Bust out your boombox (yes, I still own a tape powered boombox – I know its sad).  Today’s review is about a great application called iLike from iLike.com. I like (no pun intended) this application because of what it offers.  A surprisingly simple application it enhances the way to organize your music tastes on Facebook.  The application lets you mark down artists you like and then provides you access to various information such as tour dates, music videos and the best part you can play music from your artists of choice on the iLike audio player (which is built into the application).  Granted the player simply pulls videos from YouTube it still sorts them and places them into a playlist so you don’t need to keep searching for music from the artist, this tactic works really well and the songs it automatically found for a few artists I looked for were really solid tracks.  I am guessing that the playlist sorting mechanism uses some kind of user feedback to enhance results.  The application includes some additional features such music quizzes, charts and free MP3s.  I like (again, no pun intended) a feature where you can dedicate songs to your friends.  You can choose songs from your favorite artist or from a list of the most dedicated songs on the application.  Your friend can then list to that song (they will need to install the application as well).  This function really help promote the application virally and is one of the reasons this application is one of the most popular on Facebook, just this week I got 3 dedications from some of my Facebook friends.   The application already has a healthy 5.6 million monthly active users and that figure is growing rapidly, expect it to reach 7 million active users in a month or two. All in all, a really simple and elegant application which truly delivers excellent music and artist information, I like, iLike.

When I am not writting application reviews in sweatshop-like conditions, my next favourite passtime is watching movies.  Which is why I simply had to review this application.   The first thing you do when you join Flixster is take a movie rating test.  You are given a bunch of movies from different genres and you decide its star rating, from one to five.  If you hated the movie or have never seen it, you can also select a ‘not interested’ or  ‘I want to see this’ button.  Your ratings are then compared with all your friends, who also have the application, and you get to see who you are most compatible with in the movie department.  It can actually be a little shocking if you have friend’s you don’t normally see on a regular basis and then you discover they love all the same type of movies you do.  The application allows you to rate movies anytime you want, so you can constantly add new movies you like to your list.  It also has a fun quiz section, where you can take quizzes on just about anything movie related.  They have hundreds of quizzes to choose from and with each quiz you can see which of your friend have taken it and what they scored.  If you want to challenge your friends with your own quiz, you can make one up and sent it off to them.  It can be fun to see which friend takes your quiz and what they score, as well as how many other user end up taking it.  There is also an endless quiz you can take whenever you want.  New questions are constantly added and you can start and stop whenever you want, with the ability to restart where you last ended.  Besides the ratings and the quizzes, you can also watch trailers for upcoming movies and trailers for movies that are currently in theatres.  If you love movies you will have countless hours of entertainment with this application.