TuneUp Media, one of my personal favorite software apps out there has only a few, music-centric uses. It cleans up the titles, finds the cover art for you – which helps my typical OCD nature where everything has to be alike, but it also locates local happenings like concerts and now, via their Tuniver.se website, helps you discover new music as well as inform you of other happenings. It’s not a well-known app, but it’s definitely a well-used app with over 1 million users and over 850 million songs “automagically” cleaned through their process. For a company that only recently have had their application added to the brick and mortar Apple Stores, that’s quite an achievement.

Well that, and I stand by my earlier assessment that their software plain rocks.

GOGII has released some numbers for their free text messaging app textPlus that has been released for the wildly popular Apple iPhone, Apple iPad and the Android series of phones by Google. Mobile phones, as widespread as they are also means that you’re fighting for a lot of elbow room alongside a lot of similar function apps. But somehow textPlus has amassed 18 million users and growing.

The textPlus app is free to download for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android phones. The textPlus 60611 short code allows users to text for free in the U.S. and Canada, and its app-to-app texting functionality is free to use worldwide. Over two billion messages have been sent to date within the textPlus network, with volume averaging 16 million messages daily and half a billion each month. Users spend over an hour a day using the app.

Not bad for an app that’s never been advertised outside of the iTunes App Store and a few places online. Again, it’s just a good app that’s done well.

Vonage, perhaps one of the biggest VoIP providers in the US, but nowhere near the size of the of the Ma’ Bell (AT&T) that I grew up with offers a cool feature via their Vonage World Plan called Vonage Visual Voicemail that transcribes your incoming voicemails and sends them to you via e-mail. Such a small feature that’s getting used 4 million times per month and rising.

As a long time Vonage user, I sometimes forget to take my Vonage V-Portal router with me, and that’s when the visual voicemail service comes in handy. Apparently 4 million other users like that convenience too. And again, this is a feature that has only been (by me) advertised on the Internet.

And if you have Vonage – I suggest that you do, the ability to call 50+ countries for free is just plain great – set up your own visual voicemail. Amazingly enough, the transcripts aren’t even bad. It was able to decipher my normally ultra-fast talking mother even!

With all of that said… it goes to show you that software and esoteric features can still be used by millions of users. You don’t have to be a Microsoft, Apple or IBM to get a lot of attention; just be like the aforementioned companies and use the Internet properly and wisely. And honestly… I’m loving that.

[ Links: TuneUp Media, GOGII textPlus, Vonage ]

This review was a long time coming. I usually take my time to get to know exactly what I’m reviewing, and each and every review at RTL is a product that I stand behind. TuneUp has become that one app that simply became something that I didn’t know I needed until I got my hands on it.

Even before I bought my first portable mp3 player – I broke down and got the first generation, Firewire charging and syncing, shiny metal back with the actual moving click wheel, monochromatic screen 5gb Apple iPod – I was already converting all 900+ CD’s that I had in my possession and throw it onto a portable 40gb hard drive. Lugging around 900+ CD’s and buying more each month was beginning to become a nuisance.

Sometimes the software I was using, I wasn’t always using iTunes in the beginning, didn’t get all of the information or ID3 tags right. And with my current level of OCD, that annoyed me but having some almost 10,000+ songs to go through and correct… hell, I was just happy that I knew what the title was sometimes. Fast forward almost 9 years later, a quick stint using Napster, a full-blown switch to the Apple iTunes Music Store and a growing appetite for music I found myself having a music playlist with a lot of “Track 1″ and “Unknown Album” all over the place.

Not to mention with the cover flow interface, I was greeted with a ton of blacked out images where colorful covers should go. What will a music lover do with such an ugly mess?

Get TuneUp [ site here ]. That’s what.

TuneUp is an add-on that sits on the side of the Apple iTunes application like some useful digital remora fish filled with ever-changing information that includes what concerts are going on around you, the ability to share what you’re listening to with others on Twitter, YouTube integration… and that’s all on the all-important Tuniverse tab. The real magic happens on the Clean tab.

On the Clean tab, you will drag and drop music from your iTunes library onto the TuneUp application and it will start to crunch through, grab covers, correct or add the album name. That’s on the songs with partial information. The cool part is that on some songs that were titled wrong – for instance my entire King Tubby dub collection has endured the years that I didn’t know which album they belonged to – I was too lazy to add the album name when I ripped the CD to MP3 and have since traded the CD for more CD’s.

Word of caution though. The Clean tab recommends dragging 500 songs at a time. Listen to the tab… I dragged 6000 songs over and had enough time to go make and eat a sandwich. But by dragging 500 songs, it was done before I had the time to reach over, grab a soda and open the top. Now, it’s not perfect. This is software that we’re talking about. But the good part… if TuneUp isn’t’ sure about a song, it’ll make a suggestion that you can either “aye or nay” and keep going. Same for covers too. You can sometimes be presented with multiple covers via the Cover Art tab.

Now… onto the Concert tab. I’ve not been to a concert in ages, but when The Who came to town, I knew about it regardless and was somewhat successful in avoiding some of that traffic. I’ve also been made aware neighboring cities and their happenings too… which since I’m in a very small venue is a good thing to know as well.

The cons are very few, but do not automatically let the Clean tab automatically clean and add covers to all of possible suggestions. I ended up having some odd MP3′s sent to me by friends or stuff I’ve actually gotten directly from the artist – such at L.E.G.A.C.Y. “Legclusives” – and they were renamed to something very odd… very German. In that case, you can make the Comments view within iTunes visible and look for “Cleaned Up by TuneUp” and see and go back to it and revert it by hand. Which is not as bad as having to redo some 6000 songs by hand. And sometimes, TuneUp can glitch a bit when you’re moving iTunes around… and I swear it will start on my second monitor and switch to the first monitor almost always. Slightly annoying…

With that said… the pros outweigh the cons. If you have a lot of music, if you love music, you simply need TuneUp in your life. You can download TuneUp and check it out for 100 cleanings as well as 50 covers. But who has a limited amount of music like that now!? Go buy it. It’s the best $19.95 (yearly) or $29.95 (lifetime) that you will spend. After a couple of months with TuneUp, I do not want to go back to life without it… you’ll see just how crappy your music playlist looked without it.

Rated: 5 out of 5 (A Must Buy)

[ TuneUp ] [ TuneUp Blog ] [ Releated: RTL Reviews ]

Everybody loves free stuff, and when the makers of my current favorite software TuneUp announced a contest, I had to spread the word.

Wooohoo – get excited! We are going to start doing regular TuneUp contests where you can win some awesome prizes. Seriously. To kick off this whole new movement, we’re giving away a bunch of TuneUp schwag in addition to these über-cool iPod speakers (see above):

I know, right!? Let’s face it. Speakers are typically pretty boring. But this guy, the Headphonie mp3 speaker, is here to add a little charm to your listening experience. He might be petite, standing 3″ tall, but he delivers intense sound whether he’s plugged into your computer or mp3 player.

Want it? Participating is easy:
- Join our Facebook Fan Page
- Drop your haiku into the CONTEST: HAIKU thread under “Discussions”.
- Post your best TuneUp 5-7-5
- Cross your fingers and hope for the best

This is a winner take all contest – no runner ups.

Best TuneUp haiku added by May 21st wins it all. So get to it.

Now, don’t be a dummy like me and submit on their blog; save that for the above rules – yes it involves Facebook. I’ll have a very thorough review on this software very soon. As of right now, I’m loving it.

[ TuneUp Haiku Contest ]