There's a new HTML5-based web app that's getting some attention, addictive in its possibility if not always in its actual function. Gizmodo explains:
When you enter the site you can go into one of several rooms. Some will be packed, others empty. You can also create your own room. Once in, you can either jump on the decks and start playing music or just hang out and listen. If a song's not already in the Turntable database, you can upload it yourself. There's a chat interface, and DJs can earn points from the audience, which earns them both points and gear for their avatars.
OMG! Nerdy! Yeah. It's actually even nerdier than it sounds. But it's also a pretty nice interface to kick back and listen to music from your friends and discover new songs.
You'll need a Facebook friend already in there (shouldn't be hard). When preparing for this story, we checked into the Gizmodo room and dropped a tested and proven quartet of songs for an empty room — "G.R.I.N.D." by Asher Roth, "I'm The Ish" remix by DJ Class feat. Lil Jon, "Day 'N' Nite" (Crookers remix) by Kid Cudi and "Shame" (12" version) by Evelyn "Champagne" King. You select the songs via a search box on the right, adding them to a "queue" for your funkiness, then you hit the wheels of … uh, pixels. Problem is, don't think you'll get to practice your DJ Hero honed abilities so fast. If you're in there by yourself, after a couple of second this message pops up …
"We can only play you a preview of your song until someone else also starts DJing. Everyone else can still hear the song playing."
Hopping into a hip hop room found an uncensored version of Kanye West's "All Falls Down" playing as avatars of an audience passed virtual blunts around, saw the "n" word bleeped out by the site's filters and kicked each other upside the head while five digital DJs (three on Macs, two using Windows, according to what the icons showed) "stood" at the DJ table, four waiting their turn as "Chilly P" rocked along. There's a voting meter with buttons for "awesome" and "lame" which gives you a real-time barometer of how the room feels to the "crowd."
The limitations are a little stifling, but the chatting can get going in an entertaining fashion and once Nate Dogg's chorus on "Oh No" comes in, it can almost feel like rocking out at the club from the comfort of your chair. Worth a look, in that it's free (so far) unless you live outside the United States.
Also, Wired has six things the site has to overcome to succeed, including legal challenges, financial backing, missing features and more.
[Source: Gizmodo, Techdirt, Wired]