MusicMatch Offers Free CD-Quality MP3 Tunes
Searching for stuff on the ‘Net can be a pain, having to weed through the hundreds of Web sites that come up after one keyword search.
San Diego’s Clickey Corp. plans to eliminate some of that frustration with its new search engine (www.Clickey.com). The search engine, touted as the first of its kind, lists only those sites with the designated search word in a domain name.
“Clickey differs from other search engines by providing top-level domain name searches,” said John DeUlloa, president and co-founder of Clickey. “The domain search function gives the user more accurate results. For example, a search for the term MP3 yields only those Web sites which contain MP3 as part of their domain name.”
DeUlloa said most search engines use what is called spidering technology, which grabs every single word on every single Web page when a keyword is entered.
“It’s become very frustrating for business owners and end users to find anything on the Internet these days,” he said.
He said Clickey is modeling itself after Yahoo!, a search engine that doesn’t use spidering technology.
But, DeUlloa said, Clickey will be different from Yahoo!, which has also become a Web portal that offers things like news and travel information
“We don’t like to consider ourselves as a competitor of Yahoo! We want to get back to the basics. We want to be (solely) a search engine.”
Clickey also allows searches to be broken down geographically, allowing people to narrow their search to any city in the United States. Eventually, the company plans to allow people to search any city in any country, said DeUlloa, author of the popular search engine guide, “The Step by Step Guide to Successfully Promoting Your Web Site.”
He said Clickey levels the playing field for businesses by allowing them to be found more easily on the massive World Wide Web.
Businesses, which get a free listing on Clickey, also have a chance to change the way they are found on the site.
For example, if there’s a company that sells boots over the Internet, the firm can be listed on the Web under “winter boots” during the winter and under “hiking boots,” in the summer or fall.
Clickey also rotates Web site listings so each company gets a fair shot at being found on the Internet.
DeUlloa explains:
“Let’s assume there are 1,000 businesses that want to be found under the term ‘business news.’ At the time the end user does the search, we randomly grab 200 sites. If that end user comes back an hour later, the listing would be completely different.”
Businesses that create a link back to the Clickey Web site also get their logo or graphics put at the top of the Clickey Web site for free, something that usually costs companies a lot of money in the form of banner advertising.
To reach a broader market, Clickey plans to form strategic alliances with wireless companies to allow people to search the Web using the Clickey search engine via hand-held devices such as Palm Pilots.
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Cyber Songs: It’s a match made in cyber space.
San Diego-based MusicMatch, Inc. has released MusicMatch Jukebox 5.0, the first personal jukebox software that allows consumers free, unlimited CD-quality MP3 recordings. Other jukebox software providers usually charge for the same service.
MusicMatch Jukebox 5.0 is the first personal jukebox software to incorporate MusicMatch’s new Community-Driven Matching engine, which provides consumers with personalized music recommendations and a powerful search tool for finding new music.
An online “Track Info” window provides instant information on the musicians and albums being played. Users can also create custom audio or data/MP3 CDs by using an integrated CD burner software.
“Our customers rank recording quality one of the most important features they look for when choosing personal jukebox software,” said Dennis Mudd, co-founder and CEO of MusicMatch. “As the first company to offer free CD-quality MP3 encoding in the free version MusicMatch Jukebox, we are not only offering consumers the highest sound quality and the most robust personal jukebox software available, but we are also providing them with the most powerful way to experience digital music.”
The 3-year-old MusicMatch, which develops award-winning digital audio software, has also hit a high note in the financial community.
The company recently closed a second round of financing with a $16.6 million investment from Menlo Park-based Redpoint Ventures, a leading venture capital firm focused on broadband infrastructure, services and media opportunities for the next generation of Internet and entertainment.
MusicMatch will use the money to pump up the volume for marketing and product development. The company also plans to hire more employees.
Bits & Bytes: Tadpole Technology is doing swimmingly. The Carlsbad-based vendor of mobile computing solutions recently acquired Endeavors Technology, Inc. for about $3.3 million. Endeavors was founded in 1998 out of research at UC Irvine to use the Web to support wide area wireless E-processes and E-services across mobile work forces and multiple organizations. Wide area E-process software provides the means to electronically transmit or distribute route and track information between work groups that are working in different geographical areas. Arcadian Software, an Escondido-based start-up, is beginning to net national and global attention. The firm’s software Win2 guides negotiators through almost any situation, whether it be buying a house, leasing a car, closing a deal, making a sale or even asking for a raise. Gerard Nierenberg, author of the best-selling classic “The Art of Negotiating,” has even endorsed the Win2 software. The software was developed by local lawyer David Ferguson and his son, Bryan Ferguson, a computer software programmer. Customers include law practices, university business professors, human resource executives and sales people. Get in tune with the latest in digital special effects at a March 24 presentation at San Diego State University. Featured speaker will be Michael Backes, executive producer for Timeline Computer Entertainment, an entertainment software company he co-founded with author Michael Crichton. The event, sponsored by the San Diego Communications Council, is scheduled for 2 p.m. in the Little Theater on the SDSU campus. For more information, call (619) 594-6933.
Got any cool tech stories? E-mail Andrea Siedsma at asiedsma@sdbj.com.
