Introduction.
This week we talked about another vital characteristic of web2.0 which is “Perpetual Beta”. According to publisher and open source advocate Tim O'Reilly, this pattern has come to be associated with the development and release of a service in which constant updates are the foundation for the habitability or usability of a service.
What is Perpetual Beta.
Perpetual beta is the keeping of software or a system at the beta development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. It is often used by developers when they continue to release new features that might not be fully tested. As a result, many operational systems find this to be a much more rapid and agile approach to development, staging, and deployment.
An obvious example of Perpetual Beta(Google Music Beta).
This is the first step of Google on the cloud media service. The service named “Music Beta” is a new service which has been launched by Google. This is an absolute free service and it allows users to keep their music up to the cloud around 20,000 songs. By comparison, the Amazon’s cloud service offers only 5 GB of free storage for about 1,200 songs stored at a mediocre bit rate. Google will also best Amazon with a feature that automatically creates playlists. Moreover, it will also work with any music on any phone running Android 2.2 or above (The iOS from iphone will be supported shortly). There will a simple presentation with artists, albums, and easy playlist creation. Users can manually create them, or another feature called "Instant Mix" that will make a playlist based on any single song. The system will auto magically pick 25 different tracks to build a "truly ingenious mix". All of this syncs to the cloud, which means no wires needed to download anything. However, more importantly, songs can be cached locally. Users can pick any song, album, or playlist to download onto storage, at an unknown quality. The bad of Music Beta is it is currently only available in the United States.
This week we talked about another vital characteristic of web2.0 which is “Perpetual Beta”. According to publisher and open source advocate Tim O'Reilly, this pattern has come to be associated with the development and release of a service in which constant updates are the foundation for the habitability or usability of a service.
What is Perpetual Beta.
Perpetual beta is the keeping of software or a system at the beta development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. It is often used by developers when they continue to release new features that might not be fully tested. As a result, many operational systems find this to be a much more rapid and agile approach to development, staging, and deployment.
An obvious example of Perpetual Beta(Google Music Beta).
This is the first step of Google on the cloud media service. The service named “Music Beta” is a new service which has been launched by Google. This is an absolute free service and it allows users to keep their music up to the cloud around 20,000 songs. By comparison, the Amazon’s cloud service offers only 5 GB of free storage for about 1,200 songs stored at a mediocre bit rate. Google will also best Amazon with a feature that automatically creates playlists. Moreover, it will also work with any music on any phone running Android 2.2 or above (The iOS from iphone will be supported shortly). There will a simple presentation with artists, albums, and easy playlist creation. Users can manually create them, or another feature called "Instant Mix" that will make a playlist based on any single song. The system will auto magically pick 25 different tracks to build a "truly ingenious mix". All of this syncs to the cloud, which means no wires needed to download anything. However, more importantly, songs can be cached locally. Users can pick any song, album, or playlist to download onto storage, at an unknown quality. The bad of Music Beta is it is currently only available in the United States.
Introducing Music Beta by Google
References:
Music Beta
Wiki
Music Beta
Wiki
Thats pretty cool. Personally I don't think that would replace the standard way of browsing anytime soon. Perhaps with enough feedback during beta it could eventually become something I really want.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, I think it's actually a good thing that the Beta is perhaps only available in the States, if they are planning on making big changes then maybe it's better to have a smaller audience as a test market instead of rolling out a product worldwide that the Company might not be confident about.
ReplyDelete@Sean702 and mindy747. I'm pretty sure that Music Beta by google is very outstanding project. so it will come over the service from Amezon.
ReplyDeleteI never heard about music google before. its interesting application. I totally agree with mandy747 the beta only avialable in the US for a small users to test it but I beleive it gonna be a cool application for everybody in the world in the near future.
ReplyDelete@85Wan, Music Beta by Google has just launched last couple of week. Thus, this is a pretty new online service from Google. I think this can gain the market share from cloud media service.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment.
Yeah I agree with 85wan, I didn't know Google has a Music service. But good blog though. I like how you have posted a relatively small post (I think its easier to get your point across).
ReplyDeleteI know from your comment above, you said that it was launched a couple of weeks ago, but I would like to know if Google has released any future plans for its Music service. I guess increasing its market audience would be one and iOS support as well. Are there any other future plans?
Feel free to have a read of and comment on my blog posts @ https://bkb90.wordpress.com/
@bkb90, According to cnet.com, Firstly Music Beta will be support iOS shortly. Secondly, the beta version is currently only available in USA. In my opinion, Music Beta will be available for other countries in a short time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment.
Ohh it is finally here! Too bad it's only available in US at the moment. I think this will be very popular, especially with future iOS support. However Apple might be coming to cloud music solution soon, too (see my post on MobileMe). How do you think Google stack against Amazon and Apple?
ReplyDelete@akifuku. In my opinion, Google will beat up Amazon soon if Music Beta is available for every countries and I think it may take such a while before Apple will step into this online media services. Because google have done a great job in harnessing the collective intelligence.
ReplyDeleteHowever, copyright can be a cause of problems for this kind of services. Therefore, google will have strategy to deal with this problem... Let see how it goes.
Thanks for your comment.
M..U know, just like I wrote in my blog, Google always set their product in beta situation. Someone say maybe they need to develop a engine which call "Bate search"
ReplyDeleteGoogle music is a good example to describe this term .
ReplyDeleteI wan to add that Google relies on adaption of the beta perpetual development, its user become as co-developer, they use they software comment on it and give their feedback. The users always assess the new features via their usual usage, also Google use some statistic and controlled experiment to make the decision about its products.
@Wilson.C, @gaogeng. That's right guys. Google always gain the benefit of the perpetual beta to improve its services. However, "Beta version" sometime cannot be excuses for poor software developments/services.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. Good luck with your assignments.