A few weeks ago, I was asked if wanted an opportunity to review a new software app under embargo that is designed to solve one of the great remaining problems with any music library - fixing album art and metadata.  Over the years between WMP/Zune/iTunes conversions of my library, converting all of my tracks into 160kbps MP3, migrating between HDDs and just plain idiosyncracies with ID3 tags and where album art gets stored, my library has become a severe mess.  TuneUp promised to fix it and I have to say aside from a few minor nits, it does a commendable job and is now available for download in two versions: TuneUp and TuneUp Gold but more on that later.

Around the UI
TuneUp is a companion app to iTunes for Windows (Mac coming this Fall) - it rides shotgun, snapping to the right-hand side of iTunes and listens into your library via iTunes' scripting engine. The UI offers four options - Clean, Cover Art, Now Playing, and Concerts.  The first two options - Clean and Cover Art are the meat of the app.  The second two options- Now Playing and Concerts are similar to other solutions offer links to YouTube, Stubhub, Amazon, Google, and eBay searches for artist information and concert listings in your area (via Ticketmaster/Stubhub).  But what sets TuneUp apart is the cleaning feature. My library started off with about 40% accurate information (horrible!) and by running through TuneUp's algorithm, was able to successfully match the majority of my songs. 

Taking it for a Spin
After backing up my music library, I did a series of ad-hoc tests to determine the accuracy of the service. TuneUp representatives tell me it works by applying a heuristic evaluating ID3 tags, filename, and even samples the audio of the song to create a fingerprint of the content. From there, it's matched against Gracenote's massive library of songs.   Gracenote is now a subsidiary of Sony and they've been making great strides in accuracy since their grass-roots efforts as user-supported CDDB so many years ago.

TuneUp correctly found a large # of U2 songs in my library that had missing album art or inaccurate media information, mostly a mix-match of Genre information.  Results are listed in one of three categories - Matches, Likely Matches, and Processing.  All display by album and can drill down to You can then choose to save each track. 

Not Perfect, But Closing in on the Target
Most of my issues with TuneUp are easily solvable.  First the UI has layout issues with the progress bar often colliding with text.  Here is a good example:

Another issue is accuracy on Live Sets or rare tracks.  The library does a good enough job of identifying the songs, but normally matches them to studio recordings.  As of right now, I wouldn't recommend TuneUp for eclectic music libraries. 

Also, I've noticed the Genre naming is quite a bit different across the industry - U2 suddenly went from a mix of Pop and Rock to Adult Alternative.  I don't know if that's a bad thing though I'm not sure Bono would agree.  Sheryl Crow's "Good is Good" genre became, "Singer-Songwriter".  Huh?! I actually started using it as an indicator for when content had been cleaned in my library.

Then there's the pricing.  The app appears to be ad-supported, with an American Apparel banner ad at the bottom of the screen.

Pricing and Advertisements
TuneUp is free to evaluate with over 500 song clean-ups and 50 album covers.  This is  a commendable # for testing and the price of $11.95 for an unlimited version is reasonable.  What I don't see noted here however is whether the Gold version removes the advertisements at the bottom.  I'd like to see more details about how TuneUp intends to use this space and exactly what information is shared with advertisers. Right now this appears to be limited to American Apparel - I don't see much of a fit between the ad and the content though, it would be less annoying if they did some frequency capping and targeted the ads to my interests.  I suspect this is to come in a later release.

Features I'd like to see
TuneUp isn't perfect- but it's pretty darn close.  Here are a few features I'd like to see included:

• View ID3 Tags and Fix.  iTunes will offer, but I can only see all of TuneUps changes after they're applied.
• Duplicate finder.  Yes, iTunes has a similar feature but is largely dependent on you as the user to go through and find
• Lyrics finder. Gracenote offers the service, would be good to see here.
• Offer to Remove Missing Songs from iTunes. WMP and Zune talk directly to the file system and know when files are removed.  iTunes tries to play and then gives you the dreaded "bang".  Nuke em all as an option.
• Zune/WMP Media Bridge.  Ensure media info is correctly set in the places Zune & WMP look, and offer a sync option for playlists, playcount, and ratings.  (Check out MusicBridge as a good proxy)
• Genre Mapper. Ability to rename a Gracenote genre (e.g. Adult Alternative) to Pop or whatever you wish.  It's a highly contentious and subjective topic.
• Faster indexing and better notification. TuneUp normally works well with ~50 tracks loaded but I decided to try and break it load in over 1000 tracks at a time.  It actually held up remarkably well but the UI updates started getting slow and I wasn't sure if it died or not.  A countdown time or est. time remaining option would be a big help.

Summary
TuneUp solves a major problem of most music enthusiasts, though if you're fastidious about your ID3 tagging, have invested hours in genre matching and the like, you may find continuing to manually update to be right for you.  Also, if you wear a tin foil hat and are concerned about personally identifiable information such as track names, playcounts and personal ratings being uploaded to TuneUp, you may want to scrub through the privacy statement. TuneUp assures us this is used for improvements to the service and personalization features such as concert listings (e.g. they won't give you a suggested concert for a one-star rated artist you hate).  For the mainstream music lover, TuneUp is a worthy addition to your toolkit, even in this first release with one caveat- back up your library before you try.  It's not perfect, but it's major improvement over in-app solutions.  Be sure to tell us how your experiences are going in the comments below.

Here's a roundup of announcements today.  I was off playing with the family on Bainbridge Island otherwise I would have posted earlier.

• Xbox 360 is getting a totally new Dashboard (Engadget) complete with Avatars. This is one of the many cool things being cooked up but haven't been announced/released yet.  The funny thing is a few months ago, having James Cameron on stage at the Advance conference talking about his upcoming movie project, "Avatar" caused a few heart palpitations in
• Xbox Live gold members to get NetFlix on-demand, complete with shared viewing experience with your friends.  Now if only you could record your own RiffTrax ala MST3K.  There's an idea Lance!
• Xbox Live Party System.  Friends stick with you- watch a movie together, share a slideshow, go from game to game etc.   Finally- make it a game night with your buddies!
• Improvements to how Xbox 360 works overall.  Improvements include running games from HDD - no more whirring during games, 16:10 output via VGA or HDMI for those of us connected to 16:10 displays (vs. 16:9) and you'll be able to make Xbox 360 purchases over the Web.
• Mark Whitten details it all in an email that went around our group like wildfire later today. 

More details and video at www.gamerscoreblog.com and www.majornelson.com.  There's even more goodness waiting in the wings which I can't talk about.  But for now, off to go play with new package that just arrived under embargo. More on that later ;)

Ryan Stewart and Long Zheng summed it up nicely.  This kind of banter and candor is why I work at Microsoft.  A CEO who will go, "Monkey Boy" just to please his customers.  Guy had some really nice things to say about the new Microsoft culture which was great to hear.  I'll post the keynote here when available.

Congrats to the Xbox 360 and Zune teams (notably known for their membership in the Entertainment & Devices Division.)

Xbox goes profitable, almost like a grown-up business - Engadget

The new Microsoft at CES site is up, and it's powered by Silverlight. There are so many projects underway now it's hard to keep track of them all and this was a great one to see.   
What's more, you'll be able to watch the keynote live in-page with Silverlight or via WMP/default browser.  Take a look, spin the wheel in LV fashion and check out the latest news from Microsoft at CES.

Hope y'all enjoy the show - Sunday night @ 6:30pm

Todd Bishop of the Seattle P-I provides a glimpse into the Take-Home testing that many of us do on digital home technologies at Microsoft.  Scott and Hakkan are two of the guys I've had the pleasure of working with in the past - nice to see inside their homes. 

Which brings me to realize my setup has changed so much in the past few years since I was GPM for Media Center- it might be time for a video this weekend walking around our Digital Home 2.0 ;)

Microsoft employees try out new technology at home

Earlier this AM, HP shot me a mail with the latest details on announcements they're making for CES.  Here's the latest:

• MediaSmart Receiver - works with XP and Vista PCs, offering wireless delivery of media via 802.11 ABGN and is also DivX certified.  Includes a Pocket Media Drive slot on the front for the big files and will offer Media Center Extender support this spring via an Internet-delivered update.  No note on whether that's an additional cost.
• MediaSmart TVs - Updated 1080p TV's with three (3) HDMI ports, wired and wireless connectivity and (drumroll please) Media Center Extender support built in!
• Media Vault and Media Vault Pro - Home "NAS Plus" offerings in 500GB and 1GB offerings for the Media Vault mv2100, and up to 1.5TB for the mv5100. Both include Photo Webshare and iTunes server features previously seen in HP MediaSmart servers. These units are Linux-based, unlike the HP MediaSmart Server which is powered by Windows Home Server.

All products will be available in Spring 2008

Every year, I pore over my Christmas music looking to create the ultimate mix for that cocktail get-together with the neighborhood friends, the perfect in-car mix for shopping, the Christmas Eve Classical mellow-out of young children, and the anthem to which tiny feet run down the stairs Christmas morning.  Yes, I'm a sucker for the holidays.

I also use my free time over the holidays to try and put digital media to some unnatural uses around the home.  This year, sharing photos of holidays past with family and friends takes center stage.

Step 1: Assemble your "Best of the Holidays" Picture Collection into a Single Folder
To simplify transfer to my phone/PDA/Xbox/Media Center and call-up, I use the recently released Windows Live Photo Gallery to organize all of my holiday best pictures into a folder at the top. These are pictures I want to share during the party.

This is easy to do and can be done with any one of your favorite photo apps, though I strongly recommend WL Photo Gallery - not because I work at MSFT but because it has some really great features like ability to upload directly to Flickr.

Step 2: Sprinkle in some Holiday Trivia

I've created a set of 15 questions in the below pack and included the master images from the- all you have to do is unzip it, put the pictures in the same folder as your "Best of" collection.  You'll probably want to rename the files so as to mix them in sets with your own photos.  The pictures are from the old Winter Fun Pack I did as a side project so many years ago for XP.

Step 3: Assemble the Ultimate Christmas Mix

This year we went a little upscale with a swank set of songs for the adults and a few favorites.  Pretty much anyone can build a playlist these days.

Here are some of my favorites:

Cocktail Party Swanky Christmas (Most off "Christmas Classics" on Zune)

• Christmas Time is Here - Vince Guaraldi Trio
• White Christmas - Bing Crosby
• Baby, It's Cold Outside - Dean Martin
• Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Lou Rawls
• Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let it Snow! - Lena Horne
• (Everybody's Waiting' For) The Man with the Bag - Kay Starr
• Happy Holiday - Peggy Lee
• Sleigh Ride - Ferrane & Teicher
• I'd Like You for Christmas - Julie London
• It Came Upon a Midnight Clear - Ella Fitzgerald
• Grown-Up Christmas List - Michael Buble
  

Step 4: Share it on the Big Screen with Xbox 360, PC, Media Center, Digital Picture Frame etc.
There are a number of ways to get your photo playlist onto your PC or picture frame.  I use my Xbox 360 as an extender, and a CompactFlash card inserted into a digital picture frame to share them in two rooms.  Here are a few examples (click images for larger sizes):

Play it on Xbox 360 from your Zune - from the Zune device or home network

Play it from Windows Vista Media Center

Play it on a digital picture frame

Hope you enjoy- Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our family to yours.

It would look like this.

I don't always agree with Chris but this time I tend to. With the disclaimer that the announcement is huge - to enthusiasts willing to spend all that $$ to be able to watch and record HD and subscription cable TV on their PC. 

Dell’s CableCARD Re-entry Is Huge In the Grand Scheme - Chris Lanier's Blog

Since yesterday, the Microsoft.com homepage has been promoting a new game for Xbox 360 called, "Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action" with a new twist- a mini-game embedded in the ad  itself.  I can recommend this game personally as it's been playtested by our family and friends at recent gatherings.   The game itself takes over the entire top panel of the MS.com homepage interactively in what I believe is a first.

Expect a lot more of these kinds of interactive experiences on the MS.com site and others to come in Silverlight. 

Microsoft Homepage

An interesting dialogue about consumer fair use rights happening right now.  I'm an advocate of protecting IP, but this bill (auspiciously named the PRO IP Act) goes way, way too far.

I may not agree with all of Jeremy's points (transmitting an MP3 intended for mass distribution is different from shoplifting a CD and should carry stiffer penalties IMO).  What concerns me about these kinds of bills is what happens to the Mom or Dad who puts copyrighted music under his home video, posts it and it goes viral?

This is an area where I encourage all of you to get familiar with the issues and make sure your congressional representatives have your views. Good places to start learning:

Jeremy Toeman’s LIVEdigitally » Blog Archive » A note to Nancy Pelosi regarding the PRO IP act

Michael Gartenberg - (un-) common sense on copyright

Engadget's reporting onthe new Ricavision RICA 100 remote with built-in MCE and SideShow functionality.  With Bluetooth and A2DP support, this is quite the looker though I wonder how well it works ergonomically when stacked up next to a Harmony 890 which is my personal fave today for ensuring household bliss.  This holiday break, I'm hoping to get some Z-Wave adapters so I can control the lights with simple macros like, "Watch a Movie".  Geek on.

Ricavision kicks out VAVE100 universal MCE / SideShow remote - Engadget

Another good gem here - walkthrough of the Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update.

Gamerscore Blog : Fall Dashboard Update Details

If you're a hardcore video geek dealing with the mix-mash of video formats and wondering what will really be supported in the December 2007 Xbox Dashboard Update, then you'll want to read this FAQ.  Otherwise, we return you to your morning coffee.

Xbox Team : December 2007 Video Playback FAQ

Was too busy to note the following interesting stories the last few days:

• TiVo to get solution for Switched Digital Cable Nets, coming Q208
• TiVo interface coming to PC via Nero deal
• TiVo announces 3Qtr results, still losing millions :(
• Verizon to offer, "Any Apps, Any Device" option for customers (but at what cost)?
• Wired is spinning up its Video Division. IPTV for everybody!
• Xbox 360 Backwards compatbility update adds support for 80 add'l classic games
• Quad CableCard Tuner systems from Inteset for Media Center announced

According to Joystiq and a few other outlets, the Halo theme will be available tomorrow as a free download for Guitar Hero III.  Add Mass Effect to the mix and you have two more great reasons why I love my Xbox 360.  That and watching my family groove to Paint it Black.

Learn to Fly--Foo Fighters

Things Have Changed--Dylan

This Is How a Heart Breaks--Rob Thomas

Runnin' Down a Dream--Petty

Someday Baby--Dylan

LA Woman--Doors

Locomotive Breath--Jethro Tull

Won't Get Fooled Again--The Who

You Can't Catch Me--Stones

Freebird--Skynard

China Grove--Doobie Bros.

Don't Fear the Reaper--Blue Oyster Cult

We're an American Band--Grand Funk Railroad

If you're using an Airport Extreme with WPA/WPA2 Personal security enabled, you might notice that your shiny new Zune 2.0 software can't find your network automatically. The fix is  to manually add your Airport and set the network type as "WPA using TKIP" and away you go.

Technical reason: Airport Extremes for some reason squawk as WPA2  and not WPA, even when in mixed security mode which means they don't show up in the list. The Zune team is aware of the issue and it has been reported to Apple.

I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the wireless sync feature. Four years ago we were talking about being able to wirelessly sync your device from your car in the garage. Now it's a reality, and a killer feature IMO.

Sometimes there's just so much good stuff happening that I miss out.  I was browsing the Facebook community for Silverlight (nearly 1000 strong now) and a picture caught my eye.  There was  Adam Kinney's Xbox Friends Watch gadget.  Designed for Windows Vista Sidebar and built with Silverlight, pick the friends you want to track (by gamertag) and you can see online status, browse through latest games and more. 

Adam is one of my favorite inventors in our Developer & Platform Evangelism group.  Simple, yet functional.  Kudos Adam, kudos.

Michael Gartenberg, wizard of digital media at Jupiter Research recently blogged  about  the new round in the HD format battle. With Best Buy following Wal-Mart in offering Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD players at a swank $99, Michael notes, "At that [price] point, it's not a competition between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray, it's a competition (correctly so) between HD-DVD and DVD."

Frankly, the whole topic jumped the shark for me nearly six months ago.  But the whole price war has really piqued my curiosity.  I wonder if Toshiba and its partners can keep the prices that low and for how  long?  Either way, Michael has an interesting point - "With prices that low, backwards compatibility and some very good content starting to appear (the Heroes Season 1 Box Set, Transformers and soon the first season the original Star Trek series) we may be getting to a point this holiday season that could tip the balance."

Back in February, I did a quick analysis of the price points for the formats, based on Amazon.com price points for the top players in both formats.  While unscientific, this yielded an average cost of nearly $850 for BD and $400 for HD-DVD (not including game consoles).  While it's clear that BD players have made the most movement, it's unclear when or if prices will drop to this price on an average basis.

And Sony's response to the HD price event?  "Blu-ray will be down to $399 and slightly below that, but not much lower," according to Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow.

Whether Toshiba was looking to move old inventory (as in a unit that first shipped Q1CY07), or this represents a tipping point in the HD format battles is unclear. Either way, the PR and marketing value of HD-DVD becoming synonymous with "Affordable HD on a disc" is palpable.

Whichever way this one goes, my advice still remains- sign up for NetFlix or Blockbuster's online service and receive whichever format you prefer without purchasing the discs until the whole format war is sorted out.

Note: I do not work for nor with the HD-DVD effort at Microsoft - all comments are my own and not representative of my employer.

If you're an owner of a first-generation Zune,  now known as the Zune 30, it's nice to note that  you'll also shortly be able to use the new Zune software on your device and the new  Zune software starting on 11/13 - that's next Tuesday folks.  I'll post some thoughts here shortly after it's in the wild.

My iPhone and iTunes also took an update yesterday, pushing out a bunch of games and whatnot for the iPod.  I still don't understand why I have to reboot my PC it seems every time iTunes wants to do an update.  Oh well, off to rebootland.

My wife is addicted to Guitar Hero 3.  GH2 was the first game she's ever player in the actual store and at seven months pregnant she kind of stuck out, creating a crowd of gawkers at the lady resting the axe against her belly.  She's classically trained in cello and sight-reads like a whiz which helps, and there's no chance I'll ever, ever beat her in this game. 

But that doesn't stop us from having fun with it.  Having been drugged, bound and tied and placed into the back of an Audi, a friend told me he was going to the midnight madness launch for GH3 for the Wii and offered to pick up the game.  I figured this would be cool, particularly because of the Wii's new online gameplay.  The same way roses win favor with some wives, this would garner favor in my household.

My wife was ecstatic.  Nothing breaks up baby monotony quite like GH3. I missed the sharp HD graphics of the Xbox 360 but the gameplay was largely there, except for a noticable delay in audio effects when you missed a note and the Wiimote twanged, nestled into it's compartment in the Guitar controller.  Then, things went horribly, horribly wrong when our neighbor's daughter challenged us to an online match.

It all started with a phone call.  Apparently we needed to find the 16-digit "Friend Code" and give it to her.  Then, another call- we needed her to enter our friend code.  Then the gameplay. Setting up a game is obnoxious, with little presence information available- did your friend set up the game?  Are you supposed to?  Another phone call.  Then their wireless went out. Sigh.  Finally we get a game, and I realize I spent this money on a Wii version of what I should have bought for Xbox 360 in the first place.  Playing GH3 online with the Wii was like stepping back into the dark ages.

So, Craiglist to the rescue.  I rationalized this away to my wife, who could now unlock more songs via coop mode with Xbox 360 since we'd have two guitar controllers (one from GH2 works just fine).  Sure, she'd have to start over, but she'd also be able to play online.  Okay, she didn't buy that one but we have two guitar controllers that work now.

It's easy to say gameplay is what matters most, until you see the graphics side by side.  Chris and  Ponzi were over for dinner Saturday night and noticed the difference,  Particularly online, the frame rate during some of the hardest sequences drops suddenly and erratically on the Wii.  Xbox 360 keeps up with audio, video, voice, and easy online game matching all in one.

As a master air guitar player, I'm a sucker for this game and you never know, my sons might learn to play the real thing after watching Dad jam. Ryan told me, "Dad, you really rock" and that's all the fan base I need.

In what is sure to be a smart business move for TiVo, they've announced that they're bringing Rhapsody's music service and the ability to download any of four million digital track into the living room.

There are some limitations according to the New York Times- TiVo owners can't move music around their homes or transport songs from TiVo to a mobile device.  These are both well understood and limited issues given that most consumers will just save the music to a playlist, and then sync  from their PC. 

This is great progress to see for TiVo. Their support for application extensions has languished and ISV community fizzled in part due to the lack of rich graphical capabilities such as what Media Center + Xbox 360 extenders can offer.  First MTV, now this, Rhapsody seems to be building out a new playbook.  I have to wonder- does Rhapsody have a Media Center solution waiting in the wings?