have been told you look like. After you update your profile with your twin or switched at birth photo then cut/paste this to your status.”

For those who have never been compared to a celeb, the site has an application, Face Double, that will generate their long-lost celebrity brethren.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, game creator Bob Patel revealed that he came up with the idea after his colleagues teased him about looking like Tom Selleck.

Despite its popularity, Patel seems to take the game with a grain of salt.

“It’s way more popular than “Post a Profile Photo of Your Favorite Norse God Week.” Way more,” he said.

I’ve recently stumbled upon a rather fascinating website called Sency.

Sency is a real time search engine which has implemented a filter in an effort to weed out some of the spam that comes along with real time results.  Another unique aspect to Sency is their free feed for websites & blogs.  They offer websites & blogs the ability to have automatically updating, real time information, scrolling on their webpage for any given keyword.  The free feed is completely private labeled and customizable. The content options are endless because websites and blogs have complete control over which keyword they use. Websites have the option to customize the background color, height, width, text color, and text size of the scrolling information.

The developers recently implemented a new tool which shows users the most popular links from today for a respective search term. This data, in addition to the real time results – now makes their service even more valuable for web surfers.

The real-time feed feature on any website for free is awesome, I can’t wait to implement it on here! So keep a lookout it is soon to come!

– Andy

A group of students in China have created PhotoSketch, a project that does exactly what I just described: it takes a rough, hand-drawn sketch, scours the web for photos that match, and runs them through an algorithm, stitching it all together. Check out this video on how to use it.

Update: Due to extremely high interest in this amazing system, the creators have taken down the site. I can’t wait to see what people dream up with this thing.