Below you will find a list of very interesting tools that might help you create music online directly from your browser. I started the list with some music production tools from the most professional to the most basic one’s. I also added some multimedia apps at the end of the list I am sure you will like. I really enjoyed playing around FNK an incredible online visual programming environment that uses a dataflow approach for the analysis, processing and synthesis of image, sound and other data in real-time.

Extensions for Chrome

Back on December 6, 2010 Google officially released the Chrome Web Store, there were only a few apps available to run with your chrome browser, specially for music. We saw a very nice revamp of the store this passed October and since I’ve been seeing a very reasonable amount of audio apps and extensions to make music and sounds in the cloud. One of the first apps I did try was Audiotool, blew my mind the first time I used it and really recommend it to you.

For the more classic music lovers I also added some online guitar tuners at the very bottom of the list.

Production Studios

Studio One
Audio tool
Audio Sauna
Ujam
Aviary Music Creator
Beatlab
BreakoutBand
Musicshake

Audio Editors

Aviary Audio Editor

Audio / Multimedia

Fnk
Pulsate
Pulsr

Audio / Multimedia / Games

SoundCloud App
ToneCraft
Isle of Tune
Chime
Doremi

Beat Counter

Beats Per Minute

Guitar Tuners

Online Guitar Tuner
Free Guitar Tuner
Guitar Tuner

Pros

• Light weight
• Very nice LCD screen
• Battery life is awesome
• Sleek design, very user-centered
• No need for antivirus software
• System constantly updating

Cons

• No Ethernet port (Need to carry a USB ethernet adaptor very useful when traveling)
• Very tricky to manage files, copy or move them
• Not to many Apps in the Chrome Web Store
• The mouse pad is not very responsive
• Offline Gmail is still on beta

Conclusion

The device is not intended for intensive processing tasks but yes it’s perfect for what it was designed for, surfing the web… Fast! The price might seem a bit high in relation with its hardware specs but it is difficult to calculate the value of the product, mainly because It’s hard to measure the long term benefits of having a device that gets better & faster through time. You might want to consider it as an investment! lol…

Twitter has some great advantages over other social networks and believe that its biggest one is its simplicity. This makes it a perfect platform to conquer what most techies call the final frontier: unite the virtual world with the physical world.

Unite the virtual world with the physical world?

Twitter has rapidly shifted from a few technology enthusiasts to millions of members. The large majority of them follow already non-living things from toasters like @mytoaster to telescopes @MKII. Well yes, we have started to follow tweets from non-living things and suddenly Twitter has blurred the borders between virtual world and the physical word, with most of us not even realizing it. I particularly find this to be very interesting, a few years back the concept of merging the internet or virtual world with the physical web was very difficult to explain, at least to non-technology enthusiast. Today, Tweeter has made this concept easier to be understood.

The Internet of Things

To take this interesting interaction to the next step we will need an additional ingredient. A few years ago I collaborated doing some research studies for a High Tech Company who developed a product based on Wireless Sensor Networks for the mainstream market. A wireless sensor network is a computer network made out of Miniature-Computers, so-called sensor knots or Nodes that are equipped with sensors that accomplish common tasks by interoperation. When I say common task, I mean simple tasks such as monitoring environmental parameters, movements or posting status messages through Twitter.

With the experience I’ve gathered in the search marketing industry I can see the great potential in merging this technologies for a future business model for Twitter. I have divided this new business model into two areas of development:

• Twitter Gadgets (Or Twitter hardware)
• Twitter Targeted Adds (by Geo Location or Project Theme)

Twitter Gadgets

Today, sensors are cheaper, equipment and nodes for configuring wireless sensor networks are easier to acquire, many European and American companies are currently selling them online. Code can easily be developed for non-living objects to send twitter posting of measured environmental parameters through sensors. In other words we are in the perfect position and time to create a device that would make the internet more interactive with the real world, not only to a few technology enthusiasts but to any mainstream user.

I would like you to visualize the concept of Twitter Gadgets as a, let’s say “LEGO for any internet user”. Devices that can help you build your own projects and applications. By adding different sensors and devices you could build scaled projects, just like “LEGO pieces”.

To illustrate the concept, let’s say this is your small “Twitter Gadget Home Project”, as shown below in the diagram. The Main Twitter Gadget would be a in other words a node with small processing chips that can interoperate with other scattered Twitter Gadgets with small sensors.

The diagram illustrates how all of the nodes can perform simple monitoring tasks and all of them could be sending parameters to be posted to your Twitter stream. Wouldn’t that be great, to know if your stove was left on, if your plants needed water or if the kids left the lights on. Imagine the immense possibilities and variety of projects that could be undertaken.

Now lets translate this technology into digital marketing concepts, in order to validate the business model. Could sensors mesure the amount of food left on our fridge? the amount of gas left on your lawnmower? Well the answer is YES. Now imagine having a set of suggested retailer offers on your twitter stream according to your specific needs. This would be highly targeted adverts built by the same consumer based on their very unique needs.

I am currently working on a small prototype and hope I have enough time to finish it. Please let me know if you find this idea viable or have any comments regarding it, please drop me an Email!

I went on to expand the libraries and found some great ones like the Physics library a simple particle system physics engine. Since I didn´t have any idea on how it worked I decided to start tweaking some code instead. Found this very nice website called Openprocessing.com with some great open source code examples and sketches. I used one example sketch by Abel Dewitz checkout his repertoire here.

After modifying the code I needed to embed the sketch into my webpage. For this you need to export the sketch and create an applet folder in the same directory of the sketch and then upload it to your webpage directory. This is the outcome:

I do really encourage you to go through each one of the sketches and try to modify the code so you can familiarize with the IDE. I´ve been playing arround a bit with it and finished a set of sketches mostly self portraits. Check them out:

Given all the activity these passed few months from some of their competitors, starting with Facebook’s new products and alliance / collaborations with Microsoft, it will be very interesting to see Google’s response and will be expecting some great announcements that will show why they are still the search market leaders. I’m really hoping to see new features on their search technology and Google apps, also very interested in finding out more about Android client applications and the Google Wave API.

This is why I’ll be attending the following Sessions:

• Scripting Google Apps for business process automation
• Google Analytics APIs: End to end
• Data migration in App Engine
• Make you application real-time with PubSubHubbub
• Google Wave API’s design principles + Anatomy of a great extension

And of course I will also be at the SEO related sessions:

• SEO site advice from the experts – with Matt Cutts
• Optimize every bit of your site serving and web pages with Page Speed

I’ll be embedding the live Wave’s of the sessions for you to follow. You can also check out the live video broadcast keynotes live on the Google Developers YouTube channel. There will be a developers sandbox where developers who have built applications based on Google technologies can exhibit their work.

I’m very interested in checking out some of them, mainly the one’s concerning the travel industry:

• Tripit
• Twilio
• Rucksack
• Cordys
• Mobiata

Stay tuned I will be writing my impressions of them… I will also be twittering in spanish at Acento-Digital.com!

Live notes in Google Wave:

Google I/O 2010: Day 2 Keynote

If you have any projects focused on the Latinamerican markets, please visit our website and checkout our services! (In spanish only)

If you are interested in knowing more about the test you can find a detail explanation about it at Google’s Conversion University. The best way to prepare for the test is to apply and experiment with some of its advanced features after going thru all of the lessons. I particularly found very interesting the E-commerce Tracking, Advanced Segmentation and the Regex Lessons. If you have used extensively other Web Analytics Software such as Webtrends or Urchin you will have no problems and difficulties completing the test. You have about an hour and a half to answer all 70 questions you can pause the test whenever you want but you will have to finish it within 120 hours.

After completing successfully the test you will receive a certificate of achievement in .PDF, Google also maintains a publicly searchable database of people who have passed the Google Analytics test and obtained the certificate. This means that starting from today I can be be search for and contacted through Google’s database!

I have used mobile tags for a few marketing projects and used both the QRCode and Datamatrix code tags to link to some of my online content via mobile. If you haven’t heard about Mobile barcodes or tags here’s a very nice summary that might help. I’ve been following the development of these technologies through the years, this is why I was very curious about Microsoft’s mobile Tagging format and began to fool around with its beta version to try to find out if they had any advantages over the competition.

To start, I was very impressed by their administration platform which helps you order and manage all of the tags you create, you can even divide them by categories and makes them very easy to manage and edit.

It was very easy to create my very own Microsoft High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB) within minutes I managed to have the tag up and running. Here’s how my HCCB Barcode looks like:

If you scan it with your mobile camara, it will redirect to my website although you will need to download this Microsoft scanning software into your mobile.

The “Custom HCCB Barcode Option” lets you add your logo to the barcode’s background. As I am marketing guy, I found this option to be very useful, although this feature is also available by other mobile tagging solutions like Beetaggs or Trillcode. The advantage of adding images to your barcodes or tags is that it might suggest and increase the intent of user to scan your barcode and access additional information online.

Adding your Brand or Logo to tags becomes a very powerful marketing tool, especially if you are commercializing products and want a bit more interaction with your website’s content. Catchy graphics in your barcodes and might encourage your potential customers to visit and investigate your products with their mobile and increase their purchasing intent on the spot. Check out my custom made tag like above it will redirect to my website if you scan it with your mobile, you need to download this Microsoft scanning software into your mobile:

Compared to other scanning software the app performs solidly and feels very robust even if your mobile photos shift a little or the photo is not focused, another nice advantage over the competition.

But for me, the most important feature of Microsoft’s Tags is its analytics features which help us create various reports to analyze the performance of categories and tags. With the help of these reports, we can track the progress of your categories and tags within a specified time span. We can even find out the localities where our tags and categories are receiving more scans. This will definitely help us marketers manage more efficiently our campaigns and promotions.

So what are the disadvantages, well the biggest one unfortunately is like most of other Microsoft products they have chosen the proprietary route, this gives other mobile tag solution providers with more open platforms to have an advantage. There is high number of companies, as mentioned before, who have been on the mobile tagging market for many years, who are looking for innovative ways to add value to their services like for example Semacode who are now integrating their mobile tags with social media networks, they currently only have Facebook integration but they will be adding support for other social networks soon.

In short, if you are already using Windows Mobile applications this tagging format will fit like a glove with some applications and it is highly recommended for other users who want to track the performance of their tags, its report capabilities are ideal for campaign performance evaluation and other marketing purposes, thumbs up Microsoft!

They also have a Performance Tab to keep track of the products you’ve submitted, with key metrics such as clicks and impressions. Here’s a pic of the interface:

You can also connect your Google Base items to your Adwords campaigns and the Google Base Store which enables eBay, Yahoo!, and osCommerce store owners to connect their store information to Google Base.

Google Base is only available for the American, Canadian and UK markets but hopefully it will be available in many other markets soon. Additional information about Google Base.