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TOMORROW'S NEWS:
Facebook Lexicon
Facebook recently introduced Lexicon, a trend-mapping tool that puts SuperPoke to shame. Lexicon, which was created by Facebook, tracks the most interesting trends on Facebook by analyzing words and phrases from wall posts, and it then turns the information into graphs and charts. The graphs show how many Facebook members are talking about a particular word or phrase.
"Lexicon graphs are a powerful way to understand the trends in what people are talking about." says Roddy Lindsay, Facebook data scientist.
Lexicon is similar to the Google Trends search tool, except that the data is pulled from conversations instead of search queries. Lexicon only gathers text from walls and never accesses messages, chat.
Midomi
Imagine you have a song stuck in your head.
Thankfully, a new Web site and iPhone application have come to your rescue, and they can be found at www.midoni.com.
It's been there for days, but you don't know the artist or the title. What's worse, you can only remember the chorus. Instead of playing out the whole song, your brain just plays the chorus on an endless loop, slowly driving you crazy.
Midomi software's is multi-faceted, combining existing search methods like text searches (if you know the artist or song title) and a "grab it" feature that let's you locate a song that's playing on the radio just by holding your iPhone to the speaker.
Once Midomi identifies the song, you can purchase it from either of its two music store affiliates, Apple iTunes or Yahoo! Music Store.
If you can't remember the artist or title, and you can't "grab it" from the radio, that when the third and most impressive feature comes in. You can simply sing or hum into the mic, and it will find the song based on melody, lyrics and language.
Keyvan Mohajer, CEO of Midomi software producer Melodis, says the software is adaptive to the information you give it. If you don't know the lyrics, then you can just hum and it will use only the melody.
Max White. Andover junior, says he would potentially use Midomi, but says the singing feature might not work well for him.
"I'm a horrendous singer.I'm tone-deaf to the ultimate degree."White says.
Photo illustration by Julianne Kueffer
searches or other private data.
Lexicon can compare phrases with up two five keywords. If you type "party tonight" and "hangover" into the application, Lexicon compares the use of these words on walls and produces a month-to-month graph comparing their frequency.
Facebook spokesman Matt Hicks says the information gathered by Lexicon is publicly available for any user to be able to learn more about what's happening on Facebook. Lexicon can be added just like any other user-created Facebook application.
"We've seen positive reactions to Lexicon from people who find it to be a fun and useful way to spot trends," Hicks says.
—Nina Libby
But Mohajer says that's okay, because the search is independent of key, tempo, language and even vocal quality. What matters is that the song is in the database. If it's not, Midomi isn't going to find it no matter how well you sing it. Mohajer says.
To solve this problem, Midomi combines one part MySpace with one part American Idol to create a social network where singers can congregate and sing their favorite songs into the database.
Midomi adds to its database
daily, and the Web site has nearly one million songs to search from.
Matt Bechtold
6
November 6,2008
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