alonetone is a really sexy website for musicians made by a musician. I came across the site a few days ago while looking for music resources and instantly fell in love with it. The site isn’t that new (launching late last year) but they recently launched a new version with a sexed up new design.

The concept is simple. Musicians can upload music to their account and share it with their friends. The site also provides a platform for discovering new music for musicians and non-musicians alike. The execution is seamless.

I managed to get in contact with the owner and found out a bit more about the origins of the website and concept.

I am a recording ‘bedroom’ musician, and I’ve offered my own music online (for free) for a really long time. I’ve spent a lot of time encouraging and helping other musician friends of mine record and share their music. I’ve always dreamed of a nice automated system that would help many more musicians get their music online for others to hear, without the stinky corporate feel getting in the way. Just music, people who make music, and their listeners and fans.

alonetone is different because it is non-commercial, run by a musician for musicians and is not trying to sell anyone anything. Tons of sites out there promise musicians money, fame, etc. Although this can seem attractive, it’s not really what a musician needs when they start recording and sharing music. It is another false promise from another company making profit from them (or trying to). It’s very unlikely that the musician will make any money by signing up with these other sites.

With alonetone, there is no reason to include money in the discussion. Maybe if the site explodes in popularity, it will need some help to pay the storage costs. But that is about it. The code is open source. The development is out in the open. I encourage the musicians to tell me what they are looking for and I try to develop something that will address their underlying needs. Really, it’s just all about the music and the people who make it.

Also, alonetone is a step in a larger ladder. I have many ideas about how music can look online. The biggest issue with online music is – how do you find music you will like? alonetone provides musicians with a home, but I’d also like to move in the direction of providing listeners with one too.

alonetone is an on-going project so if you find any bugs or issues while browsing the site please report them. It’s a great project with some honest goals and I really hope it does well.

Some of you may have already heard of Desktop Nexus. They’ve been around for a while but this morning they released a new version of the site with some sweet new features. Building on top of the basic format the site now has a much higher emphasis on the community.

If you hadn’t already guessed the site boasts a massive selection of free to download desktop backgrounds. I spoke with 21 year old Harry Maugans this morning and found out a bit more information about the origins of Desktop Nexus.

A long time ago I ran a BMW forum, and we had a small wallpaper section. Well, that section grew shockingly fast, and I realized the demand out there for good wallpaper sites (not many exist). After that realization, I set out on a two year campaign to create the top source for computer wallpapers online. We want to become the household brand name, where everyone goes first (and last) whenever they get tired of their computer background.

This new version has taken almost a year to complete (the first, basic version took roughly two months). I’ve been messing around with the system for the past little while and there are some really quality wallpapers over there. It’s also a very useful site for finding twitter backgrounds.

If you feel your desktop background is a little un-inspired, head over to Desktop Nexus and change it.

There are many studies being performed about colors and color psychology, and one theory I enjoy agreeing with is that colors have effects on one’s mood. Have you ever taken a look at a color, and imagined further? As in, for example, you’re looking at a blue billboard and think of the sea, which in turn yields you to think in calm terms? Here, a quote from Bloomberg University:

Color, without our realizing it, can have a profound effect on how we feel both mentally and physically. Dr. Morton Walker, in his book The Power of Color, suggested that the ancient Egyptians as well as the Native American Indians used color and colored light to heal.

The article then goes on to list examples of a variety of colors triggering moods or thoughts, like blue, for example: “Blue represents peace, tranquility, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, sky, water, cold, technology, and depression.”

So how does one utilize this? Or, even more, how can you turn something involving something as common as color and mood into anything worth venturing into and profiting?

Guitarati seems to have figured all of this out, as founder Sonal Pandey puts it, “Guitarati provides an offbeat, intuitive way of music discovery based on music-color co-relation. Amidst a world of music discovery dominated by tag clouds, 1-10 rating systems and so forth, we wanted to create something that enabled users to easily find music that others had ‘felt’ the same about.”

The thing that impresses me most about Guitarati is the creativeness of the idea, and how well they’ve pulled it off. Just recently launched in public beta, the service works well with not many visible bugs.

So how does Guitarati make money, and how is it legal? 

Guitarati provides multiple means of revenue for bands and labels, as they get
paid for song downloads as well as streaming. They (bands and labels) decide the
price of their music and retain 75% of the earnings. Record labels can manage
their entire roster and earnings through a single dashboard. Artists can upload
their unsigned as well as released albums. The website is free to use and there
are no hosting or registration fees. We also aim to offer a plethora of
unconventional tools to artists and labels to promote and sell their music.

All in all, a wonderful start-up, a creative idea turned into a profitable new pit-stop for finding music online. Check it out @ Guitarati.com

P.S. – No funding or expenses were disclosed in the e-mail we received, though check back in the comments for something from Pandey possibly.

Ever wanted to make your own game depicting some crazy situation that will more than likely never happen? Check out fyrebug.com.

Fyrebug lets you heavily customize a whole library of pre-made flash games any way you want. You can upload images from your computer or pull them from other websites. Once you’ve added some custom images you can then tweak how you want them to display.

Once you’re happy with your game you can share it with your friends and embed it in blogs and social networking profiles.

I managed to speak with Jonathan Widro, (one of the co-owners) and managed to get a bit more information about the idea behind fyrebug.

My partner and I were working at 4kids Entertainment, and worked closely with flash games. We came up with the idea for Fyrebug, but kids cant upload their own images, so we decided to pursue the idea on our own.

Designed and developed completely by Jonathon and his partner they managed to keep startup costs considerably down.

Here is a game I made depicting me and Mike Arrington having a play fight. If you have a few minutes have a play with the system and make your own game. I’d be interested to see what crazy situations indiestartup readers can create.

Domize is a very useful tool for brainstorming domain names. I’m sure we’ve all been there at some point or another. Trying to find an available domain name for a new project and wished there was a quicker way to do it.

There have been lots of domain search tools out for as long as I can remember but domize concentrates heavily on speed. Dubbed by mashable as “The Fastest Domain Name Search ever” and I would have to agree.

You just start typing in a domain name and the domains are checked on the fly. If domains are indeed taken you can hover your mouse over the extension and a nice little preview of the site is popped up.

This is useful because sometimes taken domains have “for sale” landing pages which you can check very quickly.

The site was developed by Genbook product director Anson Parker. I exchanged a few emails with Anson and he told me a bit more about the story behind Domize.

I built Domize as a side project over a few nights because I wanted a faster, simpler way to look up domain names. I am often brainstorming ideas for web applications and always enjoy finding a free .com domain name to go along with that idea. I have only ever built out a few of these projects, but have somehow collected around 50 domain names in the process.

While there were already some ‘instant’ domain name tools out there, I found them clunky, full of ads and basically just no fun to use. There are also concerns that some of these tools are simply a way for people to steal ideas for good domain names, which is why I wanted to make Domize an encrypted SSL application by default.

Domize also has support for iphone users so you can check for available domains anywhere. It’s a very useful tool so check it out.