Ikaro » Social network

How To Listen And Share Music Online Through Unlimited Streaming: Blip

admin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 04:17:56 +0000

Blip.fm allows sharing music online and listening to songs through streaming with no need of mp3 downloading; it’s a real never ending source of music. It works as a social network and it’s Twitter-like.

Image Credit: solarseven

Uploading your own music

After your subscription you can upload yours MP3s to your profile. Dealing with copyright is obviously on you. In few words, you can only upload music from your CDs or mp3 songs regularly purchased online. Once you do this, you can listen to your songs through streaming directly from your account.

Comment and listen other users’ songs

You can search for the other users’ (DJs) songs in the search field and once you find them, listen to a preview.

To listen to the whole songs or add them to you playlist, you should make comments on them by clicking on blip. After your comment, the song will be uploaded to your blips list on the home page.

At this point you can:

Listen to the whole song through streaming by clicking on play
Send an alert to the song’s owner by clicking on the ok hand (called props and used to determine the users’ karma)
Add a song to your playlist by clicking on the star
Add the user as one of your favorite DJs

There are two very useful functionalities: the chance to listen to the songs other users are blipping in real time and the chance to follow your Favorite DJs’s blips (and, obviously, be followed).

Social Functionality

Blip activity can be embedded into;

Twitter
FriendFeed
Pownce
Tumblr
Live Journal
Jaiku
AudioScrobbler

Your blips are automatically shared with the others micropublishing services.

There are other web 2.0 music sharing services, such as last.fm, anywhere.fm, etc, but Blip is much more simple and fun. My username is ikaro, hope to hear from you! : )

Online Loans: All You Need To Know About Social Lending

admin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:35:33 +0000

When people think about online loans, one generally thinks of a loan request done through an online form.

In fact, as well as the web and social networks have influenced both media and marketing with viral effects, so have they been strongly influencing financial products such as loans.

A loan system, that is, a micro-credit one managed with social dynamics is called Social Lending.

Photo Credit: mitarart

If you’re not familiar with social lending yet, here’s what you need to know:

What’s the difference between Social Lending and traditional loans?

On traditional loans, it is the bank that lends you money, on social lendings it is the individuals like you who will lend money to you.

If I’m not granted a loan through the bank, is it likely that I’ll get it from websites like these?

Hardly. Even on online social lendings, the requester’s rating is calculated (the risk for investors who lend you money). If you’re a high risk borrower for a bank, you’ll probably get the same status online.

Do I need to provide guarantees for a loan?

No, or at least, not the way it is requested by banks.

So, there’s a chance I may not restitute my debits? Once there are no guarantees…

Theorically, you might, but consider that you won’t get high sums of money from Social Lending. And not restituting a small sum of money implies the impossibility of reusing this opportunity in the future and for good. Is it worth it?

If it is individuals like me to lend the money, consequently, I myself can do it.

Exactly. In a Social Lending platform, you can register for both loans request and financial investing by lending money to others.

If I wish to lend money but the requester doesn’t need to give any guarantees, what kind of guarantees will I have?

There’s a maximum limit of money you’re allowed to invest, which is subdivided in parts. You can’t lend more than one part to the same person.

To provide a practical example: if you invest 10.000 euros in total, you can’t lend a single person more than 10% of this value. Therefore, you’re compelled to lend 1000 euros to 10 different persons. That limits your risk and avoids speculation.

Consequently, the person requiring the loan will receive it from lots of investors, not only one.

But, what’s the interest rate?

That is perhaps the most interesting point about social lendings: the interest rate is established by whom requires the loan. The requester submits the request specifying the amount, the motivations for the request and the interest rate they are willing to pay.

But, then I can ask for a very low rate!

Yes, but who will be willing to lend you the money? These are the laws of supply and demand. If your rate is too low, no one will offer you money, and you’ll have to submit the request again, raising it. Therefore, as you can see, it is all about the laws of the market, with banks outside.

So…

I hope to have succeeded in explaining the concept of social lending. And beware to the fact that each social lending platform has its own rules, so consider the information on this post as a general guiding.

Here are some peer-to-peer loan platforms:

Zopa
Prosper
Kiva
Targeted to microcredit for poor countries, based in the USA.
Virgin Money
CommunityLend
LendingClub
GlobeFunder

Ikaro » Social network

Top 22 Videosharing Websites To Spread Your Videos

How To Listen And Share Music Online Through Unlimited Streaming: Blip

Uploading your own music

Comment and listen other users’ songs

Online Loans: All You Need To Know About Social Lending