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New use-case for IE: Yahoo! Launch videos?

In crusing past a catch-all email account, I found a note from a CTO I met on Caltrain last week (Navient Corp. offers hiring mgmt sw to help companies nail down what they need and then screens applicants to fit those needs; mostly in the call center space). He mentioned an Eleanor song (my name is more prominent in music than real life), by an indie-sounding band called Low Millions (indie -> just about anything featuring guitars).

Wanting to check it out (yet eschewing his iTunes recommendation), I googled and found Yahoo!’s Launch toy, which offered a video. Intrigued, I dug out my IE (it’s true - I had apparently removed all shortcuts to IE) to check it out.

The band was cool, but more interesting was that instead of just playing the one song, the system took me to another song directly - one I liked (Jem’s They). So it’s not only free, and on-demand, but it’s deterministic enough to have lead me to other appealing music.

In order to really use the tool, I had to login to my Yahoo! account. The system glitched on letting me rate Jem immediately, as the server transition from guest to ekrusew failed to handoff my viewing history. So as an apparent new user, I searched and played Jem and rated it highly. The system then played some more appealing stuff - including (new?) Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan - alternative artists I’ve liked through the years. A good experience, content I’m interested in, as I got to see what Sarah looks like now in her latest video. I’m even ok with the commercials that have been interspersed.

Mike, who pays way more attention to this stuff than I do, says this app isn’t new-new, that it’s among the things Anita Wilhelm (mobilegirl) worked on when she was at Yahoo! last year. He’s not sure how much traction it’s gotten out in the world. I certainly never saw it before now.

It’s been a good experience so far - better than tuning into an mp3 channel. It sounds roughly like music I’ve liked in the past (in discovery, variations on a theme is what I want). The video is, strangely enough for bare-bones me, a definite experience enhancer. Though the window remains in the background I’ll bring it forward to take a peek and learn more about a song I like. Then I learn the artist’s name within the context of sampling imagery the band’s provided - like extended cover art. The video is useful in understanding the band, as an extra channel of information. Nice, and worthwhile for even just the couple seconds I view the video.

My recommendation, as always, is that Yahoo! needs to make the investment in porting this to Moz. It’s a nice app, but if during working today I hit a patch of system drag, IE’s first in line for shutdown to free memory. And since I never use IE, IE becomes a de facto Yahoo!’s music videos app - which is exactly the tethering that web-based applications was supposed to eliminate.

And this one is for Russ, who will no doubt be happy that I’m plugging his team: what about mobilizing this for Yahoo!? In the world of MobiTV and Orb, you’ve got the content, the logic and the infrastructure already. Streaming to my Treo would be neat. I’ve got RealPlayer, with no apparent video capabilites, but with a gig of SD, I can stand to add an app. Arguably, I could stand to replace my gig of music files with (a subscription?) music service.

I’ve been slow to feel the need for mobile video, but in this “impression” context I could see it being useful.

Heh, just now it came up with a song by Coldplay “Yellow” that I’ve liked but (counter-culture isolated me) never knew name/artist. Good job Yahoo!.