Software Karaoke Research Project

After seeing the pros and cons of the systems I've seen in reviewing MC's with Laptop karaoke I decided that the wait times could be better and so could problems like no video on occasional songs, no transposition in some cases and so on...I mentioned reducing wait times with a proper queuing mechanism. I mentioned I wasn't a karaoke software specialist although could write scripts if it would help. Then I thought, wait a minute...I'm an IT consultant, I write reviews, why not BECOME a qualified karaoke software specialist. This litttle idea of mine will take some time and probably cost me some 'okane' (that's money to you and me) but I figure I should put my 'okane' where my mouth is. The first part of this research will only cost me time so...I'm going to try to see what exists out there.

I hope people reading this will bear in mind I'm applying the profession that pays my bills (IT consulting) which I am basically going to give away for the greater good of Karaoke in Toronto. So....anything people can do to reduce the cost (time/money) to this project would be greatly appreciated. Now if any of you MC's who have would like to help with this (and I have already offered to help find ways to improve queuing times for free) if it would really be cool if I could see exactly what software you are using and how (which while I'd like to tell people ways to improve on a general level but not reveal who is using what as that is private, unless you want me to of course) that would give me a lot of insight. It would also give you ways to improve what you do as you'd be getting consulting services applied to karaoke operations at no cost. (The advantage is you'd be getting well before I published it to this blog giving people who help out an edge over competitors)

I'll be keeping my eyes on this project which is close to my heart:http://sourceforge.net/projects/plarpebu/
Its an open source Karaoke Player that supports .kar and mp3+cdg formats. This is actually a big deal and the French are the first to have the foresight to start something like this. I've also seen kTunes and iStar which I'll check out as well but open source means potentially constant improvement by many hundreds of developers which often proves as or more powerful than commercial solutions. (the Apache web Server and OpenOffice are two examples. The Internet I consider one of the first open source projects with the greatest impact obviously).

So those of you who are interested in a free karaoke player can check that out to start. I'm considering adding to the project if I can communicate effectively with these developers (My French Sucks..wonder if they speak Japanese..) More will come later on. Again any help would be great as this will be a major undertaking. Progress will start slow and build up as I get more data.

Also, I hope you are all getting useful info from my reviews. I'm really trying to put more out as fast as I can but it does cost me time and money: About $20-$40 CAD per review for the costs of food/drink or Karaoke Rental fees and about 2-4 hours to attend, jot notes, write and publish to the blog. It all adds up. I'd love ideas to offset/reduce this. Ads are annoying so I try to avoid them. Anyway ideas would be great but I will continue one way or the other. Cheers all.

Jonah A. Libster