Melodeo

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Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Hulu may land on the PlayStation as early as next week;HP buys Melodeo;Nokia favors a Linux system over SymbianFox Mobile launches a video service on BlackBerry phonesPorn sites may soon end in .xxxA new hoodie has built-in earbuds

HP buys mobile music company Melodeo

Computer giant Hewlett-Packard has acquired Melodeo, a Seattle-based start-up that specializes in music applications and services for mobile devices, the companies confirmed on Wednesday.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but an anonymous source told TechCrunch that the price was around $30 million. The acquisition vaults HP into the battle for mobile music services.

I've written about Melodeo's products a couple of times, most recently in January, when I got a demo of a forthcoming update to Melodeo's Nutsie app for Android phones. Nutsie (the name is an anagram of iTunes) runs on several mobile platforms, … Read more

HomePipe music streaming works but isn't pretty

In the wake of Google's acquisition and temporary burial of Simplify, Seattle-based HomePipe has launched a similar free service that lets users stream their full iTunes library over the air to their iPhone or Android phone.

HomePipe launched in March with a new take on remote computer access. While consumer services such as LogMeIn or corporate technologies like Microsoft's Remote Desktop Services offer full keyboard-video-mouse, or KVM, access to your computer, HomePipe reasoned that mobile-phone users mainly want their data--for example, to show pictures or read documents locked away on a home PC.

On Thursday, HomePipe updated its … Read more

Google to take on iTunes with Simplify Media buy

One of the most interesting bits of news to come out of today's Google I/O conference was the company's stealth acquisition of Simplify Media a couple months ago.

Until March of this year, Simplify offered a free software application for PC and Mac that let users stream music from the iTunes or WinAmp libraries on their home computer, over the Internet, to other devices they own. The company also made an iPhone app that let the iPhone or iPod Touch receive these streams.

It was a nifty solution for users with big music libraries at home and … Read more

Nutsie brings iTunes to Android via the cloud

Version 3.0 of Nutsie, a mobile application soon coming to Android phones, is more than an anagram for iTunes.

As I watched Melodeo engineering Vice President Bob Wise demonstrate the new Nutsie on a Motorola Droid at the company's Seattle office on Monday, I had to wonder why Google doesn't have its own Nutsie-like app.

The basic idea behind the current version of Nutsie is simple: you have a bunch of songs stored in iTunes on your computer that you'd like on your phone, but you don't want to buy an Apple iPhone (perhaps because of AT&T). … Read more

Effin Genius is like Pandora's smart little brother

No matter how much music you have on your iPhone or iPod Touch, sometimes you get bored with it or just want somebody else to drive.

That's the appeal of apps like Pandora and Slacker, which build personalized radio stations based on a particular artist, then let you customize those stations to various degrees.

A new app called Effin Genius, from Seattle company Melodeo, takes a different approach: instead of forcing you to enter the name of an artist or musical genre--or anything at all--Effin Genius analyzes the playlists in the iTunes library on your iPhone or iPod Touch, … Read more

Selling songs as iPhone apps

Eliot Van Buskirk over at Wired has an interesting post today about Seattle band Presidents of the United States of America.

In addition to selling its songs on iTunes in the normal fashion, PUSA has just released a $2.99 application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that will let you stream songs from four albums (the ones whose rights are owned by the band), plus assorted other flotsam (live tracks, demos, whatever).

The application was built by Melodeo, whose vice president of business development is none other than PUSA's Dave Dederer.

The songs are streamed, not downloaded, which … Read more

Home videos go mobile with MoboFlix

Up until now, Seattle start-up Melodeo has concerned itself mostly with a sort of "social podcast" business model that combines an audio directory, user profiles, and an appeal to customers who are interested in mobile podcast listening via its Mobilcast product. It's had some success, inking deals with cell phone carriers. But now the company has launched something completely different: MoboFlix, which aims to be a sort of YouTube for mobile videos.

The concept is this. Use your camera phone to film a mobile video, submit it to the MoboFlix site, and it can be viewed by … Read more