

Radio OneLlama Goes Public - thegreatllama
http://www.onellama.com
Greetings, HN!  Couple of changes we've made recently:<p>- You no longer need an invite or registration to use the site
- API is available at http://company.onellama.com/section/labs/api/
- Feel free to experiment with the API (no keys necessary for now), if we really like what you build, our connections with the North Pole enable us to send you a free iPod Touch
- iPhone version is in the works
- Flash widget is in the works
- Improvements made to search (added a location search), with more info given on results<p>Have a Happy Holidays!  Cheers, -The Llama
======
whiteslave
Onellama doesn't stack up well against it's competitors whatsoever. Here's
why:

ONELLAMA vs DEEZER.COM To compare, deezer.com allows you to both make pandora
style radios, discover new music, & make your own free to play playlists and
it's all easy to do. Onellama only gives you the option of listening to 30
second snippits or paying for the rhapsody player to listen to your music +
their new radio service. So why would you choose Onellama when there are
better services?

THEIR MUSIC SEARCH FEATURE When searching for music, it brings up only a few
songs by the artist you're looking for and presents with other related
options. This is sometimes good for discovering new music, but often you just
want more songs from the artist you searched for and they don't let you easily
do that. Also, the related music if often overly mainstream music - not cool
if you like indy stuff.

OVERALL INTERFACE Onellama has a penchat for developing confusing interfaces.
Sure, they're somewhat neat as far as creative flash design, but they come
together to make a pretty confusing experience. It's really hard to find what
you actually want. For instance, it's great that they just launched their
radio - but where did the music search feature go? Also, within their music
search feature - it brings up some crazy interface for searching for related
music - but I can only play 30 second of music each?

RADIO The radio is not that bad. Despite the radio search feature being a
little confusing to a new user (who will type a band they like and expect to
hear that band - not some other music) it's probably one of the best online
tools now for searching for radio stations that play what you like.

So overall Onellama, you have potential, but the way it's coming together
needs some serious improvement to stack up against competitors like
deezer.com. Here's what I recommend.

1\. SIMPLIFY YOUR INTERFACE!! \- One your homepage, make one button for Radio,
one for music search, and one for personal playlists. Right now you're hiding
search functionality & putting way too many options for your radio on your
direct homepage.

2\. Make it free to play music Downloading Rhapsody sucks and turns people
off. Make it free to play on your website.

Starting with those two things will help the quality of your website a lot.
But right now, it's substandard compared to your competitors.

------
truebosko
Ok, after some playing I think I got this.

First of all, I don't think it works in Google Chrome (Windows XP) .. every
station I tried just errored saying it couldn't load the stream. Same stations
worked in Firefox.

The interface is neat, but when I typed my artist in I got a list of random
radio stations. It would be nice to show us a tiny bit more info on the
station before I load it

It seems more obscure artists are totally broken. Try typing "Godspeed you!
Black emperor" I love the band, but I know they most likely won't show up on
online radio due to the length of songs and the results seem to show that ..
got a bunch of weird results that did not even match the artist at all (Soul?
No.)

Either way ... Very interesting I have to say, will definitely give it a few
more tries.

Edit: Also needs some volume normalization. Getting my brain blasted despite
being on Volume-2 on some stations and then a nice quiet sound on others is no
fun.

------
thegreatllama
Changes:

[1] No longer need an invite or registration to use the site [2] API available
at <http://company.onellama.com/section/labs/api/> [3] Feel free to experiment
with the API (no keys necessary for now), if we really like what you build,
our connections with the North Pole enable us to send you a free iPod Touch
[4] iPhone version is in the works [5] Flash widget is in the works [6]
Improvements made to search (added a location search), with more info given on
results

Cheers, -The Llama

------
crystalgeyser
"Founded by some of the world's leading experts in machine learning and
semantic web, One Llama offers a unique approach the world of personalization
and recommendation combining the best techniques from collaborative filtering
and machine learning."

Who are these experts?

------
paul9290
Is it winamp people?

I hope so because if not their use of the llama and online radio will cause
confusion.

