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Category: Grabb.it

Grabb.it redesigns, incorporates personal MP3 tumblogs

Rick Turoczy on April 1, 2008

Portland-based Grabb.it, the service which has the potential to help catalog Web-based MP3s for music lovers everywhere, picked a rather inauspicious date to release a new version of the Grabb.it site. But they’re not fooling around.

The new site now enables anyone to create tumblog posts based on the MP3s they grab.

Grabb.it is the group music blog where anyone can contribute. Sign up to create your own personal mp3 blog about songs you love and to send your posts to services like Tumblr, Blogger and Facebook.

This new feature holds promise, both as a way of allowing users to easily create reviews of the tunes in their respective libraries and—hopefully—as a means of increasing the reach and promotion of the Grabb.it service to active tumblog and Facebook types.

What’s a “tumblog“? I’m glad you asked. According to Wikipedia:

A tumblelog (or tlog) is a variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary.

Other noticeable changes to the Grabb.it site include a highly simplified UI and a very slick, intelligent bread-crumb trail.

For more on the MP3-finding service and its new tumblogging capabilities, visit Grabb.it.

Grabb.it releases API, documentation

Rick Turoczy on January 31, 2008

Portland-based Grabb.it, the music service that helps users share and rate MP3s, has announced the release of a rich RESTful API for accessing its data.

The primary resource type Grabb.it makes available is the playlist. We make playlists available in many formats, at many endpoints. We also have a few methods to manipulate and generate playlists. This document details the formats, endpoints (access urls) and uses of Grabb.it playlists.

Documentation on the API is available on a new Grabb.it API Google Group. For more information, visit Grabb.it.

Grabb.it releases microblogging feature

Rick Turoczy on August 23, 2007

Portland-based Grabb.it has announced the release of a new microblogging feature for its users.

Following the lead of services like Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce, the new Grabb.it feature allows users to post short messages (less than 140 characters) and provides a feed to which others can subscribe. An example can be found here.

The recent development efforts—like the iPhone interface—have led to a growth spurt for Grabb.it, forcing them to have deal with (welcome) growing pains.

Grabb.it releases incredibly cool interface for iPhone

Rick Turoczy on August 16, 2007

Tired of the music on your iPhone? Point it to the Grabb.it iPhone interface and you’ll be surfing new tunes in a matter of seconds. Find one you like? Click and you’ll be listening—to the whole song.

Just flip through the iPhone friendly scroll list or search, then click on a selected tune, and voila! That’s it. It’s playing on your iPhone. Just like that.

The new Grabb.it iPhone service worked flawlessly on wifi, with no interruption. It played the songs as if they were stored in my iPod library. With Edge, it was a little choppy.

Still, worth checking out.

[UPDATE] Great insight into the development challenges, on Chris Anderson’s blog.

Designed to support independent musicians, the Portland-based Grabb.it service makes any Web-accessible MP3s—from local favorites, relative unknowns, and popular artists—more accessible by indexing MP3s as they are posted by artists and fans.

Grabb.it

Rick Turoczy on August 9, 2007

Grabb.it, the self-proclaimed “Giant MP3 eating rabbit,” has released some new features and a shiny new interface, according to some recent tweets from Chris Anderson.

Designed to support independent musicians, the Grabb.it service makes any Web-accessible MP3s—from local favorites, relative unknowns, and popular artists—more accessible by indexing MP3s as they are posted by artists and fans.

At the time of this posting, Grabb.it was indexing nearly 9,000 artists and more than 8,000 albums.

For more information or to register for the service, visit Grabb.it.